Radio Days

This a unashamedly nostalgic post for all who , like me, relied on radio for entertainment in the fifties. As a family we were late to TV which was impossible until we had mains electricity installed. We had our first TV in 1959.

Radio was the sound track of my childhood. When still young I enjoyed Children’s Hour . I still recall Uncle Mac’s sign off “Goodbye children , everywhere” Inevitably I also listened uncomprehendingly to adult radio,  I just about remember “It’s that man again” featuring comedian Tommy Handley. He introduced many famous characters including Colonel Chinstrap who interpreted almost everything as an invitation for a drink. “ I don’t mind if I do” was his regular response. Handley was famous for initializing joke phrases such as YTYTK ( You’re too young to know ) although most were far more complex.

When I was a bit older we had “Educating Archie” where bizarrely Archie was a ventriloquist’s dummy. A series of young comedians tried ( unsuccessfully ) to educate Archie in his radio personage as a mischievous schoolboy. The ventriloquist ie. The voice of Archie, was Peter Brough; and one supposed tutor was Max Bygraves.

We heard a variety of comedians also

I say , why does a bear wear a fur coat?

I don’t know, why does a bear wear a fur coat

Look silly in a mackintosh ( boom,boom).

Another comedy series was “Take it from here”. Featuring Jimmy Edwards this also had a long running saga of Edwards daughter, Eth and her courtship in the Glums. Much humour of the time was based around the common experience of the armed forces. All adult males served 2 years conscription. A sketch of Roman legionnaires had them numbering off

I, II, III, IV, V ….

My father was a great fan of “Have a go” with Wilfred Pickles as very genial and gentle question master.  The slogan for the show was “presenting the people to the people”. The format was Pickles first interviewing the people asking often silly questions like “ if you could say I love darling but” what would the but be. This produced answers like “why do you always squeeze the toothpaste tube in the middle”. This was then followed by a series of questions with right answers rewarded by small sums of money. The questions were designed to be easy and relevant to the person. Thus a miner was asked “what is colliers ham?” The answer being jam.

I always remember one comic who gave questions to a specific answer. Thus

Answer:9W

Question : tell me Mr Wagner do you spell your name with a V

Later we had a comic travelogue with lines like

“ Here in the prairie the prairie dogs howl. Aren’t no trees in the prairie, jest cactus”

Later still as a teenager I was captivated by the Goons. I didn’t understand some of the jokes but the surreal plots were amazing. At the time eggs were to be branded as a national standard with a Lion stamp. As Neddy put it

“ It’s all a lie, they aren’t lions eggs”

The Goons were not above the classic running gag. One they used was at some point some character fell in the water to great sounds of splashing and with Eccles saying “He’s fallen in the water” to great cheers and laughter from the audience( this was dubbed in )

Hard to imagine now but the BBC was the monopoly broadcaster. There were three national services. The Home Service on medium wave and the Light Programme on long wave. The Third programme was classical music and obscure talks which were ignored by us.

It was just possible to reach into the airwaves to hear Radio Luxembourg. This was only possible in conditions of very good reception particularly in the evening. I enjoyed “Smash Hits”. The idea was to submit a record you hated which was then played and finally smashed. In pre vinyl days records were breakable. I was childish enough to find this enjoyable.

Re-reading this post I find its mainly about comedy. I listened to a lot of serious radio as well.I  didn’t quite subscribe to Queen in Radio Ga-ga who say “Everything I need to know I heard through the radio”. Among many serious programs I see that ”Any questions” is still going( even that had its lighter moments)