Wogan House

Wogan House falls silent this month as engineers continue to decommission the BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music studios. The stations have been based in what was then Western House since 2006, at the time of the Broadcasting House re-development. Prior to that there were some production booths in the building. Radio 2 and 6 Music have been moving into new studios back over in NBH, with the daytime news bulletins now coming from studio WG1. Any late-night revelries in the BBC Club, also in Wogan House, ended in December 2023 prior to its move into the existing Media Cafe area by the end of April.

Studio 6A in Wogan House (2018)

The BBC first occupied Western House in 1953 and for many years it was the home of the Designs Group of the Engineering division. A car showroom remained on the ground floor premises until the early 60s. Later the Recorded Sound Effects Library moved in. 

Western House in 2015. The following year on
16 November 2016 it was renamed Wogan House

The lease for the building will transfer to Landmark Space who propose to use it as ‘flexible office spaces’. It will be known as 99 Great Portland Street.

Studio 6B (2024)

Studio 4D (2024)

As far as I’m aware the last 6 Music show from Wogan House is today with Gideon Coe, in for Cerys Matthews. The last Radio 2 shows are this coming Friday.

Not the A to Z of Radio Comedy: I is for In One Ear

I first heard Steve Brown on Radio 4’s late-night live comedy show In One Ear. His songs, musical skits and attempts to paint himself as the “affable sex symbol” were an integral part of the show. Press releases of the time also described him variously as “a good natured Nicholas Ball”, “the versatile Brown” and “the man who wrote the press release”.  

In One Ear enjoyed a run of three series of live Saturday late-night shows (plus a recorded pilot and a Christmas special) between 1983 and 1986. It brought together a cast of four: Nick Wilton principally an actor though also in revue and a scriptwriter, stand-up comedian Helen Lederer, musician Steve Brown and actor Clive Mantle. Mantle’s height (6’5½”) and his role at the time as Little John in ITV’s Robin of Sherwood was the subject of much ribbing in the show.     

Before In One Ear both Nick and Steve had worked together a number of times. In 1982 they appeared in the Perrier award-winning show Writer’s Inc. alongside Jamie Rix and Vicky Pile. Rix would go on to produce In One Ear and Vicky wrote for it. (Nick’s first professional role was in the farce Simple Spymen directed by Jamie’s dad the veteran farceur Brian Rix).  Wilton and Brown also worked together in the Spring of 1982 in a two-week run at the Fortune Theatre of News Revue, an attempt at a musical satire show with Wilton in the cast and Brown at the piano. In July 1982 there was a limited run of Ha Bloody Ha! at the Gate in Notting Hill. This sketch and music show also featured Jan Ravens, at the time a radio comedy producer (Week Ending etc.). The following year she and Steve would marry (they divorced in 1993) and from 1986 to 1988 they were part of the Sunday morning Brunch crew on Capital Radio (CFM) with Roger Scott, Jeremy Pascall, Paul Burnett and later Angus Deayton.

Steve’s first radio gig was as a song writer on the 1982 sketch show Three Plus One. Produced by Jan Ravens it also featured the musical talents of Philip Pope, already an established performer on Radio Active. This led to Steve working with Philip on future series of Radio Active and, a few years later, on Spitting Image.  

The cast recorded the pilot of In One Ear in April 1983 but it had to wait until December for broadcast. By then a series had already been commissioned to run the following May and June. Nick Wilton was already appearing in another Radio 4 comedy show, the Grant and Naylor scripted Son of Cliché (1983-84). This show would win the 1984 Sony award as Best Light Entertainment Programme, Radio Active having bagged it the year before. In 1985 it was the turn of In One Ear.  

To introduce the first series in May 1984, Radio Times staff writer David Gillard wrote this article. By the way, take the reference to The Goons as the last live comedy show with a large pinch of salt. That show was, to my knowledge, always recorded, though interestingly enough the In One Ear team do reference The Goons in the pilot episode.  

The art of living dangerously

The sign on the door of one of the BBC Radio Light Entertainment offices reads: ‘Prefects Common Room. Knock before Entering’. Inside, the wine bottles and paper cups on the table suggest St Trinians, though the assembled ‘prefects’ seems a studious bunch. Here, in earnest conclave are the producer, writer and performers of In One Ear – radio’s first live comedy show since the Goons.

‘Above all, we have to justify going out live at 11.30,’ producer Jamie Rix, tells his team. ‘We’re not going to hide behind the format – we’re going to be different and we’ve got to be dangerous. The audience at home must be unsure about which way we’re heading. We must constantly take them by surprise by going off at unexpected tangents.’

