Marcus's take on The Late Edition

Here's the thing. For the last few years I have been proffering opinions on… well, almost everything on Radio 4's 'The Now Show' and also on the live comedy circuit. Now it's time to 'step up' and take some of those opinions directly to the people who they affect and see what the other side have to say for themselves. It may turn out I've been talking bollocks for a number of years. This is a great challenge for me, and excitingly - l have my own desk.

My hope for 'The Late Edition' is that it becomes a long running and successful series - obviously. Not only because it would be fun and make me rich beyond my tamest dreams but because we (the UK) haven't got this right yet. The US (for all its faults, bless it) has made some phenomenal programmes in this genre - Comedy Central's 'The Daily Show' being the best of them, 'The Tonight Show' and 'The Late Show' not far behind, albeit that they are celebrity led; but 'The Late Edition' has the best aspirations of anything I've ever worked on. The bar has been set pretty high and we will miss (often by miles) but the attempt will always be worth the effort and should be a joy to watch.

I have surrounded myself with the best writers there are for this sort of thing, deeply funny and intelligent people who I hope will make this show an unmissable weekly feature for all fans of topical comedy. It's nerve wracking, exhausting and very exciting. It's great for me to be able to focus on one programme for an entire six weeks, instead of the usual thing of juggling ten different projects at once - oh, except for the fact that at some stage during all this my wife will be having our second baby, but apart from that it's all good.

I hope you enjoy 'The Late Edition' - please contribute to the website, we want to hear from you.

Thanks

Marcus

www.thelateedition.co.uk