Alan Partridge, Peter O'Hanraha-Hanrahan, Kevin Smear, Rosy May... just some of the characters that were originally created for Chris Morris and Armando Ianucci's satirical On The Hour radio show - the show that paved the way for the TV series The Day Today and which first graced the airwaves on BBC Radio 4 way back in 1991. Now, for the first time, the radio show's two series have been released on CD through Warp Records...

Each series pack contains three CDs with the aired episodes along with a fourth disc of extra material thrown in for good measure – and the packaging has been conjured up by the design department at Framestore CFC, who, CR readers may recall, worked with Morris to create the DVD navigation and menu system and the packaging for the DVD release of Nathan Barley.

Being a radio show, no graphics existed for the programme but Framestore have done it proud, conjuring up some suitably in-your-face, newsy-looking 3-D font-based graphics complete with ridiculously ostentatious news slogans cooked up specially by Morris himself. "Arise Sir News" graces the front cover of the Series 2 pack, whilst "Full spectrum domi-news" is the slogan that runs through the inside of the Series 1 package...

On The Hour, series 1 and 2 are in the shops now and available online from warpmart.com. This is the news!

Credits:
Design: Framestore Design
Designer: Sharon Lock
Producer: Simon Whalley
Client: Warp Records
Producer: James Burton
Words:Chris Morris
Packaging: Pozzoli