Too Long; Didn't Read: Ep 4. We've got our work cut out

Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4

BBC

Comedy

4.2 • 13.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

With unemployment on the rise, Catherine and friends want to know why Britain isn't working. Is it AI? Is it older workers taking early retirement? Or is there something bigger going on?

To find out why, Catherine is joined by Hugo Rifkind, Isabel Berwick, and roving correspondent Sunil Patel - and they've got their work cut out...

Written by Catherine Bohart, with Madeleine Brettingham, Georgie Flinn and Christina Riggs.

Producer: Alison Vernon Smith Executive Producers: Lyndsay Fenner & Victoria Lloyd Sound Design: David Thomas Production Co-ordinator: Katie Sayer

A Mighty Bunny production for BBC Radio 4

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:04.7	Hello, lovely Friday Night Comedy people. I'm Catherine Bowhart and I'm here to tell you that if you're in the UK,
0:10.6	you can now listen to brand new episodes of my series Too Long Didn't Read and all the other Friday Night comedy shows first on BBC Sounds,
0:18.6	seven days earlier than anywhere else. Just go to BBC Sounds, subscribe to
0:22.9	Friday Night Comedy, and I can't stress this enough. Make sure that you have push notifications
0:27.5	turned on. That way, you'll get alerted as soon as new episodes become available, although
0:32.1	here's a big clue. It's always on Friday. Listen to Friday night comedy first on BBC Sounds.
0:39.1	Hello and welcome to Too Long Didn't Read, the show that like Trump in his Alaska meeting with Putin
0:43.8	just about manages to sound informed while furiously Googling stuff during the lunch break.
0:51.8	I'm Catherine Bohart and this is a show with so many angles on the news
0:55.3	that's like Nicholas Sturgeon's haircut, sharp, incisive, and timeless, yet confusingly sexy.
1:05.6	Here on Too Long Didn't Read, we take a deep dive into one big news story with the help of
1:09.9	comedians and an expert,
1:11.3	but before that, what else has caught my eye this week? In big news for me and all the other
1:16.1	messy bitches who live for drama, so that's me and the entire cast of The Archers, Taylor Swift is
1:21.5	releasing a new album. Taylor announced she's releasing her 12th album at 1212 on the 12th of August
1:27.4	after posting a carousel of 12 photos on Instagram.
1:30.3	Presumably, this is a play on the end of World War I, which happened on November 11th at 11 a.m.
1:36.3	And if in case you're wondering, yes, the album is the bigger story here.
1:42.3	Former Scottish first minister Nicholas Sturgeon has released her autobiography
1:46.3	just in time for me to ignore it on my holiday
1:48.5	in favour of a romanticcy about a horny wizard.
	...

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