The Burkiss Way was a BBC Radio 4 sketch comedy series that ran from August 1976 to November 1980. It was written by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, with some additional material in early episodes by John Mason, Colin Bostock-Smith, Douglas Adams, John Lloyd and others. The show starred Denise Coffey (series 1 only), Jo Kendall (series 2 onward), Chris Emmett, Nigel Rees and Fred Harris. The series had three producers over the years, announced as "Simon Brett of Stepney", "John Lloyd of Europe", and "David 'Hatch of the BBC' Hatch". BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station which broadcasts a wide variety of chiefly spoken-word programmes including news, drama, comedy, science and history. ... Comedy is the use of humor in the form of theater, where it simply referred to a play with a happy ending, in contrast to a tragedy. ... Note: as an adjective (stressed on the second syllable instead of the first), august means honorable. ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... For other uses, see November (disambiguation). ... 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday. ... Andrew Marshall (1960- ) is a British comedy writer, most noted for the domestic sitcom 2point4 children. ... David Renwick (born September 4, 1951 in Luton, Bedfordshire, UK) is a British television writer, best known for creation of the sitcom One Foot in the Grave and the mystery series Jonathan Creek Before beginning his full-time comedy writing career, he worked as a journalist on his home town... Douglas Noël Adams in an undated publicity photograph by Jill Furmanovsky. ... John Lloyd (born 1951 in Dover, England; birth name: John Hardress Wilfred Lloyd), British comedy writer and producer. ... Denise Coffey playing the part of Juliet in Do Not Adjust Your Set Denise Coffey (born 12 December 1936 in Aldershot) is a British actress. ... Jo Kendall is a British actress. ... Nigel Rees (born June 5, 1944, near Liverpool) is a British author and presenter, best known for devising and hosting the Radio 4 panel game Quote Unquote and for his keen interest in the use and misuse of the English language. ... Simon Brett (b. ... Stepney is a place in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. ... World map showing Europe Europe is conventionally considered one of the seven continents which, in this case, is more a cultural and political distinction than a physiogeographic one. ... Sir David Hatch attended the University of Cambridge, where he was also a member of the prestigious Cambridge Footlights Club. ...

Jo Kendall had previously appeared in I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, and thus has the distinction of having appeared in not one but two acclaimed cult radio comedy shows. Im Sorry, Ill Read That Again was a long-running radio comedy programme that originally grew out of the Cambridge University revue Cambridge Circus. ...

The series had its roots in a pair of half-hour sketch shows entitled Half-Open University which Marshall and Renwick had written with Mason for Radio 3 as a parody of the real life Open University programmes. The first of these shows, broadcast in August 1975, spoofed science, while the second, in December, lampooned history. The Open University (OU) is the UKs open learning university, established in 1969. ... Note: as an adjective (stressed on the second syllable instead of the first), august means honorable. ... 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ... Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Science For the scientific journal named Science, see Science (journal). ... Look up December in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Template:DecemberCalendar2006 December is the twelfth and last month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days. ... History studies the past in human terms. ...

In a similar vein, The Burkiss Way was originally based around a fictional series of correspondence courses by "Professor Emil Burkiss" entitled The Burkiss way to Dynamic Living, and each episode, or "lesson", had a number and a title based on one of the course's fictional subjects: "Lesson 1: Peel Bananas the Burkiss Way", "Lesson 2: Pass Examinations the Burkiss Way", and so on. Although these numbers and titles were maintained throughout the show's run, an obvious and rapid change of style early in the second series saw the notion of a radio correspondence course become a hook rather than a narrative device, and it was thereafter mentioned only in passing. From here on the programme continued in a more obvious "sketch" format, though it was to use increasingly Pythonesque devices including surreal, stream-of-consciousness linking, back referencing and aggregation. Like the Pythons before them the writers lampooned and tinkered with the very medium on which the show was broadcast. Radio 4's continuity style was often spoofed. Many later episodes had false endings, sometimes cunningly disguised as genuine continuity announcements. Both the opening and closing credits might be placed anywhere within the show. One particular show ran "backwards" from the closing to the opening credits, while another was allegedly dropped and broken, and subsequently glued together with a tube of BBC coffee, resulting in a disjointed running order with many of the sketches beginning and ending in mid-sentence. An old-fashioned form of distance learning, a correspondence course is a course in which the student studies at home, receiving his/her work by mail and sending it back to the instructor in the same fashion. ...

