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Round the Horne

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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. It was transmitted in four series of weekly episodes from April 1965 until 1968.

The series was created by writers Barry Took and Marty Feldman, with other writers contributing to later series after Marty Feldman returned to performing, and starred Kenneth Horne with Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden, Bill Pertwee and Douglas Smith. Took and the cast had worked on the predecessor series Beyond Our Ken.

Contents

[edit] Format

Round the Horne featured a parody a week, several catchphrases, and many memorable characters. 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. The show normally opened with a deadpan delivery by Horne of "the answers to last week's quiz", a quiz that listeners neither heard nor knew about, and which was laced with (what were for BBC Radio at that time) incredible double-entendres and sexual innuendo: e.g. 'The answer to question one was an army surplus vest or a banjo. For those of you who thought it was Dusty Springfield, you obviously weren't paying attention'.

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'), and they spoke in the gay slang Polari, aka palare.

Other popular characters included J. Peasemold Gruntfuttock (Williams, the world's dirtiest dirty old man), the matinee idols Fiona and Charles (Marsden and Paddick), 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, Fanny Cradock ("Fanny Haddock", played by Marsden), and "Daphne Whitethigh", presumably based on journalist Katharine Whitehorn. 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".

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:

Charles: "I know."
Fiona: "I know you know."
Charles: "I know you know I know."
Fiona: "Yes, I know."

or

Charles: "Everything is the same…"
Fiona: "and yet somehow different."

Another regular character, 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.

An occasional visitor in the later series, and played by Marsden, was Judy Coolibar, an aggressive Australian (and likely a parody of Germaine Greer) 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 invariably managed to introduce her "many, many times" sexual innuendo.

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 shark, a volcano or something equally silly that involved inane lines such as "Moo moo", "rumble rumble" or "Chug chug futt".

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. Sometimes the songs represented original material, but just as often they were Cockney music hall chestnuts such as "Little Bit of Cucumber".

A fifth series had been commissioned, but Horne's untimely death of a heart attack in February 1969 closed the book on the series.

[edit] Series 1

Series 1 ran for 16 episodes from March 7th, 1965. The scripts were written by Barry Took and Marty Feldman. The cast was Kenneth Horne, Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden, Bill Pertwee, announcer Douglas Smith with music by the Fraser Hayes Four and Paul Fenoulhet and the Hornblowers (Edwin Braden replaced Fenoulhet from episode 7). The producer was John Simmonds.

[edit] Series 2

Series 2 ran for 13 episodes from March 13th, 1966. The scripts were written by Barry Took and Marty Feldman. The cast was Kenneth Horne, Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden, Bill Pertwee, announcer Douglas Smith with music by the Fraser Hayes Four and Edwin Braden and the Hornblowers. The producer was John Simmonds.

[edit] Series 3

Series 3 ran for 20 episodes from February 12th, 1967. The scripts were written by Barry Took and Marty Feldman. The cast was Kenneth Horne, Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden, Bill Pertwee, announcer Douglas Smith with music by the Fraser Hayes Four and Edwin Braden and the Hornblowers. The producer was John Simmonds.

[edit] Series 4

Series 4 ran for 16 episodes from February 25th, 1968. The scripts were written by Barry Took, Johnnie Mortimer, Brian Cooke and Donald Webster. The cast was Kenneth Horne, Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden, announcer Douglas Smith with music by the Max Harris Group. The producer was John Simmonds.

[edit] 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 22nd, 1966. It omitted many topical jokes from the original script.

A 1966 Christmas special, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, was broadcast on December 25th. The script was written by Barry Took and Marty Feldman. The cast was Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden, Bill Pertwee, announcer Douglas Smith with music by the Fraser Hayes Four and Edwin Braden and the Hornblowers. The producer was John Simmonds. 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 24th. The script was written by Barry Took, Johnnie Mortimer and Brian Cooke. The cast was Kenneth Horne, Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden, announcer Douglas Smith with music by the Max Harris Group. The producer was John Simmonds.

[edit] Documentaries

A 45 minute radio documentary Round And Round The Horne was broadcast on September 18th, 1976. It was presented by Frank Bough and included interviews with Kenneth Williams and Barry Took.

A 60 minute radio documentary Horne A' Plenty was broadcast on February 14th, 1994. It was presented by Leslie Phillips and included 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.

A 3 hour radio special, also entitled Horne A' Plenty, was broadcast on March 5th, 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 the first and final episodes of Round The Horne in their entirity.

[edit] 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.

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 - this show also is part of the BBC 7 schedules.

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 (director: Nick Wood) and was broadcast on BBC 4 as part of a "Summer in the Sixties" season on 13 June 2004, 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 taking over in December 2004 and the so-called Round the Horne ... Revisited 2 rounding off the London run from January to April 2005.

David Took (Barry's son) gave the following opinion on the modern staging:

"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."<ref>Kettering Magazine #3 carries an overview of the series plus an interview with Barry Took's son.</ref>

Comparisons can be drawn between Round the Horne and the American sketch comedy television series Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In (1968–1973). 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.

[edit] Cultural Impact

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 frequently used word futtock, meaning part of a sailing ship's rigging, while rarely encountered outside the radio show (apart from Ronnie Barker's 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 word fuck. The word nadger, which may be an anatomical reference, was already known from the Goon Show (The Nadger Plague). It has now passed into computer slang, meaning to twiddle some feature in a concealed manner.

In the long-term, mining obscure and invented words for double-meanings probably also led to the popularity of Larry Grayson, 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.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

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