Living At Home- Part 4

we didn't have any sort of record player at home when I was growing up until quite late into the 1960's. I have a feeling that there was an ancient gramophone of some sort, probably only capable of playing 78's, but not a modern one capable of playing modern L.P.s and 45s. We eventually got a small portable machine when my great aunt died and there were heaps of Greenshield Stamps which were converted into this new player. If you remember Greenshield stamps, you used to 'earn' them when you bought things at certain retailers, such as Tesco, so many stamps when you shopped and then stuck them into books. I suppose the equivalent today would be Tesco Clubcard points, or Nectar points, although these are collected on a card, electronically saved and then 'spent' when you have sufficient, either on your grocery bill or on other items such as free tickets for places such as Alton Towers or Sealife World, Warwick Castle or Madam Tussaud's. This record player was eventually replaced by a far better player which my brother Sandy and I shared.  I remember my mother deciding that we needed a decent record player as she like to hear the occasional bit of classical music. We went to Weatherhead's, a local electrical retailer which had a large shop at the corner of Bedford High Street and Dame Alice Street. It's long since gone, replaced at the last time I visited Bedford by a pub. A shame really, as it was an independent company. Anyway, we went there to choose a record player, one of those semi-portable machines, only playing records, but one with a device in it which was the height of technological wizardry which enabled you to stack a pile of 45 r.p.m. discs on this system which allowed you to play these records one after the other without having to get up and do it manually. My brother was more into pop music than I was. I became interested in classical music and began my own collection of LPs of standard classical repertoire. I also became interested in recording using a tape-recorder, as a result of being influenced by a teacher at Rushmoor School who used a tape-recorder in some of his classes to record our voices, reading poetry and prose. Later on, when I moved to Abbey Secondary Modern School, I bought a Grundig tape-recorder from one of the teachers. I know Sandy used to record pop music off the radio (as did everyone else during this period) and be was (and probably still is.) obsessed by motor sport, and in particular, Grand Prix races. Was it called Formula 1 in those days? I don't know, but he used to record the radio commentaries on a tape recorder. I eventually replaced my tape-recorder with an early Philips cassette recorder.

Although quite good for recording from the radio, the occasional bit of voice work and listening to music, cassettes had their limitations. For a start, you couldn't edit them. The tape was extremely tin and had a tendency to stretch. You could never find specific points on a tape, for example, the beginning of a piece of music. Eventually pre-recorded cassettes were introduced, as a sort of replacement for LPs, but the technical quality of cassettes wasn't up to much. It took a long time to re-wind a cassette and, because the tape was very thin it could get caught up in the mechanism of the machine as well as stretching and this eventually lead to them not functioning. In-car players were eventually introduced, some with built-in radios, but if you kept your collection of cassettes in your car, they could become damaged if there was warm weather, as heat seemed to cause all sorts of problems to the tape. My brother Sandy had an 8-track player at one point, I think perhaps it was a birthday present. The cassettes were bulky and not as good as cassettes, and I recall he had all sorts of problems with the machine which constantly got jammed. The tape was far wider than a Philips cassette, but eventually he gave up on the thing and the whole system was eventually abandoned by the manufacturers.

A friend of mine when I was at Mander College, John Gregory, introduced me to The Goon Show. His father had recorded the original episodes off the radio and onto reel-to-reel tape. John allowed me to record many of the episodes onto cassette when he used to visit me at home over several Saturday afternoons. I am still an ardent fan of The Goons and listen to some of the episodes which are broadcast regularly on the digital radio channel, BBC Radio4 Extra. Not just The Goons, but I also enjoyed many other BBC comedy shows, such as I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, Round The Horne, The Navy Lark as well as The Men From The Ministry. All re-broadcast on BBC Radio4 Extra. I, and probably loads of other people, recorded from the radio using a microphone, but I eventually managed to find a way to link the tape recorder to my transistor radio by using a lead from the tape recorder fixed to the loudspeaker, linking to the soldered points inside the radio. It worked! Which meant I could get a far better recording as there was no background interference as you would get if you used a microphone set up in front of the radio, for example, cars going past or people talking in the room.

My interest in tape-recording and recording in general was a very useful skill because when I worked in stage management I was sometimes called upon to operate the sound desk at several of the theatres I worked at, having to make up the various sound effects tapes and I learned how to edit and splice tape. In those days it was physically cut, using a special splicing machine and sticky tape. No doubt today all this would be done digitally and saved onto either a CD-ROM or at least on a computer hard drive.

