[1] Each of Stanshall's four allotted two-hour slots, which he called "Radio Flashes", consisted of him acting as DJ, playing his own favourite records as well as Peel's usual playlist.
Each episode included pre-recorded comedy sketches starring himself and actress Chris Bowler, and other absurdist interludes such as mock advertisements for large animal repellents such as "Rilla-Go!
This piece was a reading of an apparently randomly-selected installment of a nonexistent 'continuing serial' that told the story of an eccentric, dysfunctional semi-aristocratic British family (the Rawlinsons) fallen on hard times at the dilapidated country estate of the title.
Wodehouse but with added surrealistic imagery, obscure literary allusion, and a slightly scatological aftertaste, a version of the piece was broadcast on radio DJ John Peel's Top Gear on 20 March 1971, as part of a session by Stanshall's touring band Freaks.
A different, more-polished version of the original piece (labeled "Part 14"), appears (possibly somewhat of necessity) on the Bonzo Dog Band's post-breakup contractual obligation album, Let's Make Up and Be Friendly (1972).
Wodehouse's Blandings Castle thrown in, as it now focused on the characters of Sir Henry Rawlinson and his family, who only briefly appeared or were mentioned only in passing in the original, embryonic versions of the saga.
In the case of Rawlinson End however, the details of this introduction were often unrelated to any previous events that had occurred in the narrative, and indeed each episode rarely continued in any logical order from the preceding one.
This was followed in 1980 by the movie Sir Henry at Rawlinson End which by its very nature is a different beast to either radio broadcast or LP record, and expanded the concept further but arguably lost some of the original's imaginative charm and singularity of vision.
At the time of Stanshall's death in 1995, he was said to be preparing and recording material for a new LP detailing Sir Henry's wartime exploits, provisionally entitled Plastered in Paris.