Deadpan

[geron]

Stu, some of the best satire around the time of TW3 [0] were 2 radio series - Round the Horne and Beyond Our Ken. You catch Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick and others at their very best. Rambling Syd Rumpo and Julian and Sandy. Absolutely brilliant.

Indeed so. A run of them has just ended on BBC Radio 4Extra -- perhaps you caught some of them. I was in the studio audience for one of the final series recordings. An unforgettable lunchtime.

But there has been a lot of good situation comedy on radio more recently. I could mention Cabin Pressure, Ed Reardon's Week, Clare in the Community....

[pelmut]

Stu, some of the best satire around the time of TW3 [0] were 2 radio series - Round the Horne and Beyond Our Ken.

Beyond Our Ken had a long pedigree.  The main writer was Eric Merriman, whose father, Percy, had been one of the founders of The Roosters concert party in the 1920s -- that explained the age of some of the jokes.  Kenneth Horne had already established himself as a comedian in Much Binding in the Marsh (I am old enough to remember hearing an episode of that) although he still kept his 'day job' as sales director for Triplex Glass.  

I never felt comfortable with Round the Horne, too many of the jokes were risqué without being particularly witty; the characters were the same boring stereotypes each week and some of the writing was formulaic and repetitive.  ITMA had a much more imaginative range of characters and witty writing, even though a lot of it was bizarre nonsense.