Tread boldly, men

At the end of the decade a new form of radio comedy had arrived - the wacky Disc Jockey. No Brit did it quite so well as Kenny Everett (left). Everett played music like any other jockey, but then punctuated the track list with spoof interviews, silly sketches and even regular characters such as Sid Snot and Captain Kremmen. He could be heard on Radio London, Radio Luxembourg and Capital radio as well as on BBC Radio One.

Adrian Juste (right) was another mainstream radio host who performed sketches and jokes; these were interspersed with classic comedy show clips and stand-up recordings. His source material was novel and often controversial, guaranteeing him both audience and publicity. Also at this time, another up-and-coming producer was helping to revitalise radio comedy. Geoffrey Perkins was working on the flagging panel show I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue (top right) (the spin-off of I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again and Hello Cheeky). One of his contributions was the game “Mornington Crescent”, a piece of enduring radio nonsense. The weekly show is still running today, as relevant in its irreverence as ever.

Perkins had earlier produced the first series of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (left) for BBC radio, a science-fiction comedy written by Douglas Adams (with a little help from John Lloyd). Hitch Hiker’s was a massive hit, broadcast by the BBC World Service, National Public Radio in the US and CBC Radio in Canada.

Geoffrey Perkins went on to co-write and perform in Radio Active (seated on chairs right), an innovative 1980s sketch show which also featured Angus Deayton, Michael Fenton Stevens and Helen Atkinson Wood. The programme’s pioneering aspect was the elevation of its own status above that of its cast. It had first been performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe when all four students worked together in the Oxford Revue. Radio Active ran for seven series and was adapted for BBC2 television as KYTV, winning both the Grand-prix and Silver Rose at the Montreux Festival.

This success was emblematic of an era in which radio formed the creative seedbed for TV comedy. Stand-up comics seen regularly at the new comedy venues such as The Red Rose and Jongleurs in London, The Buzz Club in Manchester or The Zapp Club in Brighton were being groomed for radio. Almost as a nod to John Henry’s shows seventy years earlier, these young bucks were adding their own names to the programme title. Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation (above right), The Mark Steel Solution (above left) and Harry Hill’s Fruit Corner (above centre) all had the feel of a bygone era and owed more to Tommy Hadley, Robb Wilton and Arthur Askey than to Peter Cook or Spike Milligan.