Round the Horne was one of the most influential BBC Radio comedy programmes, comparable to The Goon Show in its influence on other comedy programmes.^{[citation needed]} It was transmitted in four series of weekly episodes from 1965 until 1968. Not to be confused with the baseball term around the horn. This article is about the ESPN sports discussion show. ... BBC Radio is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. ... A comedy is a dramatic performance of a light and amusing character, usually with a happy conclusion to its plot. ... The Goon Show was a popular and influential British radio comedy programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC from 1951 to 1960 on the BBC Home Service. ...

The series was created by writers Barry Took and Marty Feldman — with other writers contributing to later series after Feldman returned to performing — and starred Kenneth Horne, with Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden, Bill Pertwee and Douglas Smith. It had musical interludes by the Fraser Hayes Four, and accompaniment by Edwin Braden and the Hornblowers, except for the fourth series, when the musical duties were performed by The Max Harris Group. Took and the cast had worked on the predecessor series Beyond Our Ken. Barry Took (June 19, 1928 – March 31, 2002) was an English comedian, writer and television presenter. ... Martin Alan Marty Feldman (8 July 1934[1] – 2 December 1982) was an English writer, comedian and BAFTA award winning actor, notable for his bulging eyes, which were the result of a thyroid condition known as Graves Disease. ... Kenneth Horne Kenneth Horne (27 February 1907, London – 14 February 1969) was an English comedian and businessman. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Hugh William Paddick (Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire 22 August 1915 – 9 November 2000 in Milton Keynes[1]), was an English actor, whose most notable role was in the 1960s BBC radio show Round the Horne in sketches such as Charles and Fiona (as Charles) and Julian and Sandy (as Julian). ... Betty Marsden (1919–1998) was a British comedy actress. ... William Desmond Anthony Pertwee (born July 21, 1926) Amersham, Buckinghamshire, is a British comedy actor. ... Douglas Smith (? - October 15, 1972) began his broadcasting career with the BBC European Service (now the World Service) in 1946 and later worked as an announcer and newsreader on the Home Service and the Third Programme. ... Fraser Hayes Four is a British close harmony vocal group formed by musicians Jimmy Fraser and Tony Hayes in the 1950s. ... Beyond Our Ken (1958-1963) was a radio programme, the predecessor to Round the Horne (1964-1969). ...

Format

Round the Horne featured a parody a week, several catchphrases, and many memorable characters. The show often opened with a deadpan delivery by Horne of "the answers to last week's questions"; questions which listeners had neither heard nor knew about, and which were laced with (what were for BBC Radio at that time) incredible double entendres and sexual innuendo, such as: In contemporary usage, a parody (or lampoon) is a work that imitates another work in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke some affectionate fun at the work itself, the subject of the work, the author or fictional voice of the parody, or another subject. ... A catch phrase is a phrase or expression that is popularized, usually through repeated use, by a real person or fictional character. ... A double entendre is a figure of speech similar to the pun, in which a spoken phrase can be understood in either of two ways. ...

"First, the "Where Do You Find It?" question. The answer came in several parts, as follows: wound round a sailor's leg; on top of the wardrobe; floating in the bath; under a prize bull; and in a lay-by on the Watford By-Pass. At least, I found one there, but I couldn't use it, because it was covered in verdigris."

Another type of opening featured announcements about a particular event, e.g. Coat A Sheep in Raspberry Jam Week, Immerse an Orang-utan in Porridge Week, Smear A Traffic Warden in Bloater Paste For Asia Day, or something equally bizarre. This would be the excuse for all sorts of happenings, such as the two-man inter-rabbi bobsleigh championships (to be held on the up and down escalators at Leicester Square underground station—weather and platform tickets permitting), Formation Goat Nadgering, Paso Doble Jockey Wagging, Floodlit Horse Massage, and Nark Fettering on Ice, and reports of the latest activities of the Over-Eighties Nudist Leapfrog (or Basketball, or Judo) Team.