Radio Sit-Com

Having discussed sitcom in my last blog post, it's easy to write off one area that sitcoms are really successful. We tend to dismiss radio's contribution to the genre, and think that television is the only place for their production. But if it wasn't for BBC Radio Four (or, up until around 1967, when the stations were re-named) Home Service and Light Programme (which became Radio Two) we would never have had such delights as Hancock's Half-Hour which is considered, by many, to be the grandfather of sitcoms. The early episodes, right through to the much later episodes, are broadcast regularly on the digital station Radio Four Extra (originally called Radio Seven up until a few years ago.) A huge range of shows were, and still are, produced by the BBC. I could name not only 'Hancock's Half Hour' but also, 'The Navy Lark', 'The Men From The Ministry' and those shows which were adaptations of successful television shows such as 'Steptoe and Son' and 'Dad's Army'. Lesser-known, or indeed even remembered, are shows such as 'Marriage Lines' which starred very young actors of the likes of Richard Briars and Prunella Scales. 'Not In Front of The Children' which I seem to recall from the 1960's and which starred Wendy Craig. Some shows work really well on radio, whilst others don't seem to adapt too well. Perhaps if you're familiar with the television version the radio version would work for you. With radio you have to do quite a lot of work yourself as an audience-member. You have to concentrate harder when you have to listen to fairly complicated dialogue and when there's a difficult plot-situation. With radio you do have to LISTEN and CONCENTRATE, with television you don't have to work anywhere near as hard because so much of it is visual. Fairly obvious I suppose, because it has pictures as well as sound. You can have visual gags which, obviously, radio can provide.

It seems odd to think that you'd adapt a successful television sitcom for radio, as with 'Dad's Army' and 'Steptoe and Son.' Particularly 'Dad's Army' which had so much visual comedy in it's television version. 'Hancock's Half-Hour' used the idea of Tony Hancock having a sort of 'stage personality' an 'alternative' persona. The pompous, lazy, 'actor' or 'comedian.' It didn't (one presumes) really reflect his 'real' persona. It wasn't until the writers, Galton and Simpson, were rejected by Hancock as writers when he moved to I.T.V. that the B.B.C. allowed them a free hand with creating several 30-minute comedy plays that the eventual series of 'Steptoe' was developed from one particular episode called 'The Offer.' Putting character actors into the main roles meant that there was room for more character-driven plots and far more believable situations than they could write for Hancock.

As for the 'Navy Lark,' there is a certain amount of what can only be described as 'slapstick' in this very amusing show. I know it sounds crazy to describe it in those terms, but having listened to it recently on BBC Radio 4 Extra, there is nearly always some sort of incident when the ship it's set on H.M.S. Troutbridge, ends up crashing into another ship or a harbour wall or something and there's a great deal of noise and commotion as a result. In fact, that's why so much radio comedy work better in some respects than television, the sound effects that are used. I know 'The Goons' can never be classed as a sitcom, more a string of sketches, but it must have been quite revolutionary in it's use of sound effects. Feet running, explosions, clangs, pianos falling, etc etc which are just completely nuts and very funny.

A favourite radio comedy of mine is 'Clare In The Community.' It's based on the comic strip which appears in the Guardian 'society' section. Clare is a social worker who manages to sort out other people's problems but can't deal with her own, more specifically, her relationships. There's a good mix of characters and it works well on radio. I just don't want it to move to television because it will lose it distinctive flavour. Imagining what the characters look like is one of the best reasons for any form of radio drama or comedy. It's a bit like reading a novel and imagining how the characters sound and look. It can be a real disappointment when there's a film or television adaptation of your favourite novel when you see how a particular character is cast and presented, it can be a real let down.

One of the best things about radio, again particularly with comedy but also with drama in general, is that it can really stretch actor's abilities. Thinking in particular with people like Kenneth Williams, who was one of the supporting actors in 'Hancock's Half-Hour.' He had an incredible voice range and could conjure up an almost endless parade of weird and wonderful characters to support Hancock, whether it be an annoying neighbour, policemen, doctors or whatever a particular story required. It's no wonder that Hancock became obsessed with how he was so 'up-staged' by not just Williams but by Sid James and as a result they didn't move to television with him in the early 1960's. 

