Steve Punt
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Steve Punt is well known thanks to the popular Radio 4 Friday night comedy, The Now Show - with fellow-host Hugh Dennis, he\\u2019s been mocking politicians and celebrities for an astonishing twenty years now. He also presents The Third Degree, the Radio 4 quiz which pits undergraduates against professors. But behind the scenes he\\u2019s been busy writing for a whole host of other shows, such as Mock the Week and The Mary Whitehouse Experience, for comedians Jasper Carrott and Rory Bremner; he even used to write for the puppets on Spitting Image. He says \\u201cWeirdly, I think people are more inclined to believe comedians than they are politicians.\\u201d
In Private Passions, Steve talk to Michael Berkeley about how it all began: when he was bad at games at school, and forced to play the clown. He reminisces about his first job, in a music shop in Croydon, which he describes as being so rich in comic material that it was a bit like a sitcom \\u2013 all of life was there. He talks about how audiences have changed thanks to social media, and why he worries that mocking politicians may just be a way of feeding their gigantic egos.
Music choices include Sibelius\\u2019s Violin Concerto, piano music by Debussy and by Scott Joplin, Shostakovich\\u2019s Jazz Suite, Dave Brubeck, and a comic masterpiece by Dudley Moore, \\u201cBedazzled\\u201d.
Produced by Elizabeth Burke\\nA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3
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