One of the most popular sketches was Julian and Sandy, featuring Paddick and Williams as two flamboyantly camp out-of-work actors, with Horne as their comic foil. They usually ran fashionable enterprises in Chelsea which started with the word 'Bona' (for example 'Bona Pets', or in one memorable episode a firm of solicitors called 'Bona Law'), and they spoke in the gay slang Polari, aka palare. Julian and Sandy were characters on the BBC radio programme Round the Horne, played by Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick, with scripts written by Barry Took and Marty Feldman. ... Chelsea is a district of London, loosely defined by the area around the Kings Road, beginning at Sloane Square at one end, and the Worlds End public house at the other, the River Thames and the Victorian artists district to the south, and some parts between the King... GAY can mean: Gay, a term referring to homosexual men or women The IATA code for Gaya Airport Category: ... Polari (or alternatively Parlare, Parlary, Palarie, Palari, Parlyaree[1], from Italian parlare, to talk) was a form of cant slang used in the gay subculture in Britain. ...

Fiona and Charles was a regular comedy sketch in the show. Betty Marsden played Dame Celia Molestrangler, and Hugh Paddick was 'ageing juvenile' Binkie Huckaback. Their characters — Fiona and Charles — were a pair of lovestruck, dated cinema idols engaging in stilted, extraordinarily polite dialogues, in scenes that were parodies of Noel Coward's style. Typical dialogue (imagine it spoken in BBC English) included: In contemporary usage, a parody (or lampoon) is a work that imitates another work in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke some affectionate fun at the work itself, the subject of the work, the author or fictional voice of the parody, or another subject. ... Noël Peirce Coward (December 16, 1899 – March 26, 1973) was an Academy Award winning English actor, playwright, and composer of popular music. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

Charles: "I know."

Fiona: "I know you know."

Charles: "I know you know I know."

Fiona: "Yes, I know."

These sketches would also feature long lists of words meaning the same thing but finishing with the opposite, such as:

Charles: "I was certain, positive, convinced and doctrinaire, and yet... unsure."

Other popular characters included J. Peasemold Gruntfuttock (Williams), the world's dirtiest dirty old man, and erstwhile self-styled King, later Dictator, of Peasemoldia, a small slum area of the East End of London just off the Balls-Pond Road, together with his wife Buttercup (Marsden), whose catch phrase was "Hello cheeky-face!". In the 3rd series, it was reported that Gruntfuttock had died, and an entire programme was dedicated as a tribute to him. However, without explanation, the character was soon resurrected.

Also appearing: Oriental criminal mastermind Dr Chou En Ginsberg MA (failed) (Williams, accompanied by his common-as-muck concubine Lotus Blossom, played by a cockney Paddick) and parodies of popular British TV entertainers such as Eamonn Andrews ("Seamus Android", played by Pertwee), Simon Dee, and "Daphne Whitethigh", presumably based on journalist Katharine Whitehorn and played by Marsden, a development of Fanny Haddock, her Fanny Cradock take-off from Beyond Our Ken. Eamonn Andrews Eamonn Andrews (19 December 1922 – 5 November 1987) was a Irish born television presenter in the United Kingdom. ... Simon Dee in the film, Doctor in Trouble (1970) Cyril Nicholas Henty-Dodd[1] (born July 28, 1935, England) is better known by his stage name Simon Dee. ... Katharine Elizabeth Whitehorn (born 1926) is a very quotable British journalist, writer, and columnist known for her wit and humor and as a keen observer of women in their times. ... Fanny Cradock (February 26, 1909 - December 27, 1994) born Phyllis Primrose Pechey, in Apthorp House, Leytonstone, London, was a British writer, restaurant critic and television cook who mostly worked with John Johnnie Cradock, whose surname she adopted long before they married. ...

