This comes from J.B. Anderton’s channel on YouTube. Yesterday I posted another of his videos in which he presented a disco version of the theme and titles for Star Trek: The Next Generation. He does the same to Tom Baker era Dr Who in this little video. He uses the titles for episode 2 of the story, ‘The Horns of Nimon’, but the video itself consists of clips from nearly right across the Baker era. ‘The Horns of Nimon’ is a suitably seasonal story. It’s a Science Fictional retelling of the ancient Greek myth of the minotaur and is about the Doctor and Romana investigating why a planet’s children are being sent into a labyrinth, where they are preyed upon by aliens with the heads of bulls. It was intended to be a Christmas pantomime before that season ended with the serious story, ‘Shada’. ‘Shada’, scripted by Douglas Adams of Hitchhiker fame, never got made thanks to a strike. The series ended with ‘The Horns of Nimon’, which was widely regarded as the worst Dr Who episode until overtaken by such classics as ‘The Twin Dilemma’, the opening story of Colin Baker’s Dr Who, and which I regard as one of the contributing factors to his Doctor’s unpopularity – unfair in my opinion – and his eventual sacking. I’ve got ‘The Horns of Nimon’ on DVD, and watching it again, I don’t think it’s at all bad. It’s not great, but it’s not terrible, as everyone thought. Perhaps we were just spoiled for great Dr Who stories in those days, and it only seemed bad in comparison. ‘Shada’ has been extensively written about and I think there are DVDs reconstructing the story with the available footage, some of which was used in ‘The Five Doctors’ to explain why Baker’s Doctor wasn’t in it. I think the script may also have been published and possibly Big Finish, which specialises in new Who stories featuring classic Doctors, may have performed it on CD. Anyway, here’s the video for you to enjoy. I suppose I should also run a quiz for Whovians asking them to identify the individual episodes and stories from which the clips are taken.
Archive for the ‘Theatre’ Category
1970s Dr Who Goes Disco
December 31, 2022Sketch of Businessman and Comic Actor and Host Kenneth Horne
December 5, 2022Here’s another sketch of one of my favourite comedy figures from the past, Kenneth Horne. Horne’s Wikipedia entry is rather long, but the potted biography with which it begins runs
‘Charles Kenneth Horne, generally known as Kenneth Horne, (27 February 1907 – 14 February 1969) was an English comedian and businessman. He is perhaps best remembered for his work on three BBC Radio series: Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh (1944–54), Beyond Our Ken (1958–64) and Round the Horne (1965–68).
The son of a clergyman who was also a politician, Horne had a burgeoning business career with Triplex Safety Glass, which was interrupted by service with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. While serving in a barrage balloon unit, he was asked to broadcast as a quizmaster on the BBC radio show Ack-Ack, Beer-Beer. The experience brought him into contact with the more established entertainer Richard Murdoch, and the two wrote and starred in the comedy series Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh. After demobilisation Horne returned to his business career and kept his broadcasting as a sideline. His career in industry flourished, and he later became the chairman and managing director of toy manufacturers Chad Valley.
In 1958 Horne suffered a stroke and gave up his business dealings to focus on his entertainment work. He was the anchor figure in Beyond Our Ken, which also featured Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden and Bill Pertwee. When the programme came to an end in 1964, the same cast recorded four series of the comedy Round the Horne.
Before the planned fifth series of Round the Horne began recording, Horne died of a heart attack while hosting the annual Guild of Television Producers’ and Directors’ Awards; Round the Horne could not continue without him and was withdrawn. The series has been regularly re-broadcast since his death. A 2002 BBC radio survey to find listeners’ favourite British comedian placed Horne third, behind Tony Hancock and Spike Milligan.’
