FEATURE: www.bbcaudiozone.com

Comedy and iPods have been living in close harmony for many years. Podcasts by well known comedians and radio shows often score highly on top ten lists of downloads from iTunes or get large bleating reviews in broadsheet weekend supplements. Never one to miss a trick, the BBC have decided to invest in this market by placing chunks of its audio back catalogue online, available to download from www.bbcaudiozone.com

Boasting over 1400 titles and with prices ranging from 79p for a Monty Python clip to £10.79 for the Flight of the Conchords radio series (which was selected for download within seconds of the site loading on my laptop) the site uses iTunes or its own download manager. Plus, as a bonus, all the titles you download can later be burnt onto disc, so if you like to laugh to yourself while driving to and from the inevitably depressing dinner with the family, you can do so with relatively little hassle.

Those who are not interested in comedy will also be pleased to see delights such as Michael Palin travelogues, plays by Alan Bennett and dramatisations of classic books like the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe available for
download as well. The one downside with the website is that there is no new or exclusive content to entice customers with, as all the downloads that are available can be bought on CD from most well-stocked bookshops. However, as popularity in this format increases, this website could become a financially viable way for the BBC to release its ever-increasing audio library to the masses.

Another sign of the BBC moving with the technological times, it still might be some time before groups of youths huddle at the back of late buses to listen to Shakespeare from their phones.

Download your own cornucopia of mirth from here. But as luck would have it, those kind people at BBC Audiozone have given us some clips of what you can find to download for free! Click here for some Mighty Boosh or click here for some Mitchell and Webb. Aren’t they nice!