The shows featured old English folk singer Rambling Syd Rumpo, played by Williams, who sang such delightful and parodic nonsense ditties as "Green grow your nadgers-O!", "What shall we do with the drunken nurker?", and the timeless "Ballad of the Woggler's Moulie". All Rambling Syd's songs were new words set to old public domain folk melodies, such as The Lincolnshire Poacher, Oh My Darling Clementine, and Widecombe Fair. Folk music, in the original sense of the term, is music by and of the people. ... Rambling Syd Rumpo was a folk singer character played by English comedian Kenneth Williams in the radio comedy series Round the Horne. ... The Lincolnshire Poacher is a traditional English folksong associated with the county of Lincolnshire, and dealing with the act of poaching. ... Oh My Darling, Clementine is an American western folk ballad usually credited to Percy Montrose (1884), though sometimes to Barker Bradford. ... Widecombe Fair takes place annually on the second Tuesday in September, attracting thousands of visitors to the tiny Dartmoor village of Widecombe-in-the-Moor. ...

Another regular character, who had also first appeared in Beyond Our Ken, and who appeared in the script as "Dentures", was Stanley Birkenshaw, played by Paddick and characterised as a man with ill-fitting false teeth who was utterly incapable of pronouncing the letter S without spraying saliva all over the set. On several occasions he would appear as a character in a sketch; in the 2nd series, when Horne decides he wants to be a seaside end-of-the-pier-show impresario, one of the acts he auditions is "Dentures" as 'The Great Omipaloni, the world's fastest illusionist - and also the dampest'; in the 3rd series he was Captain Ahab in the first part of The Admirable Loombucket; also in the 3rd series, in The Big Top, Luigi Omipaloni, the trapeze artist at Kukpowder's Mammoth Circus, and Buffalo Sidney Goosecreature, the fearless desperado and adversary of The Palone Ranger; and in Bona Prince Charlie in the 4th series, the appropriately named Angus McSpray - Horne remarks: "After he'd finished speaking, there wasn't a dry eye in the place - or a dry anything else for that matter." On several occasions, "Dentures" opened the show in the style of a boxing MC or a toastmaster: ("My lordsssss, ladiesssss and gentlemen," etc....)

A regular character in the 4th series, and played by Marsden, was Judy Coolibar, an aggressive Australian who managed to find some kind of sexist insult in everything the male characters said. Another of Marsden's personas was Bea Clissold, Lady Counterblast, who starred in a series of sketches in the 1st series under the title The Clissold Saga, and who invariably managed to introduce her "many, many times" sexual innuendo. Lady Counterblast's butler, Spasm, another raving loony played by Williams, would croak, "We be all doomed; I got a touch of the dooms!"

Kenneth Williams's characterisations of himself as an egotistical, self-important actor were a regular feature; in reality, he was the precise opposite, a consummate professional. He frequently interrupted the proceedings with deprecating comments about the quality of the script (often switching out of character into his 'snide' voice that he'd perfected during his time on Hancock's Half Hour), he would try to seize roles from other cast members and so on. His seemingly constant strain for glory and limelight was exemplified by his "I need to be serviced" catchphrase. However, none of these rantings were ad-libbed, all were written by Took and Feldman. Williams could be heard every week cackling offstage at one of Horne's double entendres ("that's yer actual French") - an often effective method of inducing audience laughter.

Also used to effect was announcer Douglas Smith's stuffy BBC vocal style. Smith would be cast as a car, an inflatable life raft, a lion, a shark, a river boat, a volcano or something equally silly that involved inane lines such as "Moo moo", "rumble rumble", "roar roar snarl slaver", or "Chug chug futt", preceded by portentous announcements such as "... and I, Douglas Smith, play the volcano". He would also slip in spoof commercials and sponsor's announcements for "Dobbiroids", the wonder horse rejuvenator (or a cure for UFO, under-fetlock odour), or "Dobbitex" horse cummerbunds - he would claim that he'd been 'got at': paid money to plug the product, because he claimed to be only paid a pittance as a senior BBC announcer: "I want things, I need things, things the other radio announcers have got!". At times, his announcements lapse into something approaching terminal narcissism - 'this is strangely attractive, leggy gamin Douglas Smith ... ' For other uses, see BBC (disambiguation). ...

