YMMV / John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme

• Aluminium Christmas Trees: Poem codes really were used by the SOE, and they switched from using famous poems to highly memorable original ones for the same security reasons Spencer describes.
• Continuity Lockout: With the Retool, listeners who've started Series 9 halfway through have found themselves hopelessly lost.
• Harsher in Hindsight: A sketch in series 3 has an actor recording what he thinks are lines for a virus disaster movie, but is actually the government recording for a hideously infectious (and apparently 100% fatal) disease which they can't control. It's a lot more awkward to listen to after the COVID-19 pandemic. In a interesting coincidence, Corona beer is mentioned two sketches later.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A series 3 sketch claims BBC Radio Four dramas are written by an AI, and this is why they're so stilted and badly written. This was several years before actual attempts at AI writing were made.
  • After all of the sketches mocking The Archers, in July 2021 Margaret Cabourn-Smith joined the cast as the character Leyla.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The massive shift in the show's format in series 9, discarding the comedy sketch format almost entirely, in favour of a slice of life show (except for the end of the show, which still has a Storyteller sketch).

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