Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse chat about their Fast Show comedy creations Ted and Ralph, their long-standing friendship, “pink rock”, pub quizzes, bat-eared listeners and more, as well as sharing some of their favourite classical music.

This episode features an extract of the Altar Dance and Heavenly Pavane by Vaughan Williams, performed by the Halle Orchestra conducted by Sir Mark Elder, available at https://www.halle.co.uk/. The clip from The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky was performed by the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and Yuri Temirkanov, and the finale of Dvorak’s Symphony No.9 was performed by the Chineke! orchestra conducted by Kevin John Edusei – and both extracts were used with permission from Signum records, available at https://signumrecords.com/. This episode also featured clips of the main theme from Jaws, composed and conducted by John Williams, and we heard Maria Callas and the Theatre of La Scala Milan performing ‘Vissi d’Arte’ by Puccini.

The Charlie Higson and Friends podcasts were originally broadcast as a series on Scala Radio in April 2021. Scala Radio is a classical music and entertainment station broadcasting across the UK on DAB digital radio, smart speaker, SKY TV channel 0216, the Scala Radio app and online at scalaradio.co.uk