Thursday, May 13, 2010

Round The Horne (RE-Up)


"Round the Horne crackled out of the nation's wirelesses Sunday afternoons from 1965, becoming one of the most popular comedies of the era until it finished in '69.

With its ground breaking mixture of innuendo, camp comedy and word play, it netted a regular audience of more than 15million listeners and was one of the best loved programmes in radio history.

A colourfully bizarre collection of characters and memorable catch phrases burst across the airwaves from the pages of its brilliantly inventive and sometimes outrageous scripts, the majority of which were written by zany duo Barry Took and Marty Feldman.

Kenneth Horne as the straight man anchored the whole careering, seething, teaming, chaotic hullabaloo emitted from the likes of J Peasemold Gruntfuttock, Rambling Syd Rumpo, Daphne Whitethigh, Shamus Android, Binkie Huckaback and Dame Celia Molestrangler (played by Betty Marsden, Hugh Paddick, Bill Pertwee and Kenneth Williams). This mad-cap bunch mercilessly sent up the establishment via a combination of bawdy jokes and surreal literary invention acted out in a series of sketches. Kenneth Williams camped his way through the script as limp-wristed Sandy, normally introduced by Hugh Paddick's character saying "Hello I'm Julian and this is my friend Sandy", making homosexual double entendres that allowed British suburbia to laugh openly about what had been strictly taboo."


Round The Horne - J. Peasmold Gruntfuttock Sings

Round The Horne - O Lucky Jim

Round The Horne - A Nice Cup Of Tea

Round The Horne - The Cucumber Song

Round The Horne - O What A Beauty

Round The Horne - Rhymes

Round The Horne - Early One Morning

Round The Horne - Among My Souvenirs

2 comments:

Bernard said...

This was just what I have been looking for. Thanks.
You see I have the sheet music to most of those but have never heard them sang. Except for The Marrow song which I did know.
The one on Rhymes is obviously not the same as the music as the Horne team would use their own limericks.
Really good. Thanks.
(I have loads of RTH tapes, but none like this.)

Wastedpapiers said...

Glad you enjoyed them Uncle B. Round The Horne still makes me laugh today- one of the best radio comedies ever!