The programme brings together guests, generally from the world of entertainment, in a mix of interviews, sets by comedians and musical sessions.
First broadcast in 1986, it developed out of The Colour Supplement,[citation needed] a Sunday morning programme which had featured early Loose Ends contributors such as Stephen Fry, Robert Elms and Victor Lewis-Smith.
[1] Originally commissioned comedy had, by 2006, been phased out almost entirely, with comic performers tending to deliver existing material from their repertoires although, in June/July 2006, the Scots comedian and writer Janey Godley scripted a weekly series of satiric fictional extracts from Nancy Dell'Olio's Diary to coincide with the FIFA World Cup.
Dell' Olio was the girlfriend of England national football team coach Sven-Göran Eriksson.
Typically the programme was topped and tailed by Sherrin reading a comic monologue which, over the years, was written by Alistair Beaton, D. A. Barham, Ian Brown & James Hendrie, Nev Fountain, Tom Jamieson, Tom Mitchelson, Ian Hawkins, Terence Dackombe, Andrew Nickolds, Steve Punt and Pete Sinclair.