Transcript from the GSPS meeting in May 1996, known as An Evening Called Fred.
In Part 5 we learn a little about the 1972 Milligna radio series and end with a couple of blooper stories.
Audience (Bill Horsman): Still on the subject of Spike, I was interested to hear you mention the Milligna series on the radio. A number of us were invited to Spike’s house for a meal, and afterwards the conversation was flowing. I happened to mention that I had the tapes of that particular series, and he denied all knowledge of it. He said I haven’t made a series of Milligna. No, no, no, he just denied all knowledge of them.
John Browell: Well, Clare Lawson Dick, who was controller of Radio 4, said to me “Can you get another series with Spike?”. I said I’ll try. I rang him up, he said “yes, I’ll do a series, but you’re not to have editorial control over it.” I said “I don’t quite think that’s on, but what do you mean?”. He said “I want a free hand.” I thought that this was a recipe for disaster. I went back to Clare Lawson Dick and said “Spike will do one if he can do what he wants”. “Oh, that’ll be lovely” she said. So I said “Alright, if you promise to put it out at 10.30 or later, I’ll do it.”. And we did it. I recorded the whole series, and then Clare Lawson Dick said “I’m glad you’ve done that. We’re putting it out at 7 o’clock.”
Well, we had sketches about do-it-yourself laid out corpses, the Encyclopedia of Death. It was very funny, but oh dearie me, not at 7 o’clock in the evening, before the watershed.
Some blooper stories
John P Hamilton: One of my happiest memories of Greenslade, you may remember the story. There was a famous incident with Listen with Mother. The recording itself came out as a blooper later: We’re going to play a hiding and finding game with the music. I want you to pretend you have some balls. And they’d got to throw them in the air, all that lark. It was Eileen (can’t remember correct surname). And Keith Fell was doing the panel, the guy we talked about earlier doing Star Bills with Dennis Main Wilson, and Crazy People. We had a small studio in Film House in Wardour Street from which Listen with Mum came, every second day, or whenever it was transmitted. Eileen was doing this thing, and Ernest Lush, the famous accompanist, was playing piano.
Bill Greenslade was in continuity at the time on the Home Service. He could listen on prefade, and he could hear the rehearsals. He heard the argument between the producer and Keith trying to persuade Eileen, who was a very naive lady, to make it singular rather than plural. We want you to pretend you have A ball, and you’re going to throw IT in the air.
I was working intermittently, as we did, on radio newsreels. This is before my Aeolian days. I was a programme assistant then, based at Broadcasting House. I was hanging around in the recording channel, waiting for copies and reports from overseas radio newsreel. Bill came through from Continuity and said “patch in to Film House down the road and you’ll hear something very funny, and for God’s sake, record it”. We did and we got the final rehearsal, and it actually went out that way because she refused to change it. It became a classic blooper thereafter. That was all thanks to Bill. Ernest Lush apparently fell off the stool about eighteen times because he just couldn’t get through to her, nobody could get through to her that she really ought to change it. Anyway, Bill warned us, and otherwise it wouldn’t have been committed to a recording as it was going out live. It was in North America the same night, I understand, with a BOAC pilot.
As indeed was another classic which came the other way from Canada,
the great Flatulence Contest,which David Jacobs was instrumental in getting into this country.
Brian Willey: I have a story about that. The BBC Variety Department was evacuated during the war to Bangor in North Wales, and eventually they all decided to come back to North London. I was in Aeolian Hall, ready to receive all the packing cases from the Effects Department and the Recorded Library Department, and a load of acetates, discs with acetate coating, the recordings in those days. I was charged by my then boss, a man named Jack Miles, to go through these recordings, and if I heard anything of any interest, to send them to a lady called Marie Slocombe in the Archives Department. Marie Slocombe was a very stern lady.
Anyway, I got rather bored with this job, I was only about sixteen anyway, and going through these things, that’s boring, that’s boring, oh, that might be of interest. This one was the Canadian forces recording, and there was this voice saying “Here we are at the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto”. I thought that might be of interest, this contest, and I didn’t take the word in at all. I thought that might be of interest to Archives and I sent it off to Marie Slocombe. About a week later, Jack Miles says ‘come and see me’, he was very red-faced. He said ‘I disapprove of what you did last week. You sent a recording to Marie Slocombe, you shouldn’t have done it. It might have been very funny to you, it’s not funny at all, particularly with a lady like Marie.’ I said I don’t know what you’re on about. ‘Yes, you must do. Those Canadian records you sent over to her, you must have listened to them and thought it would give her a bit of a jolt. Well, it did give her a bit of a jolt’. I said I still don’t know what you’re talking about. ‘Don’t you really?’ I said no. ‘Well it was a farting contest’. So that’s where that blooper came from.
John P Hamilton:It’s a brilliant recording, it really is. It was done by a Canadian sports reporter as a straight forward commentary on the thing, and the effects are fantastic, in varying degrees. I certainly first heard about it from David Jacobs. He heard about it from somewhere or other, and we, of course, raised heaven and earth until we actually found it.
An Evening Called Fred
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