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Horne
I came across Beyond Our Ken and Round the Horne when the Beeb repeated them on the Sunday midday slot, Smash of the Day, in the early 1980s, and it’s been one of my favourite radio shows since. It had a bizarre cast of characters, such as the folk singer Ramblin’ Sid Rumpo and his ganderbag, J. Peasemold Gruntfuttock, a breathy bloke who was supposedly always writing into the programme. Gruntfuttock had strange delusions, at one point declaring himself ‘Dictator Gruntfuttock of Peasemoldia’, which was his house. Other characters included a deranged, demi-literate American film director, Daryl F. Claphanger, who had missed out on making blockbusters by producing films like Nanook of the South. The show also spoofed contemporary radio, television and films. There was the ‘Kenneth Horne Theatre of Mystery and Suspense’ while the Fu Manchu films were sent up in the tales of the crazy plots of Dr Chu-En Ginsberg, M.A., (failed). But most memorable of all was the ‘Trends’ feature with Julian and Sandy, who ran ‘Bona – ‘ whatever the subject was that day. The two were extremely camp and spoke in Polari, a language used by the gay community. Each edition, Horne would go to their new shop or business venture to inquire about their business. They’d greet him in raptures with cries of ‘Oh, Mr Horne! How bona it is to barda your dolly old eke again! Bona! Bona!’ Which, translated means, ‘How good it is to see your old face again.’ Polari wasn’t just used by gay men. It was also the language of actors and carnival showmen, according to Partridge’s Dictionary of Historical Slang. It’s used as such by an alien showman, who attempts to speak to Jon Pertwee’s Doctor in it, in the Dr Who serial ‘Carnival of Monsters’. You could, therefore, see them as just two resting actors being very ‘theatrical’. In fact, it was very clear they were gay, and at times the programme almost told you, if you understand Polari. Ramblin’ Sid in the preface to one of his songs said that its hero was ‘an omee palone’. Omee means man, palone, woman. Omee palone, ‘man woman’, meant gay man. This must have been quite edgy humour for the time, as when the shows were broadcast homosexuality was still illegal. On one TV show looking back at the comedy shows of the past, one of the talking heads said that the older generation were always suspicious of it, and especially of what was being said in Polari. And no doubt with good reason. Previously the BBC had forbidden jokes about the religion, the monarchy, disability, the colour question and effeminacy in men. Times were changing in the 1960s and so all these prohibitions were eventually discarded.
Julian and Sandy, played by Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick, were immensely popular. If you go on YouTube, you’ll find a number of videos of them, and they made two records, Round the Horne: The Complete Julian and Sandy, and The Bona World of Julian and Sandy. Long after the series had been originally broadcast, the two characters, played by Williams and Paddick, appeared on Terry Wogan in the 1980s. I did wonder if the two were now hated by the gay community as malign stereotypes, in the same way that John Inman’s Mr Humphries in Are You Being Served? was bitterly resented by American gays when that show was broadcast in San Francisco in the 1970s. But it seems it isn’t. A year or so ago London Transport or the London Underground celebrated gay pride by putting up posters of the Polari greeting around the city.
Horne himself was a genial host, who was himself the butt of the programme’s jokes. One such ran, ‘And now the question of the week is: what was I doing naked in Trafalgar fountain at such and such a time last weekend? Answers to my lawyers please.’ Williams had aspirations to perform in better or my highbrow material than the parts he got, but always respected Horne even if he was withering in his views of the programme itself.
The series also came from a time when it was still possible to write solely for the radio, or to start off on radio and move to television. Such writers have lamented that due to the rise of television and other media, this is no longer possible. Round the Horne and Beyond Our Ken are, as far as I know, all on CD, and there are a number of episodes on YouTube. In 2003 there was a play about the show, Round the Horne, Revisited, which is also on YouTube.

Sketch of Children’s TV Presenter Brian Cant
December 2, 2022This is the first of a number of sketches and pieces I’m planning to put up about some of the presenters of the children’s TV programmes I used to watch in the 70s. Cant was the lead presenter on Play Away, a sister programme of the long-running children’s TV favourite, Play School, on which Cant had also appeared, but aimed at slightly older children. Play Away was also more of an ensemble programme with a whole team accompanying Cant. There was somebody Cohen at the piano, and a number of other co-presenters, some of whom I’ve now forgotten. I think one of them was Toni Arthur, who I’ve since learned was a folk musician and the author of a book on seasonal customs for children, the All The Year Round Book. One of the presenters I do remember was Jeremy Irons, who has gone on to become a Hollywood star. I was really surprised in the ’90s when I read that he was playing the lead characters in David Cronenberg’s psychological horror film Dead Ringers. This was about a pair of twin gynaecologists, one of whom goes insane and believes that the women he’s treating are all mutants. The film includes a credit to H.R. Giger, the Swiss artist who designed the Alien in those movies, for designing ‘radical surgical instruments’. It’s as far from Play Away as you can get and is a reminder that the cast of such programmes are actors, who also take adult roles. Somebody must have seen Irons in Play Away and recognised his potential.