The show's humour was based on surrealism and literary and media parodies, liberally sprinkled with bad puns. In the first series Chris Emmett made several appearances as a nondescript dirty old man; in episode 2, for instance, his character becomes Prime Minister thanks to the Burkiss Way. From series 2 onward this voice became known as "Eric Pode of Croydon", one of the show's few recurring characters and the only one who is not a parody of a real person. Pode is a dirty old man with unsavoury habits, probably inspired by Round the Horne's "J. Peasemold Gruntfuttock". In contemporary usage, parody is a form of satire that imitates another work of art in order to ridicule it. ... Sir Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister A prime minister may be either: chief or leading member of the cabinet of the top-level government in a country having a parliamentary system of government; or the official, in countries with a semi-presidential system of government, appointed to manage the... Croydon is a major suburban town and commercial centre situated 9. ... 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. ...

Each week Pode is interviewed by Fred Harris's character, who calls him "Mister Croydon", is disgusted by his habits and his terrible puns, and always remarks, "isn't he a panic". This was one of the show's only two catchphrases, the other being "there will now be a short intermission". There was usually a series of linked sketches running through each episode, with the "intermission" sketches providing a break.

The fact that Douglas Adams had written for the show did not prevent him from becoming a favourite target for satire in later episodes. He is frequently parodied as "Mister Different Adams" whose catchphrase is "I see comedy as a kind of..." Naturally Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was also a frequent target. The cover of the first novel in the Hitchhikers series, from a late 1990s printing. ...

As time went on the show became increasingly surreal, and in several sketches the writers seem to be trying to see just how many strange ideas they can cram into a single sketch. For example, one of the later episodes contains a sketch about an amoeba that has been employed by the Department of Civil Service Staff Recruitment and Fisheries as a token Desmond Dekker and the Aces but who keeps reproducing asexually by mitosis while singing a Lee Dorsey song instead. Amoeba (also spelled ameba) is a genus of protozoa that moves by means of temporary projections called pseudopods, and is well-known as a representative unicellular organism. ... Desmond Dekker performing his hit song Israelites at the Wembley Arena in 1969 Desmond Dekker (born Desmond Adolphus Dacres in Kingston, Jamaica on July 16, 1941) is a ska and reggae singer and songwriter. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Asexual reproduction of plants. ... Light micrograph of a newt lung cell in early anaphase of mitosis. ... Lee Dorsey (born Irving Lee Dorsey on December 24, 1924) was an African-American pop/R&B singer during the 1960s. ...

The Burkiss Way ran to 47 episodes in six series, but the episode and series numbering are derailed by "Lesson 31" and "Lesson 32" which are actually a single episode masquerading as two separate half-episodes, the first of which ends series 3 and the second of which begins series 4. Just as confusingly, there are two "Lesson 39"s, both entitled "Repeat Yourself the Burkiss Way" which have identical beginnings. The consequence of these irregularities is that "Lesson 33" through the first "Lesson 39" have lesson numbers that are one greater than the actual cumulative episode number; from the second "Lesson 39" onward the correct numbering is restored.

A sketch in Lesson 28 featuring unsubtle references to newscaster Reginald Bosanquet's alcoholism was cut following the first broadcast for reasons of taste and was never reinstated. A news anchor (US,Can. ... Reginald Bosanquet was a newsreader on Independent Television News in the United Kingdom for several years. ... Alcoholism is a multifactorial illness based upon possibly both genetic and environmental factors which is best explained as a continued detrimental use of alcohol or other sedatives despite ones best interest. ...

The show has gained a cult following over the years and has recently gone into continuous reruns on BBC 7. Listeners have complained about some omissions, which may indicate that episodes have been lost or wiped - most notably Lesson 6 - and some episodes have been broadcast in mono, suggesting that the original stereo masters were wiped. Given the show's enduring popularity, it is almost certain that off-air recordings of the entire run survive in collectors' hands. Rerun van Pelt is the name of Linus and Lucys younger brother in the comic strip Peanuts. ... BBC 7 is a digital radio station broadcasting comedy, drama, and childrens programming 24 hours a day. ... Wiping or junking is an economic move by radio and television companies in which old audiotapes, videotapes and telerecordings are wiped (deleted) and reused or destroyed. ...

The opening scene from an edition of The Burkiss Way Help with listening to audio The purpose of this page is to lay out our policies for handling sounds, and give people some useful information for handling sound files. ...

External links

• The Compleat Burkiss Way