Round the Horne
By the time the new series began, television had become the dominant broadcasting medium in Britain, and Round the Horne, which built up a regular audience of 15 million, was the last radio show to reach so many listeners.
Horne was surrounded by larger-than-life characters including the camp pair Julian and Sandy, the disreputable eccentric J. Peasmold Gruntfuttock, and the singer of dubious folk songs, Rambling Syd Rumpo, who all became nationally familiar.
[2] The series was due to begin in April 1958, but in February Horne suffered a debilitating stroke; he was temporarily paralysed down his left-hand side and lost the power of speech.
Took and Feldman developed new characters for Williams, Paddick, Marsden and Pertwee,[8][9] whose ability to change between personas produced a programme described by the radio historians Andy Foster and Steve Furst as "a cast of thousands played by the same four accomplished actors".
Frank Gillard, the BBC's director of radio, wrote to Dennis Morris, the chief of the Light Programme, asking Round the Horne to "watch its step, particularly over the next few weeks and keep itself within reasonable bounds".
[49] Trying to turn the show around, Took and Feldman wrote out the popular camp Julian and Sandy characters (played by Paddick and Williams) from the third episode, but the cast and Simmonds all insisted they were put back, so the writers duly obliged.
[59] Horne introduced some programmes by reading out the answers to last week's (non-existent) questions: At other times he would give a short lecture on justly forgotten figures from history, such as Robert Capability Lackwind, allegedly the inventor of Toad in the Hole,[65] or Nemesis Fothergill, known to ornithologists – and the police – as the Birdman of Potter's Bar.
[76][n 5] The first of the new characters was an elderly ex-Gaiety Girl (played by Marsden) known as Bea Clissold in her theatrical heyday, when she was "the pure brass of the music hall",[78][n 6] and subsequently an aristocratic widow.
In a commentary on the show's characters published in 1974 Took wrote, "Her anecdotes of past marriages combine the lurid with the turgid as the narrative flashes back on leaden wings to the turn of the century and the exploits of the young Bea Clissold".
[81] From "Bona Bijou Tourettes": The camp pair Julian and Sandy (played by Paddick and Williams) made their debuts in the fourth programme of the first series and rapidly established themselves as a permanent fixture throughout the run of Round the Horne.
Julian and Sandy became nationally popular characters and are widely credited with contributing a little to the public acceptance of homosexuality that led to the gradual repeal of the anti-gay laws, beginning in 1967.
Charles and Fiona are supposedly characters played by an extremely theatrical actor and actress: "ageing juvenile Binkie Huckaback" (Paddick) and Dame Celia Molestrangler (Marsden).
[105][n 12] Their agonised love affairs are punctuated by brittle, staccato dialogue, in which they talk of their emotions in tortuous sentences: Their sketches customarily end with an unexpected twist, such as the revelation that they are living in a telephone box, or are dining at the Ritz in the nude, or trysting in a refrigerator.
A drawing of the two by William Hewison in Took and Feldman's 1974 book Round the Horne shows a diminutive Chou alongside a large, looming and graceless Lotus Blossom bulging out of her cheongsam.
[119][120] Described by Took and Feldman as "fashion reporter, TV cook, agony aunt, pain in the neck", Daphne Whitethigh (Marsden) is a hoarse-voiced pundit, "whose advice on the placing of the bosom or the way to prepare Hippo in its shell is an absolute must for all those trendy moderns who want to look and feel frightful".
[122] She advises followers of female fashion that bosoms are still out, but may be on the way back (Horne says he will keep a light burning in the window) and her other useful pointers include how to use cold cream to remove those baboon claw marks from one's hip, and how to avoid crow's feet round the eyes: refrain from sleeping in trees.
[125] Android's interviewees include the much married actress Zsa-Zsa Poltergeist, the Hollywood producer Daryll F. Klaphanger, and the star of The Ipswich File, Michael Bane; promised appearances by such as Lord Ghenghiz Wilkinson, the dancing cloakroom attendant, Nemesis Poston, the juggling monk, and Anthony Wormwood-Nibblo, the Hoxton cat thief and heiress fail to materialise.
[132] In the third series he is Buffalo Sidney Goosecreature, adversary of the Palone Ranger, and in the fourth he is Angus McSpray ("Rishe againsht the Shasshenachsh") to Williams's Bonnie Prince Charlie.
[134] Every time she talks to Horne she interprets his innocent remarks as sexual overtures: When Julie manages to find work in London she has constant difficulties coping with the men.
[142] In 2002 The Spectator described it as "one of the great radio successes";[143] the following year William Cook wrote in The Guardian that the show "boasted a wonderful writing team" and "bestrode the airwaves like a colossus, reaching an audience of 15 million – the sort of ratings most current comedies can only dream about.
[147] In 1969 the paper commented that the show was "a success with lovers of the sophisticated pun" as well as appealing to "those who like a good belly laugh", with "obvious jokes ... mixed with clever word juggling".
The answer came in several parts, as follows: wound round a sailor's leg, on top of the wardrobe, floating in the bath, under a prize bull, and in a lay-by on the Watford Bypass.
It was first produced in October 2003 at the White Bear, a fringe theatre in south London,[199] and opened in the West End at The Venue, Leicester Square in January 2004, running for more than a year.
[206] In 2008 Barry Took's former wife, Lyn, and the director Richard Baron prepared a new stage adaptation, Round the Horne – Unseen and Uncut, which drew entirely on Took and Feldman material from series one to three.
[208] In 2015, to mark 50 years since the radio series began, Apollo Theatre Company produced a stage adaptation, Round the Horne: The 50th Anniversary Tour, compiled from the original scripts and directed by Tim Astley.
The cast comprised Julian Howard McDowell (Horne), Colin Elmer (Williams), Jonathan Hansler (Paddick), Eve Winters (Marsden) and Nick Wymer (Smith).
It was presented by Jonathan James-Moore and included interviews with Ron Moody, Pertwee, Merriman's son Andy, Cooke, Lyn Took, and extracts from Williams's diary read "in character" by David Benson.
'Now my dearios, I'll tether my nadgers to a grouting pole for the old grey mare is grunging in the meadow' – from a comedy monologue by the character 'Rambling Syd Rumpo' whose material is characterized by the use of nonsense words with a general air of sexual innuendo; the meaning is intentionally vague.
= rumpy-pumpy n. Perhaps influenced by the name of 'Rambling Syd Rumpo', a character (played by Kenneth Williams) in the British radio series Round the Horne (1965–9 [sic]), whose songs, although largely consisting of nonsense words, often had an air of sexual innuendo.
"[214] Julian and Sandy are cited among the sources for a range of palare words, including "bona" (Good, excellent; attractive),[215] "naff" (Unfashionable, vulgar; lacking in style, inept; worthless, faulty),[216] "nante" (Nothing),[217] "omee" (Man – spelled "omi" by Took and Feldman)[218] and "palone" (A young woman.
