Jon Holmes: from The Skewer to Dead Ringers
The new producer of the hit Radio 4 impressions show talks to Sceptred Dial about taking over from the late great Bill Dare, and why he wants the programme to be 'an equal opportunities offender'
How do you take over a job running a cherished radio programme of which most listeners would say, “It ain’t broke, so don’t fix it”?
That was the position Jon Holmes found himself in when, following the sudden death of Bill Dare in March, he became Bill’s successor as the producer of Dead Ringers, the Radio 4 impressions show that’s been satirising politicians and broadcasters going all the way back to its launch in 2000.
Jon has gained renown in recent years as the creative force behind Radio 4’s The Skewer, in which his twisting of current-affairs news clips into something hilarious, surreal and often savage has won the show a whole host of accolades.
As a Dead Ringers devotee, I reckon I’ve detected a certain Skewer-isation of the content of the latest series — the first under Jon’s direction — which was something I wanted to ask him about when we spoke at its halfway point (three programmes gone, three more to go).
“I guess there’s an element of The Skewer in it,” Jon told me. “That’s my way of doing things, and after all I’ve only got one brain. But it’s a team effort, and I’m the new boy, and everyone is so brilliant, the cast and the writers, that they really don’t need me telling them what to do. At the same time I think I did see taking over the show as an opportunity to up its edginess a bit, to up the satirical stakes.”
Jon was aware of the perception of Radio 4 comedy as predominantly left-wing, and encouraged the Dead Ringers writers to “reflect the whole world”, a process by which any political position could be satirised, so long as the jokes still worked.
A sketch in the most recent programme in the series — in which a “Penelope Wilton”-hosted charity appeal targeted a certain type of millennial Gaza protestor — struck me as fitting that description, and I did wonder whether John was concerned that he might risk making enemies of a generation of young listeners (a large chunk of them anyway).
“I see the show as an equal opportunities offender,” he said. “If we were worried about pissing people off, we wouldn’t be doing what we do.” And the fact that Jon found a way to address the topic of Gaza was an indication that, for him, no issue is off-limits.
“I don’t think we should be afraid of any subject as long as we find a way to make a point and make it funny. We had a sketch based on the recent grooming gangs story. You really couldn’t find anything less funny than that, but it was one of the biggest stories of the week and we felt we shouldn’t shy away from it so long as we could get it right.”
Jon’s mark is especially present in “David Lammy’s inner monologue”, and in the emphasis on Kemi Badenoch’s general weirdness, but the continued presence of all the main impressionist talent — Jon Culshaw, Jan Ravens, Lewis Macleod, Duncan Wisbey — and main writers Nev Fountain and Tom Jamieson has guaranteed the maintenance of, I would say, incredibly high standards.
“I’m also conscious of trying to get in as many sketches in as possible,” Jon said. “My instinct is to keep it pacy — don’t let anything outstay its welcome.”
Personal favourites in the latest series include Lee Anderson (voiced by both Kieran Hodgson and Duncan Wisbey), and Lewis Macleod’s stunningly accurate impersonations of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. The nailing of the vocal mannerisms of Chris Mason is also really something.
The way the show has taken the opportunity to revive both Liz Truss and Diane Abbott (two of Jan Ravens’s finest ever creations) is wonderful, and I’ve especially enjoyed the targeting of the rampant proliferation of podcasting, with Radio 2’s Rylan in a blind panic because he has a guest on his show with no podcast to promote, and The News Agents’ Emily Maitlis frantically demanding that she and her team put together ever more “emergency podcasts” in response to the news.
Jon said he wasn’t aware of how well or badly any of the show’s real-life personalities were taking the joke other than one: LBC’s king of condescension James O’Brien, who got in touch, delighted to have acquired the status that only Dead Ringers can bestow.
With both The Skewer and now Dead Ringers, Jon, who is 56, is currently shaping much of the character of Radio 4 comedy, the latest point on a career trajectory that began when he was 16 and worked on hospital radio in Nuneaton, where he grew up. A degree in English and Radio, Film and Television at the University of Kent was a major step forward, and while working in a sound and lighting job at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury, he was also submitting comedy demo tapes to BBC radio.
That led, in 1998, to work on a show for Radio 1 called Grievous Bodily Radio. Comedy shows on Radio 1? Yes, it did happen, although Grievous Bodily Radio soon relocated to Radio 4.
Jon was now on the BBC radio comedy writing team, and one day the “slightly forbidding figure” of Bill Dare put his head round the door and told him he was launching a radio version of Spitting Image — ie Dead Ringers — and Jon should “get on with it”.
“That was that,” Jon told me, and he thinks that it was in part because of his long association with Dead Ringers that Jon Culshaw and Jan Ravens — for both of whom the loss of Bill Dare had been devastating — asked him if he would consider taking it on. “It was an honour, and hugely flattering, and because of my history with the programme, I said Yes.”
An extremely welcome decision, I say. Dead Ringers is very much alive and kicking under Jon Holmes.
Dead Ringers continues on Radio 4 on Fridays at 6.30pm