BBC executives might tell the talent who make its shows to appeal to younger audiences, but Britain has an ageing population.

So skewed is the country with older folk that a demographics visual would look like an upside-down bell.

So when the bosses at the Beeb asked Graeme Garden – the brains behind evergreen radio hit I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue – and his co-writers to try broaden their appeal, he found himself questioning their logic.

“I thought, well what are they going to listen to when they are older?

“You can attract a younger audience by putting Miley Cyrus on the panel, but they grow up and they need something to listen to when they grow up as well.

“It is the older generation which is the rapidly expanding population. I would have thought it was them you would want to attract.”

Miley Cyrus on the I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue panel might not be such a bad idea, though.

“Well, now I mention it, Barry’s days may be numbered.”

Despite regularly pulling in up to 2.5 million listeners for the 41-year-old Radio 4 “antidote to panel games”, the show often gets criticised for not having enough women on the panel.

“We do get a bit of flack now and then for not having enough women on the panel. And it’s frankly not for want of trying. We do ask female comics but, like the male comics, there are some who would fit in and some you think wouldn’t be as good as the ones we were thinking of.”

Female comics often don’t fancy sparring with Garden and his three co-panellists – Barry Cryer, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Jeremy Hardy, plus host Jack Dee and pianist Colin Sell. Male comics are often scared, too.

“It annoys me when people go on Twitter and say, ‘Why don’t you ever have any women on the panel’ when Victoria Wood was going out two days before that and has two shows in the series.

“Victoria Wood was not too keen about doing it when we first asked her. And eventually she said she would and she has done it a few times and it’s fantastic.”

Sandi Toksvig was a regular before she established herself on another Radio 4 favourite, The News Quiz.

“We can’t poach her any more. But we’ve had quite a lot of women over the years and we’d love to get more.”

There are only three guests per series of six (the team records two shows a day in three sessions) so if one out of three is female, it is representative of the proportion of female comics available, believes Garden.

“It is not a question of how funny they are, it’s how they will fit in with the team – and we are a team.

“You wouldn’t say, ‘Why can’t The Rolling Stones have a girl in the group’... or perhaps you would say that.”

Heading out on tour

In 2007, the show took on a new life by heading out on tour with a stage version (with best bits and favourite games) to complement the recordings. Jeremy Hardy also joined as a fourth panellist.

Given the roaring, senior audiences, The Stones comparisons might not seem so ridiculous.

“The show does well thanks to the enormous warmth we get from the audiences – especially once we started taking the show around the country.

“We have recorded everywhere from Glasgow down to Torquay and the audiences are very appreciative and seem very pleased to see us. They like to be part of the show. And rather than everything in the BBC coming out of London, or Salford, we take the BBC to them.”

Indeed, they barely perform in London nowadays.

“In the old days we’d get the same faces in the front row week after week. They kind of weren’t there for the comedy. They were there to be part of it in some way I never quite understood.”

Garden, who grew up in Preston, Lancashire, began performing at Cambridge, where he studied medicine.

He became president of the university drama society, Footlights, and helped turn it into a breeding ground that BBC talent scouts would raid.

Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie – who Garden worked with on sketch show I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again and The Goodies – both performed in Footlights. The society also paved the way for Monty Python members John Cleese (with whom Garden still runs a successful corporate training film company), Graham Chapman and Eric Idle.

“I don’t think any of us had an ambition to go into comedy as a career, but because we were a group and the group had some success on stage doing the revue, and the BBC turned that into a radio series, we all moved from whatever path we were setting out on into comedy.

“Had we not been members of Footlights, none of us would have gone that way at all.”

After Garden and his group’s success, people began to apply to Cambridge with the ambition of joining the Footlights and going into showbusiness.

Before then, comedy emerged from collective wits in the Army. Later, big names came from other universities and art schools to form the alternative comedy scene.

“Now they come from all over the place,” says Garden. “It’s wonderful. I don’t think comedy has been so diverse or so healthy, probably ever.”

Monty Python pals

Proof comes from his old pals Monty Python, who have just booked the much-publicised reunion and arena shows.

“I’ve been talking to Cleese and Mike Palin about their show at the O2.

“They have the dilemma that if they do the old stuff, the audience will love it all because they all know it off by heart. In fact, they will chant along and say the lines with them. It’s like the pop concert where they say they’re going to do some new tracks and everybody goes to the loo. People are there to hear the old stuff.”

The problem is The Pythons don’t get much pleasure doing that.

“They would like to do new stuff but by God it better be bloody good to satisfy an audience who have come to see the old stuff.

“So they are going to do a mixture, obviously. They are talking about possibly doing the old material, such as the parrot sketch, with a new twist. You have to think, well, are the audience going to like that?

“The audience will love it because it will be an event, but it will be very interesting to see how they come up with it and how funny it is.”