New nursery rhyme comedy

Jack Dee and The Thick Of It’s Peter Capaldi are to star in a new radio comedy, based around the world of fairytales and co-written by Ian Hislop.

The News At Bedtime will take children’s stories and nursery rhymes and present them as if they were events breaking on a modern-day news programme.

A BBC spokesman described the show as ‘the Today Programme on magic beans (should mushrooms not be available)’

Dee and Capaldi – best known as vicious spin doctor Malcolm Tucker – will play newsreaders John Tweedledum and Jim Tweedledee in the seven-part series, which will air this Christmas.

Hislop wrote the Radio 4 series with Nick Newman, based on their Private Eye column which satirises news stories by telling them as nursery fables

The series co-stars Chris Addison, Lucy Montgomery, Vicki Pepperdine, Dan Tetsell, Lewis MacLeodand Alex MacQueen, with cameos by Radio 4 newsreaders Brian Perkins Charlotte Green and Peter Donaldson.

It is being produced by Simon Nicholls, who previously worked on BBC Two shows Genius and Lab Rats.

The News At Bedtime will air nightly from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day – but not Boxing Day or December 27.

Published: 19 Nov 2009