Cant was also the narrator for three interlinked children’s series, Chigley, Trumpton and Camberwick Green each set in one of these small fictional towns. These were animated series using small figurines and were similar in style, using the same type of figures and music. Trumpton started off with Cant announcing, ‘Here is the clock, the Trumpton clock. Telling the time, steadily, sensibly, never too quickly, never too slowly, telling the time for Trumpton.’ The various characters also had their own theme songs. One of the characters, whose figure I’ve drawn being looked at by Cant, was Windy Miller. Miller appropriately enough lived in a windmill. His song began, ‘Windy Miller, Windy Miller, sharper than a thorn’. The theme song for the local fire brigade began with a rollcall of their names, ‘Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb.’ The railway also had its own song with the words, ‘Time flies by when you’re the driver of a train as you ride on the footplate there and back again.’ These shows have developed a cult following. In the 1980s the band Half Man Half Biscuit released a record Trumpton Riots, about what would happen if Trumpton had a riot. According to rumour, it parodied the train song with the words ‘Time flies by when you’re the driver of a train, as you ride on the footplate with a cargo of cocaine’. You can find videos of ‘Trumpton Riots’ on YouTube, including the lyrics. These words don’t seem to appear, but perhaps they’re on another song with a similar theme. Half Man Half Biscuit, as their name suggests, had a peculiar sense of humour. One of their other songs was ‘All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit’. This was just before Communism fell, when there were far fewer people from eastern Europe in Britain, who might genuinely want such a football kit for their collection.
The series’ visual style has also influenced pop video producers. One of the series began, if I recall correctly, with one of the characters spiralling up out of an opened music box. Something similar occurs in the Ting Tings’ video for ‘That’s Not My Name’, where the two leads seem to spiral up into view from something off camera below them. The producers of another pop video for a song with the delightful name ‘Burn The Witch’, deliberately based its style on the three children’s series. He also appeared in a pop video for Orbital’s The Altogether in a sequence which was similar to Play School, the children’s TV programme that preceded Play Away and in which Cant also appeared as a presenter. He also appeared in a number of other programmes and theatrical productions. Wikipedia notes that Cant won a poll as the best-loved voice from children’s TV in 2007, and three years later in 2010 he won a special award at the BAFTAs for his work in children’s television. Accepting it, Cant said: “When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. When I became a man I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, and they paid me for it.”
For further information, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cant

I found this rendition of the Play Away theme with a still of its cast on Bobby Gathergood’s channel on YouTube.
Sketch of One of Ken Dodd’s Diddimen
December 2, 2022One of the sketches I put up a few days ago was of veteran funny man Ken Dodd. But Ken Dodd wasn’t just known for his jokes, but for another set of puppet characters – the Diddimen. I think they took their name from the colloquialism ‘diddy’, meaning small. Terry Wogan used to refer to one of his fellow radio hosts as ‘diddy David Hamilton. They were designed by Dodd’s mother, who helped and encouraged him with his comedy. They were immensely popular but are also quite far back in Dodd’s career. I can just about remember them from when I was very small. They lived in Knotty Ash, actually a suburb of Liverpool but in Dodd’s imagination a land of wonder and magic. They used to have a song, ‘We Are the Diddymen’. In the show I remember, the world was square and there were ships sailing about on its different sides. I’ve been told by my parents, however, that when I was very small, they terrified me, while I was immune to the Daleks’ attempts to spread enjoyable fear among the children of Britain. Perhaps I wasn’t alone, either, as while Dodd continued on our screens, the Diddimen vanished. In their last appearance that I remember, they were played by children in makeup rather than puppets. I also seem to recall that one of the puppets was stolen a while ago, and Dodd appealed for its return. It was later found on a rubbish dump. They were colourful characters, so I’ve drawn them in colour as another experiment.
And here’s a video I found on Rikkyhardo’s channel on YouTube. It’s of a recording of the Diddimen singing their song, accompanied by pictures of them with Dodd, and on merchandising such as children’s annuals, stills from various shows, and mugs.