The programmes’ tongue-in-cheek publicity poster describes In One Ear as ‘somewhere between alternative cabaret and a puerile adolescent undergraduate revue’. Jamie, in a more serious moment, prefers to call it ‘cabaret revue with a satirical element’. The four performers Nick Wilton (late of Carrott’s Lib), stand-up comedienne Helen Lederer, Radio Active songwriter Steve Brown and actor Clive Mantle –share the burden of providing Rix with ‘seamless comedy’.

Though occasionally adopting another persona, they will all be playing themselves – or, at least what they see as their ‘radio selves’. Nick is ‘paranoid and politically naive’; Helen is ‘slightly embarrassed and neurotic’, modest Steve ‘a romantic crooner and an affable sex symbol’, while Big Clive (recently seen as Little John in ITV’s Robin of Sherwood) is ‘the thick-set, strong-voiced type’.

Jamie Rix, who produced Radio Active and The Best of Bentine and was once a writer on Not the Nine O’Clock News believes they have the recipe for a controversial, hard-hitting comedy success, though there will be no attempt to shock for shock’s sake. ‘We’ve been put into a slot where we can offend the least people-just before the Shipping Forecast’ he says with a grin. ‘But we’re not out to offend. We’re out to challenge.’

    

So here is that first episode from Saturday 12 May 1984. Although Radio 7/Radio 4 Extra have repeated some episodes I’m not aware that this was been heard since. The show doesn’t entirely eschew BBC comedy traditions as there’s a parody poking fun at the recent Granada tv series The Jewel in the Crown and a Fats Waller gag straight out of I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again. “It’s time for comedy....”

From a couple of weeks later comes the third show. It includes Steve and Nick singing Hello Alexei, referencing Alexei Sayle’s ‘Ullo John! Gotta New Motor? that had charted a couple of months previously. Hello Alexei was itself released as a single on the Red Door label at the end of 1984. The B side Nobody Ever Listens to the B Side featured Nick doing his John Cooper Clarke impression as he had done in the pilot episode. The single didn’t chart.      

Steve Brown’s death at the age of 66 was announced last week.

In One Ear episode guide:

All programmes (except pilot) broadcast live at 2330 on Saturday night

Pilot: Tuesday 27 December 1983

Series 1: 12 May 1984 to 30 June 1984 (8 programmes)

Christmas Special: 22 December 1984

Series 2: 16 February 1985 to 6 April 1985 (8 programmes)

Series 3: 30 November to 1 February 1985, except 21^st and 28^th December (8 programmes)

The In One Ear poster comes from Nick's website nickwilton.com

Tale of the Goat and Compasses

This week BBC Radio 4 Extra begins a repeat of the recently recovered second series of Wrinkles, the 1981 sitcom from Grant and Naylor starring Tom Mennard and Anthea Askey. For a comedian with nearly 30 years of experience under his belt the 1980s were a busy period for Tom as he undertook an increasing number of acting roles.

Born in Leeds in 1918 Tom Mennard had appeared in amateur children’s pantomimes. His wartime service was in the Royal Engineers and he also played in Divisional Concert Party Shows. On demob he found work as a bus conductor and then driver with Brighton & Hove Omnibus Co. but the pull of the theatre meant he still performed in amateur revue whenever he could. His time on the buses sounded like an episode of the LWT sitcom with Mennard getting into trouble for his comic antics, telling stories to the local kids rather than taking the bus out and impersonating a ticket inspector. 

Coming to the attention of singer Donald Peers, who was touring in Brighton at the time, he suggested Tom go for an audition with the BBC; he was successful and made an appearance on the BBC tv’s Show Case (15 March 1954) presented by Benny Hill. On advice from Hill he auditioned at that well-known training ground for budding comedians, London’s Windmill Theatre. Successful only on his third attempt Vivian Van Damm told him to commence in the show starting in one hour, he stayed there for a year.

