One in the Breech
It started with a tweet highlighting an episode from On the Air, a series of short animations from BBC Northern Ireland of talk radio from The Gerry Anderson Show dating back to the 2000s. The hypno-hen soon went viral, and now the late broadcaster’s family have set up a website in his honour.
You can find other On the Air clips on YouTube, but the family site conveniently gathers them on one page. There’s also a DVD release of all three series of the show. Fans of Aardman’s Creature Comforts, Mid-Morning Matters with Alan Partridge and Peter Serafinowicz’s impressions of the late Terry Wogan will love it.
As good as the hypno-hen is—and it’s so, so good—the other episodes I’ve seen are just as hilarious, and I’ve already snapped up a copy of the DVD. There’s something enchanting about seeing ephemeral radio phone-ins live on in this way… and to know that five-minute filler from a regional TV broadcaster can also live again, thanks to social media.
(The podcast of The Gerry Anderson Show features 36 hours of highlights over 78 episodes, including a more complete clip of the hypno-hen exchange—available on iTunes/Apple Music, BBC Sounds and the rest.)