Not the A to Z of Radio Comedy: T is for Three Plus One

 

Three Plus One was one of those comedy shows that filled in the summer recess when Week Ending was off-air. The title of this sketch show reflects the cast make-up: three women and one man. It appeared in the summer of 1982 for just six episodes after a one-off Easter show that year and was never heard again. Until now.

The ‘three’ were:

Denise Coffey - established comic actress and the real star of the show. Best known on TV for Do Not Adjust Your Set and on radio for The Next Programme Follows Almost Immediately and The Burkiss Way (amongst dozens of credits).

Alison Steadman - at the time perhaps best known for her TV appearances in Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May and Abigail’s Party but on radio recent work on Eddie Braden’s The Show with Ten Legs and on The News Huddlines.

Susan Denekar – a relative unknown performer who has a number of tv and theatre acting roles to her credit but appears to have done no other radio work. She sings the comic songs in this series.

The ‘one’ was the token man David Jackson Young. A comedy writer and performer he had been involved with the Radio Active team and was one of the writers for Three Plus One.

In the pilot programme broadcast on 9 April 1982 the ‘three’ are Denise, Alison and Emma Thompson, whilst the ‘one’ is Nicholas le Prevost. Emma had already co-starred in a previous summer show whilst Week Ending was on a break. This was the rather more successful Injury Time in 1980 and again in 1981, that also came back for a Tuesday night series in the summer of 1982. Emma wrote a sketch for the sixth episode of Three Plus One.

The series was produced by Jan Ravens, another Cambridge Footlights alumni, who was a radio Light Entertainment producer in 1982/83 working on shows such as Week Ending and The Law Game.

Robert Ottaway previews the series
for the Radio Times

An episode of Three Plus One is being broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra today (seems to be episode 2) as part of its Lost Gems archive offerings.  To supplement that repeat I’ve dug around in my box of tapes to turn up another show from the series. I kept all six shows though as I used cheap tapes for these recordings the quality isn’t great.

In the fifth episode the focus is on performances at the Edinburgh Fringe, a subject familiar to most of the cast and writers. There’s a stellar list of contributors to the script: Eddie Canfor-Dumas (TV scriptwriter and novelist), Janey Preger (mainly a TV scriptwriter including Angels, No Frills, Coronation Street and later on The Archers), David Kind (Punch Line, Naked Video, Hale and Pace and Spitting Image), Sandi Toksvig (at the time on ITV’s No 73), Nick Symons (who would also co-write with Sandi for Radio 4’s Cat’s Whsikers and TV’s Kin of the Castle) and Robin Sieger (later a BBC TV executive and now a leading motivational ‘guru’).

There’s a common thread linking the other writers with all of them working on shows such as Week Ending, The News Huddlines, Three of a Kind, Carrott’s Lib, The Lenny Henry Show and Spitting Image. They are Andrea Solomons, James Hendrie, Bob Sinfield, Guy Jenkin and Ian Hislop.

In this episode the song is written by American lyricist Fran Landesman

Does Three Plus One stand the test of time some 40 years later? I’ll leave you to decide based on these recordings.

Three Plus One

Pilot (title Three Plus One on 4) 9 April 1982

Episodes 1 – 6 Fridays 2235-2300 30 July – 3 September 1982