Variety and theatre work followed such as the Moss Empire’s New Faces of 1956, the Fol de Rols-“the famous song and laugh show”- Masquerade (this was alongside Pamela Cundall, later Mrs Fox in Dad’s Army), summer seasons back up in Yorkshire at Bridlington and Scarborough and, perhaps most significantly in the touring revue show Music for the Millions. Starring in the show was his idol Robb Wilton, then nearing the end of his career. Wilton’s style of delivery of his famous monologues heavily influenced Mennard’s act, especially his meandering Local Tales. (see below)

 Alongside the theatre work there were tv spots including Camera One and The Good Old Days and dozens of radio appearances throughout the 1950s and 1960s on Midday Music-Hall, Workers’ Playtime, Variety Playhouse, Holiday Playhouse and London Lights.

from Panto Archive

In the latter half of the 1960s Tom hosted regular seasons of Old Tyme Music Hall in Newquay and on Radio 2 in 1968 acted as the chairman on Come to the Music-Hall, a radio equivalent of The Good Old Days. Panto work included Goody Two Shoes at Hull’s New Theatre in 1969 which I was in the audience for (oh no you weren’t!). His co-stars were local lad Norman Collier, Jimmy Thompson and McDonald Hobley.

Comedy panel show work followed in the 1970s with regular gigs on You’ve Got to Be Joking (Radios 2 & 4 1977-80) and Funny You Should Ask (Radio 2 1978-80). From 1980 the majority of Tom’s work was as an actor mainly on tv but also in the two series of Wrinkles (Radio 4 1980-81). Wrinkles was made in Manchester by the veteran comedy producer Mike Craig. Writers Rob Grant and Doug Naylor were apparently introduced to Tom Mennard by Mike Craig in the BBC bar. Grant recalls: ‘Tom was a naturally funny guy, with a unique and distinct delivery. He was always “on”. But not one of those annoying, not-really-very-funny people who are always straining to get a laugh: he was actually funny. He would play practical jokes constantly, weaving some fantastical story to innocent, hapless bystanders without making them the butt of the joke. I once saw him on his knees outside a closed lift door, shouting “Well how did you get stuck down there?” That kind of thing.’

In Wrinkles Mennard plays the handyman in an old people’s home. His co-star was Anthea Askey, daughter of big-hearted Arthur who Tom had worked with year’s earlier. He’d appeared with Anthea in Dick Whittington at the Sunderland Empire just the year before. Also in the cast were Ballard ‘Morning Fawlty’ Berkeley, David Ross, Gordon Salkilld and Nick Maloney. After a successful pilot a series was commissioned to air in April and May 1980. A second series followed in November and December 1981. The BBC dumped or otherwise lost the tapes of Wrinkles but off-air recordings were returned and series one was repeated late last year and the second starts today.    

It was around this time that Tom was also given his own series on Radio 2. Local Tales was a series of short monologues, each about 13 minutes, that aired at intervals from 1981 to 1987. The scene was his local pub the Goat and Compasses and the rambling stories were about Tom and his mates Harry, Charlie and Fred. 

Throughout the 1980s most of Tom’s work was as a actor in a number of tv series, particularly Oh Happy Band with Harry Worth (BBC 1980), Foxy Lady (Granada 1982-84), Open All Hours (BBC 1982-85) and, most notably, as Sam Tindall in Coronation Street between 1985 and 1989. As Sam he would often be sparring with Percy Sugden for the affections of Phyllis Pearce. Sugden and Pearce were played by Bill Waddington and Jill Summers whom Mennard had first met during his Windmill Theatre days. Sam Tindall appeared in the soap, often with his dog Dougal who was, by all accounts, Tom’s own dog, in over sixty episodes. His last appearance was in May 1989. Just six months later Tom Mennard died.  

Back to Local Tales and my recording comes from the final series in 1987. There are five shows on YouTube including this one but I’ve also uploaded it as it includes some continuity. The theme is Johnny Pearson’s Corn on the Keys (KPM 1008 issued in 1966). 

Tracking down the details of all the broadcasts of Local Tales has not been easy due to some inconsistent labelling of repeats and industrial action affecting the printing of the Radio Times. 

3 episodes: 5 March to 19 March 1981

5 episodes: 16 December 1981 to 13 January 1982. All but one of these, the 30 December 1981 programme, are listed as a repeat but given that only 3 episodes were in the first series this can’t be the case.

16 episodes: 21 April to 4 August 1982

8 episodes: 28 January to 18 March 1983

3 episodes: 19 April to 10 May 1983. Not clear if these are new or repeats as the National editions of the Radio Times have reduced listing information.

4 episodes: 1 April to 22 April 1984 (all repeats)

6 episodes: 20 March to 24 April 1985

4 episodes: 27 November to 18 December 1985

6 episodes: 4 February to 11 March 1987

There were selected repeats in late 1989 following Tom’s death and a further six repeated shows in late 1990.

You can hear Tom in a Workers' Playtime revival from 1982 on my YouTube channel here