Alex Horne ‘Breaks The News’ is a fabulous, hilarious and exciting (for the podcast-iverse) foray into the genre of comedy news. Run rife with a charming spirit of chaos that blends perfectly with the sillily pompous musical stings, this podcast is not only very funny, but is too particularly British, a feeling often missing from the LA dominated scene. Brought up with a love of puns, ridiculous mini-songs/intros and a genuine striving for chunks of nonsense, Horne brings this ‘Britishness’ to the show marvellously, creating a podcast that is not only thoroughly enjoyable and laugh out loud funny, but is too fairly unique.
Maybe it is through the ease of news’s relationship with comedy that the offspring sometimes seem rather trite and lazy, but not always, as Horne’s BtN proves. The crossover has a storied history of course, from the biting satire of political cartoons over the past several hundred years to the various TV shows that often replace the concept of ‘originality’ with ‘current,’ to the numerous radio shows that come and go with rare fanfare, all of which mean the baton obviously would fall to podcasts in the end. Most podcasts do tumble across the news as a source of debate, topic or insight, but few really anchor themselves upon a voracious consumption of the news in specific. The perennial number one UK podcast ‘The News Quiz’ is one of the principal examples of these news focused news/comedy shows about the news, though its success is seemingly tethered to a lack of any genuine personality, its longevity and its BBC status. So the floor is actually pretty open for a genuinely funny, semi-specific to the news podcast, particularly one where guests have the balls to arrive without written answers to the most obvious questions, where a host might gladly jump focus between the fates of Syria and bees, or query whether a guest has ever eaten an egg. So it’s lucky that the fabulous Alex Horne has taken up such a mantle, so we need wait no longer.
Alex Horne, uncommonly close to chickens. c/o The Guardian
One thing you can bank on with Alex Horne is a certain majesty and a fantastic, yet strangely dishevelled grandeur with him, almost reminiscent of a rich uncle who long since abandoned the parties of his fellow people of money, but maintains an air of glory that is tinged (fairly strongly) with a sense of growing madness. One thing that can be said of Horne is that he stamps himself quite definitively on the show, such is his distinctiveness in meandering between the unpredictable questions, musical stings and guests. The sense of grandness runs straight through him and throughout the show, a spirit which is ably instilled by Horne, as it is undercut by him; slicing beneath the grandiosity with an ever present silliness and spirit of stupidity. As much as he is the great waves pushing the show on, he is too steered by those he’s invited, regaling them with little tales and freeing them to venture down tangents that he rescues them from, with his louche enforcement of format. This means that the joy of the show is maintained all the time, with a light, airy spirit, making for outrageously charming comedy, with a subtle sparkle that makes it all the more impressive. That they have all been brought to the show not to stage a conversation, but instead perform a show, adds to both the elements of majesty and stupidity, granting them the purpose and reason that adds to much of the comedy, fun and barrages of nonsense to the proceedings.
Utterly grand while at the same time perfectly ludicrous, Alex Horne Breaks The News is a very very very welcome edition to the podcast catalogues, making a show that is as unafraid of laughter as it is of nonsense, one with an authoritative sense of personality and individuality lacking from so many of its predecessors.
You can find the show on iTunes or by searching it on the internet. Alex Horne himself is on twitter @AlexHorne, conveniently enough. Very good, enjoy the show!