He was accompanied by a regular cast assembled by Iannucci, comprising Steve Coogan, Rebecca Front, Doon Mackichan, Patrick Marber and David Schneider, who portrayed assorted news reporters, presenters and interviewees.

[3] As in much of Morris's work, surrealism was an important part of the programme, the nonsense in the content ("De-frocked cleric eats car park", "Borrowed dog finds Scotland", etc.)

Episodes often featured a main storyline (the World "Summit on the Future", coverage of the public execution of Prince Edward, etc.)

The final episode of On the Hour closed with Morris introducing a set of headlines with the line "And there is still just time to part the beef curtains on tomorrow's news."

Morris reprised his newsman persona for The Day Today and Brass Eye, retaining the character's self-importance while further emphasising his bullying demeanour.

Wayne's reports include inappropriately upbeat coverage of a train crash disaster, an exposé on hidden messages in pop records, and a "chinnywag" about endangered animals.

Interviewing real-life sporting figures impersonated by the cast such as Nigel Mansell, Graham Gooch, Seve Ballesteros, Gabriela Sabatini and Linford Christie, as well as fictional athletes, Alan frequently goes into tangents relating to groin injuries and the interviewees' physical attractiveness.

He is absent from the original untransmitted pilot episode of On the Hour, which features a sports correspondent named "Bill", played by Armando Iannucci.

Kevin Smear (Patrick Marber): Correspondent who appears in several episodes and is later referred to as the winner of the "Golden Fist Award" for his reporting.

Monsignor Treeb-Lopez (Patrick Marber): Contributes trite, religious bons mot all somehow referencing Jesus in the segment "Thought for the Day".

A creation of Lee and Herring, Treeb-Lopez was not retained for The Day Today; his character was replaced by Marber's French postmodernist philosopher, Jaques-'Jaques' Liverot.

Speaking with an exaggerated American accent and making use of convoluted puns, her reports include a Christmas-themed prison execution, prenatal makeovers, a re-enactment of the JFK assassination, and women being banned from the state of Nebraska.

This was widely available for many years, and a CD re-release was announced in the early 2000s in the inlays of other Radio Collection titles but failed to materialise.

Both series of On the Hour were released as limited-edition audio CD boxed sets by Warp Records in November 2008, in their original episodic form.

Extra tracks include the untransmitted pilot episode; a remastered needledrop of the flexidisc originally released by Select magazine in May 1992; the "Resurrection Cattle" sketch (intended to be slipped into the Radio 4 series Today); and over 20 minutes of unedited improvisations from some of the Alan Partridge sessions.