In the 1980s any young radio light entertainment producer worth his or her salt was scouring the comedy clubs and the Edinburgh Fringe looking for the next big thing and signing them up for a Radio 4 series.
In 1985, the
year in question for this blog post, BBC Radio 4 was already offering listeners
the fifth series of Radio Active and
the second of In One Ear. It was also
the year you could hear the short-lived sketch show In Other Words...The Bodgers (though this did begat Absolutely) and the second series of Don’t Stop Now-It’s Fundation, an early
outing for Hale and Pace. And in January 1985 the latest show to join the
comedy schedule was The Wow Show.
The Wow Show was written and performed by four
young actor/comedians who were already well known for the fringe stage show
bearing the same name. The quartet was Stephen Frost, Mark Arden, Lee Cornes
and Mark Elliott. Frost and Arden were teamed up as The Oblivion Boys and
worked together on BBC1’s Carrott’s Lib as
well as appearing on Blackadder, The Comic Strip Presents... and The Young Ones. Cornes also had The Young Ones and the same Comic Strip episode under his belt.
Elliott (also billed under his full name Paul Mark Elliott) had more straight
acting credits but like the others also popped up in the Comic Strip (the frankly bizarre s02e07 episode Slags which can be found on YouTube).
The Wow Show ran for two six-part series in 1985, the first starting in January and the second in October. The producer was Jamie Rix who’d joined the Light Entertainment department in 1981 initially producing Beat the Record, Pros and Cons and Three in a Row for Radio 2 before picking up comedy duties in 1983 on Radio Active, In One Ear and The Bentine Years.
 |
| Radio Times 19 January 1985 |
From the first series comes this second episode titled For Your Hives Only, a surreal tale set in a beehive. There’s a feel of I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again about this show judging by some of the puns and, a couple of minutes in, Lee Cornes as The Queen Beatrix Herself, sounding not unlike TBT’s Lady Constance de Coverlet.
First broadcast
on Saturday 12 January and then repeated on Friday 18 January (which is the
transmission I recorded) like all of The
Wow Show it’s never had a subsequent repeat, the BBC having wiped or dumped
the lot.
I remember being slightly bemused by this series when I first heard it - I think a lot of the programmes were parodies of films that I hadn't seen, or at least film genres. But thanks for yet again coming up with a recording of something I thought everyone except me had forgotten!
ReplyDeleteThe 11.30pm Saturday comedy slot on Radio 4 hadn't been going for too long then as I recall - it started with the experimental live show "In One Ear" and then gradually evolved into a regular home for "alternative" comedy, with shows like "The Cabaret Upstairs". There hadn't really been anything like this on radio previously so credit to Radio 4 for introducing the slot. (I think it was the decision of the then Controller David Hatch, who had a solid background in light entertainment going all the way back to "I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again".)
Loved this show back in the day but sadly lost my off air recordings years ago. A couple of other episodes stick in the mind - 'Heaven is for Fascists', a boys own type adventure to find Shangri-la; and 'Flyboy' about a dimwitted schoolboy with a superhero alter ego who gets tried for witchcraft. Would love to hear those again. Bloody hilarious.
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