The writers were fans of the old variety show scene, and sing-alongs were not uncommon on Round the Horne, particularly at the end of a series or in a Christmas edition. In the 4th series, in the absence of The Fraser Hayes Four, the cast members were regularly called on to show off their vocal talents. Sometimes the songs represented original material, but just as often they were Cockney music hall chestnuts such as "Little Bit of Cucumber". On one memorable occasion in the 4th series, Smith was permitted to sing "Nobody Loves A Fairy When She's Forty", much to Kenneth Williams' disgust and Hugh Paddick's anger: ("He must have bribed the producer!"). St Mary-le-Bow The term cockney is often used to refer to working-class people of London, particularly east London, and the slang used by these people. ... Music Hall is a form of British theatrical entertainment which reached its peak of popularity between 1850 and 1960. ...

A fifth series had been commissioned, but Horne's untimely death of a stroke in February 1969 closed the book on the series. Most of the cast of the show attempted to carry on after Horne's death with the show Stop Messing About (one of Kenneth Williams' longest-lived catch phrases) with some success.

Series credits

All shows were produced by John Simmonds.

Series 1-3

Series 1 ran for 16 episodes from March 7, 1965, Series 2 for 13 episodes from March 13, 1966, and Series 3 for 20 episodes from February 12, 1967. The scripts were written by Barry Took and Marty Feldman. The cast were Kenneth Horne, Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden, Bill Pertwee and announcer Douglas Smith, with music by the Fraser Hayes Four and Paul Fenoulhet and the Hornblowers (Edwin Braden replaced Fenoulhet from episode 7 of Series 1).

Series 4

Series 4 ran for 16 episodes from February 25, 1968. The scripts were written by Took, Johnnie Mortimer, Brian Cooke and Donald Webster. The cast were Horne, Williams, Paddick, Marsden and Smith, with music by the Max Harris Group. Johnnie Mortimer was born in 1930 in England, UK and died on 2 September 1992. ... Brian Cooke (born in 1937) is a British comedy writer who wrote scripts for and devised many of the top TV sitcoms of the 1970s (eg Man About The House, George and Mildred, Robins Nest etc), almost always in partnership with Johnnie Mortimer. ...

Specials

A version of the Series 1 episode The Man with the Golden Thunderball was specially re-recorded for the BBC Transcription Service on July 22, 1966. It omitted many topical jokes from the original script.

A 1966 Christmas special, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, was broadcast on December 25. The script was written by Took and Feldman. The cast were Williams, Paddick, Marsden, Pertwee and Smith, with music by the Fraser Hayes Four and Edwin Braden and the Hornblowers. It was the only episode without Kenneth Horne, who missed the recording session due to illness.

A 1967 Christmas special, Cinderella, was broadcast on December 24. The script was written by Took, Mortimer and Cooke. The cast were Horne, Williams, Paddick, Marsden and Smith, with music by the Max Harris Group.

Later broadcasts and productions

Documentaries

A 45 minute radio documentary Round And Round The Horne was broadcast on September 18, 1976. It was presented by Frank Bough and included interviews with Kenneth Williams and Barry Took. Frank Bough (IPA pronunciation of his last name: ) (born Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent, England, January 15th 1933) is a British television presenter who specialised in sports programmes. ...

A 60 minute radio documentary Horne A' Plenty was broadcast on February 14, 1994. It was presented by Leslie Phillips and included new interviews with Betty Marsden and Barry Took, period interviews with Kenneth Horne, and rare excerpts from surviving wartime episodes of Much Binding in the Marsh. Leslie Samuel Phillips OBE (b. ... Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh was the title of a comical BBC radio show broadcast from 1944 to 1954, starring Kenneth Horne and Richard Murdoch as senior staff in a fictional RAF station battling red tape and wartime inconvenience. ...