Sketch of Children’s TV Star Basil Brush
December 2, 2022We’re now entering the world of children’s TV puppet characters. These have existed since before television. As some of the great commenters on this blog recall, there was Archie Andrews on the radio way back in the 1940s/50s. Andrews was a ventriloquist’s dummy and had his own series, Educating Archie. Following him there was Muffin the Mule and a plethora of other puppet series and characters, including the might Magic Roundabout. But Basil Brush was one of the towering figures of children’s entertainment. I’m sure there are theses to be written about him and his relation to the British class system. Brush appeared, nattily attired, in aristocratic tweeds, but was mischievously anarchistic towards his co-presenters. His shows were co-hosted by another human, such as Rodney Bewes of Likely Lads fame, who would then have to endure Brush’s jokes and wisecracking. The co-host would be formally addressed as Mr, so that Rodney Bewes was called by Brush ‘Mr Rodney’. At one point, the unfortunate person would have to read a story, during which Brush would interrupt with more jokes and wisecracks. They would then struggle to continue, with Brush urging them with cries of ‘Yes, yes, Mr Rodney’ or whoever, but still interrupt. This carried on until the poor soul was almost reduced to a wreck. I remember a sequence in which Bewes was supposed to be reading a science fiction story. One of the characters was called Zip Fastener, whose name was answered by Brush saying, ‘There are no flies on him.’ I think there may also have been a puppet dog. When this creature tried to get its voice heard, it was often answered by Brush telling it to shut its bone chute. After making a particularly good joke, Brush would cry, ‘Boom! Boom!’ and bang his head against his human co-host’s stomach. I’ve no doubt that a quick search on Google will turn up the name of Brush’s creator and puppeteer, but for a very long time he refused to be credited. This is because he wanted Brush to be character in his own right. He succeeded splendidly. And when Brush was travelling, such as for a stage appearance, he was carried in his own special box.
His creator died a few decades ago, and Brush had been retired like the other puppet characters before him. But his popularity was so great that he was revived for a new generation of children. This time his companions included a repentant fox hound. I think he’s still going. Quickly looking through YouTube I found he’s done music videos, as well as appeared on the satirical comedy, The Last Leg, commenting on the election of Donald Trump. And there certainly have been DVDs of the new series.

Here’s the video of his jokes about Trump from The Last Leg’s channel on YouTube.
Sketch of Ventriloquist Ray Alan and his Character, Lord Charles
November 30, 2022I’ve been doing a bit more sketching of past comedy acts and comic actors, and one of these was of the late ventriloquist Ray Alan and his dummy, Lord Charles. Charles was a true-blue member of the aristocracy, making sharp wisecracks and retorts. He’d pointedly comment on himself or somebody else after they’d done something he thought stupid that they were ‘a silly ass’. Looking back in retrospect, he also seems to me now to have been slightly squiffy. That’s the character, of course, not Alan himself. The two are one of my favourite ventriloquist acts. I never got on with Keith Harris and his cast of characters, Orville, the green duck in a nappy that couldn’t fly, Cuddles the monkey and so on. It was all much too sentimental for me. But there was none of that with Alan and Lord Charles.

According to Wikipedia, Alan began his showbusiness career very young. He entered a talent contest at his local Gaumont cinema in Lewisham when he was five. When he was thirteen, he got a job as a call boy at the town’s Hippodrome theatre and started performing magic tricks during acts. He then added ventriloquism and playing the ukulele. He later toured the world as a cabaret act, performing with Laurel and Hardy in 1954. Lord Charles made his debut in a charity performance at Wormwood Scrubs prison and the doll’s appearance was based on Stan Laurel. Like many of the other acts I’ve drawn, Alan made his first TV appearance in the 1960s on The Good Old Days and returned to the programme several times subsequently. It was also in the 1960s he appeared on the children’s TV programme Tich and Quackers, about a small boy, Tich, and Quackers, his pet duck. Alan also a created another character, Ali Cat, for the 1977 ITV series Magic Circle. He also presented the BBC Ice Show for two years. He also appeared as a guest on the comedy series, Tell Me Another, which ran from 1976 to 1978, with Sooty on The Sooty Show in the 1983 episode, ‘Soo’s Party Problem’. The next year he appeared on Mike Reid’s Mates and Music. In 1985 he appeared as the special guest in Bob Hope’s birthday performance at London’s Lyric Theatre. The next year he presented a Channel 4 series on ventriloquism appropriately called A Gottle of Geer., which he also wrote. He also appeared on Bobby Davro’s TV Weekly in 1987. He also wrote for other comedians, including Tony Hancock, Dave Allen, Morecambe and Wise and Bootsie and Snudge, and the 1985 programme, And There’s More, which starred Jimmy Cricket. This was often under the pseudonym Ray Whyberd. He was still working well into seventies, including at conferences and corporate events, and in 1998/99 he was one of the acts entertaining the guests on the luxury liner the QE2. Ill health forced him to take a break from recording, but he never ruled out returning to it. His last appearance on stage with in 2008 at a charity concert in Bridlington organised by his friend, the MP Greg Knight.
