Radio Times: Review by:; Jane Anderson

Prepare to be astounded. In lesser hands than those of producer Miles Warde this could have been a gimmicky waste of 30 minutes. Instead it is the most original and subtly subversive piece of radio in years.

Warde has selected spoken word archive material from some of our best-known broadcasters — think Attenborough, Paxman and Iannucci — and sliced them around news reportage upon a theme of failure. The section on global economics is enough to incite a riot but that would be ignoring the point of this wonderful programme: that we really should be learning from history.

About this programme

Extracts from archive BBC broadcasts on the theme of failure are chopped up and reformatted to create a new programme. Featuring quiz-show contestants, divorcees and politicians, as well as an explanation of the death of the dodo. The voices of Sheila Hancock, David Attenborough, Armando Iannucci and Jeremy Paxman are among the various recordings.