''The Brig Society'' is a satirical stand-up and sketch comedy show hosted by Marcus Brigstocke. It was broadcast for the first time on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday 26 June 2013 at 18:30. and a second series began on 1 August 2014, with the third series starting on 17 September 2015. In addition to Brigstocke, it stars Rufus Jones, William Andrews,

Colin Hoult Colin Hoult (born 15 May 1979) is an English actor and writer in television, radio, and theatre. He studied at Manchester Metropolitan School of Theatre. Career Hoult has worked in various television productions, including ''Russell Howard's ...

and

Margaret Cabourn-Smith Margaret Alice Cabourn-Smith (born 1975) is an English comedy actress with appearances on ''Catastrophe'', ''The IT Crowd'', ''Psychoville,'' ''Peep Show'' and ''Fresh Meat''. Her TV work includes playing regular characters on '' Miranda'', ' ...

. The title is a pun on "The

Big Society The Big Society was a sociopolitical concept of the first 15 years of the 21st century, that was developed by the populist Steve Hilton, that sought to integrate free market economics with a conservative paternalist conception of the social con ...

", a core

British Conservative Party The Conservative Party, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party and also known colloquially as the Tories, is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Labour Party. It is the current governing party, ...

proposal that sought to phase out government services and replace them with volunteer campaigns. The programme, a comic monologue punctuated by sketches, challenges the proposal by imagining the nightmare that would ensue if the volunteer were Marcus Brigstocke. Each week, Brigstocke has volunteered and "been put in charge of a thing", such as a hospital, the railways, British Fashion, a prison, or a drug cartel. Each week he starts out by thinking "Well, it can’t be that difficult, surely?" and ends up realizing "Oh - turns out it’s utterly difficult and complicated. Who knew...?" In the process he outlines a critique of social attitudes and government responses to the institution under discussion. Following the end of the series proper, ''The Brig Society'' has returned in the form of limited or one-off specials, namely a two-part special concerning British newsprint media, and the 2022 episode "The CoBrig Society", which satirised responses to the coronavirus pandemic. The theme music seems to name Mr. Brigstocke but is instead the 1970 funk/soul recording " Mr. Big Stuff" performed by Jean Knight. The show was written by Marcus Brigstocke, Jeremy Salsby, Toby Davies, Nick Doody, Tom Neenan and Steve Punt. It was produced by David Tyler.

References

BBC Radio comedy programmes {{BBC-radio-stub