He also made numerous appearances on panel and game shows. He was the host of Where in the World and the children’s quiz, It’s Your Word. He also appeared on Celebrity Squares, Give Us A Clue, Family Fortunes, 3-2-1, and Bullseye. He was also a guest on the Bob Monkhouse Show, the Des O’Connor Show and Blue Peter. On the radio he was a guest on Radio 2’s The Impressionists from 1974-5 and was its host from 1980 to 1988. In the 1970s he made four appearances on the long-running Radio 4 panel game, Just A Minute, and presented the edition of the News Huddlines, also on Radio 4 on 29th October 1975.
Apart from his stage, screen and radio appearances Alan was also a literary man. From their titles, I think they were thrillers – Death and Deception (2007) A Game of Murder (2008), and Retribution, published in 2011 after his death. They were all published by Robert Hale. The year previously, 2010, his novel Fear of Vengeance had been published by F.A. Thorpe. He wasn’t the only comedian with literary aspirations. Way back in the 1980s I came across an SF novel about genetic engineering in one of the local bookshops in Bristol by Les Dawson. I didn’t buy it, partly because I wondered if it really was that Les Dawson. But it was, and I now regret it, as it would have been interesting to read his views on the subject.
Sketch of Comedienne and Cabaret Singer Marti Caine
November 27, 2022
As you can see, I’ve tried to experiment by drawing her with coloured pencils. I hope you enjoy it.
Marti Caine is another performer I dimly remember from childhood. According to her Wikipedia page, she started performing when she was 19 after auditioning at the local working men’s club in the Sheffield suburb of Chapeltown in order to get the £19 to pay her mother’s funeral expenses. Her real name was Lynne Denise Shepherd, but her stage name was chosen for her by her husband from gardening catalogue. It was originally Marta Caine, after tomato cane, but the first name was misspelled ‘Marti’ and she stuck with it. She performed on the Yorkshire club circuit before winning New Faces in 1975. This brought her more appearance on TV, including her own show, Marti Caine. She returned to New Faces as the show’s host in the 1980s. She also starred in the sitcom, Hilary, which was specially written for her and ran from 1984-6. In that year she starred in her own one-woman show about her life at the Donmar Warehouse, where she performed 14 songs about her experiences. She also starred in a production of Funny Girl, which toured the UK.
From the Wikipedia entry it seems she saw herself first and foremost as a singer and dancer and released several records. But this was overshadowed by her role as a comedienne. Unfortunately, she made the mistake of performing at Sun City, breaking a campaign against performing there by the UN and other international performers. The boycott was against South Africa’s apartheid regime. Caine denied that she was racist and spoke of the work she had done for and with the Black community. She said she had a number of records by Stevie Wonder. She also performed a medley as a tribute to Gladys Knight on her first studio LP. She died in 1995 of lymphatic cancer. She had published her autobiography, A Coward’s Chronicles, four years before in 1991. She gave it its title to rebut the image of her as heroic and courageous. She said that ‘You fought for dear life because you were too coward to face death.’ She was also a great fan of modern art. Mick Farrell’s sculpture, Sheen, which is also frequently called Marti, is dedicated to her. She was due to unveil it, but two weeks before she could so. It was commissioned by Sheffield Hallam University and is in the university’s Arundel Gate.
Wikipedia also states that the film, Funny Cow, starring Maxine Peake as a troubled northern comedienne, was based on her.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marti_Caine
I can just about remember her show as a stand-up comic. I thought I’d draw her and put up a piece about her as, although there have always been great comic actresses, she was part of a new wave of female comics along with Victoria Wood.