The Smith Lectures was a BBC Radio 2 (R2) show that ran for 16 series (129 episodes) from 1998 to 2008.

Veteran comedian, Arthur Smith, was the presenter and he played a Professor, giving 30-minute lectures from his fictional University of Tooting BEC.

A satirical show it featured Smith tackling a variety of topics, with an injection of comedy. Details of the format are sketchy but it appears sometimes he used clips and sometimes he had guests contribute in person.

Annoyingly the main BBC website details SOME of the episodes (here) but doesn’t go back as far as 2004.

The BBC Genome does have an entry (here) for the February 28^th 2004 episode that says:

“Professor Arthur Smith lectures on the life cycle with Jimmy Carr, Phil Silvers, JoAnne Astrow, Margaret Smith, Les Dawson and Father Guido Sarducci.”

Phil Silvers died in 1985 and Les Dawson in 1993 so we can safely assume that their appearances were clips. As for what form Jimmy’s contribution took? Noooooooo idea.