A 3 hour radio special, also entitled Horne A' Plenty, was broadcast on March 5, 2005 for the 40th anniversary. It was presented by Jonathan James-Moore and included interviews with Ron Moody, Bill Pertwee, Eric Merriman's son Andy Merriman, Brian Cooke, Barry Took's widow Lyn Took, and extracts from Kenneth Williams' diary read 'in character' by David Benson. The special included the first and final episodes of Beyond Our Ken and Round The Horne in their entirety. Jonathan James-Moore (22 March 1946 - 20 November 2005) was a theatre manager and BBC radio producer and executive. ... Ronald Moodnick, known as Ron Moody (born January 8, 1924) is a British actor. ...

Adaptations and audio releases

The series has been issued as a series of CD box sets (in the same format as the Hancock's Half Hour radio series), restoring lots of material previously believed lost. The 40th anniversary special Horne A' Plenty was released as a 3 CD set by BBC Audiobooks as The Complete And Utter History Of Round The Horne. At time of writing, episodes can be heard on BBC 7 at 12.30 and 19.30 GMT each Wednesday. As is usual for BBC 7 programming, episodes remain available for up to a week on the BBC 7 web site. Hancocks Half Hour was a famous BBC radio comedy series of the 1950s starring Tony Hancock. ... BBC Radio 7 is a digital radio station broadcasting comedy, drama, and childrens programming 24 hours a day. ...

A stage show, Round the Horne… Revisited, was first produced in October 2003. Based on the original radio scripts, it was adapted by Brian Cooke, the last surviving writer from the series, and directed by Michael Kingsbury. The play was also filmed for television, directed by Nick Wood, and was broadcast on BBC Four, on 13 June 2004, as part of a "Summer in the Sixties" season, subsequently airing on BBC Two on 1 January 2005. Both the stage and TV versions starred Charles Armstrong (Smith), Kate Brown (Marsden), Nigel Harrison (Paddick), Jonathan Rigby (Horne) and Robin Sebastian (Williams). The stage show had three incarnations; a special Christmas edition took over in December 2004, and the so-called Round the Horne ... Revisited 2 rounded off the London run from January to April 2005. David Took (Barry's son) gave the following opinion on the modern staging: For the BBC radio station, see BBC Radio 4. ... For the BBC radio station, see BBC Radio 2. ... Jonathan Rigby (born 23 February 1963 in Salford, Lancs) is an actor and film critic who has written a regular page, The Fright of Your Life, in Shivers magazine since 1999. ...

"The cast are all truly excellent, and all have genuine moments of brilliance [...] the low spot would be the new material [...] With so much good material to call on it is madness to insert indifferent items. Dad and Marty would not be amused."^[1]

Episodes of Round the Horne were included in the package of programs held in 20 underground radio stations of the BBC's Wartime Broadcasting Service, designed to provide public information and morale-boosting broadcasts for 100 days after a nuclear attack^[2]. This article is about nuclear war as a form of actual warfare, including history. ...

Cultural Effect

Like the Goon Show before it, Round the Horne fed off and contributed to the nation's vernacular. Obscure but innocent words like posset (a medieval drink made with curdled milk) became cues for instant giggling, especially among adolescents in school. Thus Rambling Syd Rumpo may say "Green grows the grunge on my Lady's posset", making it impossible to approach the murder scene in Macbeth (Lady Macbeth: "I have drugged their possets") with the seriousness it deserved. The Goon Show was a hugely popular and extremely influential British radio comedy programme, which was originally produced and broadcast by the BBC from 1951 to 1960 on the BBC Home Service. ... A posset is a hot milk drink, popular in the Middle Ages for its supposed medicinal properties. ...

