Week Ending Week Ending Week Ending was a satirical radio current affairs sketch show, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4, usually on Friday evenings. It ran from 1970 to 1998, and was devised by writer-producers Simon Brett and David Hatch, and was originally hosted by "Nationwide" presenter Michael Barratt. The show's title was always announced as "Week Ending..." followed by the broadcast date, although the ellipsis was dropped from its billed title in "Radio Times" during the mid-seventies. The show was written and recorded shortly before the first broadcast, and satirised events of the week. Each show concluded with "And now here
The World at One news and comment] on air". In his history of radio news and current affairs, "Public Issue Radio", Hugh Chignell pointed out that "The World at One" was a highly successful but also a profoundly controversial innovation. It provided a successful approach to news and current affairs which would be cloned elsewhere but at the same time it horrified the more Reithian wing of the BBC who reacted in the 1970s by creating single subject current affairs programmes ("Analysis" and "File on Four") in reaction to "The World at One's" vulgar journalism. That vulgarity was personified by its first presenter, William