- Paperback: 96 pages
- Publisher: Pocket Essentials (3 Jan 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1904048048
- ISBN-13: 978-1904048046
- Product Dimensions: 17.2 x 11.2 x 1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
779,398 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #58 in Books > Music, Stage & Screen > Radio > History & Criticism
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Product Description
Product Description
Their catchphrases still fill our language, and their outlandish characters have proved unforgettable through several generations. Books of scripts, and recordings of the shows, continue to sell in extraordinary numbers. No comedy clip-show would be imaginable without Jules and Sand, Bluebottle and Eccles, or Tony Hancock and Sid James. Between them, these three very different shows from the 1950s and '60s define and encapsulate the glory days of radio comedy. There's more than mere nostalgia at work here. Round The Horne is as funny today as it was in the 1960s - and, in our more prudish times, twice as outrageous! The Goons still sounds astonishingly radical - it's hard to imagine such a bizarre programme being commissioned these days. As for The Lad Himself...well, has British comedy ever produced such an irresistibly iconic figure as Tony Hancock? But where did these smash hits come from? Was Spike Milligan's redrawing of the boundaries of comedy really as sui generis as it seems? Did Hancock's genius spring fullyformed from 23 Railway Cuttings? Did Barry Took and Marty Feldman discover some secret recipe that suddenly produced a sketch show twice as funny as any of its predecessors? This book explores the origins of the 'Big Three' - and just as importantly, the enormous, lasting influence they've had on radio (and TV) comedy ever since. It also sketches in the social context of the shows - and aims to remind us that Hancock isn't only famous for committing suicide, that Milligan did more with his life than have nervous breakdowns, that Kenneth Williams wasn't just a neurotic diarist; to remind us, above all, that these amazing shows have survived because they were extraordinarily good. Where much critical attention has focussed on the private lives of the casts, the Pocket Essentials Classic Radio Comedy concentrates on what made them great - the comedy.
About the Author
Mat Coward is a novelist, short-story writer, book reviewer, magazine columnist and humorist. He has been writing about radio comedy for twenty years, and is co-author with Barry Took of The Best of Round the Horne.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This potted history of BBC radio comedy is readable (and alas! short)enough to be swallowed at one, longish gulp. If you're sufficiently advanced in years to have been a genuine, original listener to some of the older shows considered but have not bothered to seek out any of the many recordings of them now available, you may find yourself doing so,if you read this little book. It will, I suspect, rekindle and confirm old enthusiasms.
But even if you are not at all old and remember, say, only the more recent of the comedy programmes included in this comprehensive survey, this book is for you, with the persuasive, though never overstated, case it makes for regarding all the BBC's comedic output as part of a still-developing continuum.
In short, this book is a balanced, interesting and well-wriitten tribute to Classic Radio Comedy by a writer who really knows and loves his subject.
Listmania!
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