The frequently used word futtock, meaning part of a sailing ship's rigging, while rarely encountered outside the radio show (apart from Ronnie Barker's TV series Futtock's End, starring his character Lord Rustless), had a spillover effect on words like fetlock, as well as its obvious phonetic similarity to the words fuck and buttock. The word nadger was already known from the Goon Show (The Nadger Plague), but is now generally understood to refer to the testicles. It has now passed into computer slang, meaning to twiddle some feature in a concealed manner. Futtock shrouds are rope, wire or chain links in the rigging of a traditional square rigged ship. ... Ronald William George Barker, OBE (25 September 1929 – 3 October 2005), popularly known as Ronnie Barker was an English comic actor and writer. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

In the long-term, mining obscure and invented words for double-entendres probably also led to the popularity of Larry Grayson,^{[citation needed]} who preferred to use well-known words with phallic connotations (e.g. barge-pole) in his particular version of comedy. However, there is a well-established tradition of double-meanings in British comedy, examples of which can be found in the work of Max Miller. This in its turn may have been a reaction to Victorian prudery.^{[citation needed]} Larry Grayson (21 August 1923 in Banbury - 7 January 1995) was an English much loved camp comedian and gameshow host of the late 1970s. ... The phallus usually refers to the male penis, or sex organ. ... Max Miller, the Cheeky Chappie, was a 1930s English music hall comedian famous for his daringly risqué (for the period) repertoire (see Censorship), and gaudy suits. ... Victoria Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India Victorian morality is a distillation of the moral views of people living at the time of Queen Victoria (reigned 1837 - 1901) in particular, and to the moral climate of Great Britain throughout the 19th century in... Modesty describes a set of culturally determined values that relate to the presentation of the self to others. ...

Round the Horne played an important role in establishing gay culture within the public consciousness.^{[citation needed]} Julian and Sandy and their use of the gay slang palare (or polari) gave the country a sympathetic weekly portrayal of non-threatening openly gay characters, many of whose catchphrases passed into everyday usage. A good example of this is the adjective naff to denote bad or shoddy. They were able to get away with innuendo that would have been unheard of a mere ten years before — in one episode, Sandy refers to Julian and his skill at the piano as: "a miracle of dexterity at the cottage upright"; innocuous in itself, unless one knows that a 'cottage' was the polari term for a public toilet where men met for anonymous sexual encounters.^[3]

Comparisons can be drawn between Round the Horne and the American sketch comedy television series Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In (1968–1973).^{[citation needed]} Notably, Barry Took was the principal writer in the 1969 season; executive producer George Schlatter, a Canadian, was influenced by Round the Horne on CBC repeats of BBC original programming, and searched out Took for his programme. Sketch Show redirects here. ... Rowan & Martins Laugh-In was a United States comedy television show broadcast from January 22, 1968 through 1973 over the NBC network. ... Radio-Canada redirects here. ...

The popular UK blues-rock band The Hamsters use silly stage names as part of their professional personas. Being fans of Round The Horne they incorporated one of the minor characters into the act with their bass player being known as "Ms Zsa Zsa Poltergeist". Blues Rock or Blues-rock is a fusion genre of music which combines elements of the blues with rock and roll. ... The Hamsters are a UK band originating from Southend on Sea in Essex. ... Ms Zsa Zsa Poltergeist is a male bass player for the British Blues-Rock band, The Hamsters. ...

See also

• Babblewick Hall

Babblewick Hall was a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and written by Scott Cherry. ...

External links

• Stop Messin' About - The Kenneth Williams Website
• The Kenneth Williams Appreciation Society - Online since 1997
• BBC 7 web site
  • BBC 7 Classic Comedy — RealPlayer Audio repeats of the old 'Round the Horne'
• "A quick look at some of the, er, inspired names for characters who appeared in ... Round The Horne."
• "Round the Horne… Revisited" on BBC Four

For the BBC radio station, see BBC Radio 4. ...

References