Comedy . . . Best Medicine-1

There's nothing like a really good laugh. Well, as they say, 'laughter is the best medicine.' I'm not sure who said it, but it's surely better to be happy and have a good laugh than sit and be miserable. The world is full of enough misery as it is without sitting around moaning with a long face and feeling depressed.  When you laugh, your body releases endorphins, hormones or neurotransmitters, chemicals that pass along signals from one neutron to the next and eventually gives you a feeling of euphoria. So, no bad thing, when you think of the horrible things going on in the world today.

Looking back, what are the things that make me laugh, particularly on television? Or, come to think of it, radio? Well, as regards radio, I can think of 'The Goons.' A college friend introduced me to them way back in the 1960's. His father had recorded many of the original broadcasts onto reel-to-reel tape and then they were rerecorded onto cassettes, which is how my friend gave them to me. Those shows are really funny, performed by such original comedians as Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and in the original line-up, Michael Bentine. Each of them went on to establish careers away from 'The Goons,' most particularly Sellers, who is perhaps best known to movie audiences today for his portrayal of the inept police inspector, Clouseau. Spike Milligan was responsible for the scripts, and on occasion was joined by Eric Sykes in producing material. The characters and situations in 'The Goons' were totally surreal. How could you avoid laughing at the antics as such classic characters as Eccles, Bloodknock, Moriarty, Grytpype-Thynne, Neddy Seagoon, Henry Run and Minnie Bannister. The show spawned a whole host of catch phrases, such as 'He's fallen in the water!' 'Needle nardle not', 'You rotten swine! You deaded me!" "You silly twisted boy!" I think it was the fact that only three men did all the voices, with only one female character (Minnie Bannister, voiced by Milligan) that is so amazing, looking back on it. It could only really work on radio, because you had to work hard, as a member of the audience, to create pictures of what the characters looked like and that's half the fun. There was an attempt at a television series, I do remember, based on the show, and called "The Telegoons" but it just could never come up to the quality of the radio version. It used rather feeble puppets and they didn't seem to fit my idea of what the characters looked like at all. The bit that might surprise modern audiences might be the fact that these shows had musical interludes, where the action stopped and you had a performance given by a musician, a singer or harmonica player. It was a hang-over from other radio entertainment shows of the period where you had a series of sketches and these linked by musical interludes. It does take a bit of getting used to, having the story (such as they were. Some are better than others. Most, if not all, are totally surreal.) broken up like this, rather like commercial breaks on ITV. Musicians included Max Geldray and Ray Ellington, although at one stage, apparently, Harry Secombe provided musical entertaiment, and  he was perhaps more renowned as a singer rather than merely a comedian. I remember seeing him in the stage musical "Pickwick" where he played the central character of Mr Pickwick. The shows had narrators or announcers,who were sort of foils for a lot of the gags, and these were Andrew Timothy and Wallace Greenslade.  The  producer of the earlier shows was Dennis Main-Wilson, who later moved from radio to television and produced such shows as 'Sykes" with Hattie Jacques and Eric Sykes. He went on to produce television comedies such as "Citizen Smith" starring Robert Lindsey and written by John Sullivan who went on toe create "Only Fools and Horses."

Listening to Radio Four- Part 2

Not only is there all manner of drama productions on Radio Four, but an amazing array of comedy shows and panel games. I think the main advantage over television with radio is that you can be doing other things while it is on, such as having a bath, lying in bed or driving a car, doing the washing-up, ironing your clothes or eating your dinner. Television requires a certain amount of concentration to get the best out of it, although people do also surf the internet or use their mobiles whilst watching television, such as Tweeting or using Facebook, but generally, radio does have the advantage. I love shows such as 'Just A Minute' which has been running for around 50 years. It's such a simple idea (for those who don't know the show it involves panel members talking on a subject given by the chairman, Nicholas Parsons, and they have to speak for 60 seconds without hesitating, repetition or deviation and the others on the panel have to spot these mistakes. It must be quite difficult. Over the years the panelists have included Kenneth Williams, Derek Nimmo, Tim Rice, Julian Clary,  Shelia Hancock, Stephen Fry and a host of others. Sometimes the panelists get quite heated, but generally, the shows go smoothly. Nicholas Parsons, which is well over 90, has been the chairman for all those years. I don't actually think 'chairman' is the right chose of word for what he does, he has to keep the panelists in order. Not an easy job. I reckon I've been listening to it on and off since it began, but I can remember it starting sometime in the mid-1960's when I was living at home at Malting Farm. It's always entertaining and amusing.

