Saturday Night Fry

Saturday Night Fry is a six-part comedy series on BBC Radio 4 that was broadcast between 30 April and 4 June 1988.

Hosted by Stephen Fry—accompanied each week by a selection of guests including Jim Broadbent, Emma Thompson, Phyllida Law, Robert Bathurst, Julia Hills, Alison Steadman and long-time collaborator Hugh Laurie—the show took the form of a round table discussion and sketches which veered tangentially from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Snippets of classical music were used to mark breaks between items, usually succeeded by Fry's voice saying, "And as the strains of the [name of piece] fade away, we turn to..." On one occasion, in line with a running joke throughout the episode, the last of these in the show was said as " And as the strains of Julia being slapped fades away..." Certain editions were constructed in complex knots: one edition saw the cast rearranging the script as a practical joke whilst Fry has gone to the toilet, ending up in him reading the part where they do that and so finding them red-handed, whilst the first edition fell in and out of dream sequences caused by a devilish potion.

Although slightly different in format the series could be seen as a direct precursor to A Bit of Fry and Laurie, the 1989 television series (piloted in 1987), which employed a very similar style of humour and wordplay: it included the fictional language "Strom", and the phrase "Mr. Music, will you play?".

The signature tune opening each episode was "Saturday Night Fish Fry" by Louis Jordan.