Sylvie Majorova for I Swear I'm Not Doing a Bit

I Swear I’m Not Doing a Bit describes itself as a ‘radio comedy panel show on Cam FM, themed around events that didn’t happen, things that don’t make sense and items that don’t exist’. The first show of Lent term delivered just that, with panel topics varying from writing the title of a Jane Austen novel if she was writing now to writing football chants about curtains.

“It would have been easy to fall into the expected tedium of a comedy panel show based around zany concepts, but I instead found myself actually laughing along.”

It would have been easy to fall into the expected tedium of a comedy panel show based around zany concepts, but I instead found myself actually laughing along. The show did occasionally fall into repeating tired jokes that partly come with the territory of a panel show, but also the now uncannily familiar experience of being in lockdown. The strange sense of nostalgia which has gripped us all for the Halcyon summer days of Lockdown One was played out in full in the first round. In a section concerning reasons for a break up, we had the expected quips you’d find on Twitter six months ago: finding out that your partner was a ‘let’s circle back to this’ person, that you’d been COVID positive ‘for years due to the symptom of lack of taste in men’ – and, of course, it wouldn’t be a post-2020 show without references to the most infamous town in England, Barnard Castle.

“Though not the most promising start, as we continued through the show it became far less formulaic.”

Though this was not the most promising start, as we continued through the show it became far less formulaic. Panellists began to seem more comfortable to interact and made some of the funniest lines of the show off the cuff. Indeed, there was also an entertaining self-awareness of the potential for a comedy panel’s prepared jokes to fall flat, most notably from guest panellist Gregory Miller. My hat goes off to sound editor Elen Hughes, whose editing must have helped to make a show that had the potential to be stilted and silent due to the lack of physical connection seem organic and interactive – although I disliked the (presumably) canned laughter which distracted me from some of the funniest lines.


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Mountain View

Preview: I Swear I'm Not Doing a Bit (or my manservant)

These most riotous sections were often when panellists were forced to be creative in strict conditions; they sound arduous, but Alex Walker’s and Nathan Galpin’s football chants about curtains were laugh-out-loud highlights. However, when left more free-form and actually “doing a bit” – as when representing political parties in an alternative universe – although organic laughs were created between panellists, it did feel like the show was losing its way.

Here, it was clear how integral host Louis Davies was at setting the team up for laughs, and the ease in which he does this is to be hugely commended. Overall, although I expected I might be popping I Swear I’m Not Doing a Bit on in the background to soundtrack some much more important tasks (as is the case for some of my seminars), I was sucked in after the show had warmed up, and I look forward to tuning in to the next panel (which, to crack another tired lockdown joke, is more than can be said for my next zoom meeting)…