Frank Muir and Denis Norden were contestants on a panel game called 'My Word.' It ran for years on Radio Four, and probably on the Home Service as it was before it was re-branded in the 1960's. This show was about words (well, the title was imaginative!) At the end of the programme both these contestants had to tell a story, using a well-know phrase or saying, which was given them by the compere. This saying had to be part of the 'punch-line' or closing sentence of the story. When it ended, the contestant who had the longest applause from the studio audience won. I just loved this show. I've always had a love of words, and these two men, who were major scriptwriters, working on BBC radio comedy shows such as 'Take It From Here' which starred Jimmy Edwards, Dick Bentley, and June Whitfield. It was a sketch show, best remembered for 'The Glums' section, with Dick Bentley as the dimwitted Ron Glum, June Whitfield as his ever-so-patient girlfriend Eth and Jimmy Edwards as Ron's father. Frank Muir became  Assistant Head of Light Entertainment at the BBC and then Head of Comedy at London Weekend Television and Denis Norden introduced the long-running television show 'It'll Be Alright On The Night' which consisted of clips of out-takes and bloopers from television shows and films. I think the best way to describe their comedy would be 'droll' and probably not appreciated by today's audiences as being somewhat tame. Perhaps so, but they had a wit and originality which is missing from today's entertainment, which seems dead-set on being quite offensive (don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a lot of modern comedy, but so much is just out-and-out offensive and crude. A double entendre is one thing, but being crude is another. Using bad language to get is laugh is just cheap. We don't appear to have any boundaries today, anything goes, which is a shame. Muir and Norden then went on to be involved in 'My Music' which used the format of 'My Word' but using music as the theme. Steve Race was the compere of that show.

When I was at Mander College in Bedford in the late 1960's, a friend of mine on the course came to visit me at home and introduced me to 'The Goon Show.' His father had recorded the original broadcasts on to reel-to-reel tape (actually illegal, but never mind. I think everyone did this at one time or other.) and he had transferred these recordings onto the then newly-introduced format of tape cassette. I was able to listen to some of them and was immediately hooked. I just loved the surreal humour of those episodes, probably first broadcast in the 1950's. The characters, played by Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan (who also wrote most of the scripts, along with Eric Sykes.) really captivated me and I have been a fan ever since. I have been a fan of Spike Milligan ever since. He's been called 'The Grandfather of Alternative Comedy' and influenced the Monty Python style of comedy.

I got hooked on the crazy comedy of another radio show called 'I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again', which had John Cleese, Bill Oddie, Graham Garden, Jo Kendal and co in it. This ran from the early 1960's into the 1970's and some of the performers went on to write such shows as 'Fawlty Towers' and from 'The Goodies' on BBC television. They began their careers at Oxford and Cambridge Universities and performed in'The Footlights' revues. I recorded a lot of these shows onto audio cassette and replayed them endlessly until the tapes wore out. Cassettes might be the latest technology in the 1960's, but they weren't very reliable. The tape was extremely thin and often got twisted inside the horrible little plastic cases. The longer the running time, the thinner the tape and as a result, the more likely they were to cause problems. I had a Philips cassette player, which must have been one of the first cassette players on the market.

We've now got digital radio. I won a rather smart Roberts radio, courtesy of Classic FM. It was around 11-12 years ago. It sits near our bed. We listen to Radio 4 Extra on it. They broadcast what I can best call 'back catalogue' or 'archive' material on the channel. It was originally called Radio Seven. I'm not sure why it was re-branded as Radio 4 Extra. Perhaps because most of what it broadcasts originated on Radio 4. They have old episodes of such shows as 'Round The Horne', 'The Goons', 'The Navy Lark' as well as crime series such as 'Sherlock Holmes' (there are quite a few radio versions of the stories, going back several decades.) As well as the occasional documentary and play. It seems to run on a 12-hour cycle, which means it can run 24 hours a day. 'Desert Island Discs' is played on Sunday evenings at 9.15. As this is a series which has been going since around 1942 it could run almost indefinitely. Also, other comedy shows which are on earlier in the week on Radio 4, such as 'Just A Minute' and 'I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue.'