I've Started, So I'll Finish

So what would be your Mastermind specialist subject? Me? I'd choose 'BBC radio comedy'. As that's a bit broad perhaps concentrating on the 1950s to the 80s.  Or maybe I'd just narrow it down to  The Burkiss Way or perhaps Radio Active.

In the current series of Mastermind on BBC2, which seems to have been going on for an age, two contestants have zoned in on two particular comedy series of more recent vintage. From 4 September 2015 here's Rachael Neiman facing questions on John Finnemore's superb Cabin Pressure. Rachael is no stranger to TV quizzes, having appeared on University Challenge, Only Connect and in two earlier series of Mastermind with  specialist rounds on Belle and Sebastian and John Peel's Festive 50.

On 11 September 2015 Margaret Brown, a Mastermind virgin, took Old Harry's Game as her specialist round.

At least one contestant has chosen BBC radio comedy as their subject, and that was back in 1987, when finalist John Crippin faced questions from Magnus Magnusson. Here's the audio for that round.

As for those passes, well unfortunately the audio cuts off before Magnus gets chance to provide the answers. The gobbledygook speaker was, of course, 'Professor' Stanley Unwin. The hand-picked half-wits on Ignorance is Bliss were Harold Berens, Gladys Hay and Michael Moore (I had to look that one up). The sig tune of Suzette Tarri also defeated me but its Red Sails in the Sunset. The other impersonator who teamed up with David Evans has me totally foxed, answers on a postcard please.

Thin Air

TV has only rarely used a radio station as a setting for comedy or drama; perhaps it’s not a glamorous enough setting.  Off the top of my head I came up US offerings of WKRP in Cincinnati, Midnight Caller (overdue for a repeat surely), News Radio (recently on Sony TV) and, of course Frasier.  In the UK there’s been Shoestring (‘The Private Ear’), Agony and Ken Stott in Takin’ Over the Aslyum. No doubt you can think of a few more.

One ‘forgotten’ series is Thin Air set in the fictitious Urban Air radio station in which intrepid news reporter Rachel Hamilton (played by Kate Hardie, left) uncovers local corruption.

In 2008 the Guardian’s Gareth McLean wondered about the TV shows that time forgot and of Thin Air wrote: “I remember bits of it vividly - mostly the sometime Communards collaborator Sarah Jane Morris lying dead in a radio studio. I also recall having a crush on Hardie but that's less relevant here."

McLean's post continues: "Obviously now, thanks to IMDb, I know there was much acting talent involved in the drama including Robert Pugh, Kevin McNally and Clive Merrison (who, his turn as Sherlock Holmes aside, always seems to play a baddie). And it was directed by Antonia Bird, who went on to direct Priest, Care and The Hamburg Cell. But it's so obscure that it doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry and there's not a whiff of it on YouTube. Thin Air was one of those dramas that vanished into, well, the ether”.



Urban Air boss Richard Hellier (Nicky Henson), Rachel hamilton (Kate Hardie)

 and activist Mark Gentian (Kevin McNally)

The five part thriller aired on BBC1 in the Spring of 1988 and was written by Sarah Dunant and Peter Busby. A Radio Times feature described it as follows:

Thin Air could hardly be more rooted in the present. Set in a commercial radio station in an enterprise zone called ‘Riverside’, it involved property development on a massive scale, the disruption and forced exodus of a local community, the stripping away of local authority powers, left-wing activism, designer drugs, media hacks.

James Aubrey as disc jockey Zac Diamond

Sam Kelly as harassed news editor Henry Campbell

Brian Bovell as night-time DJ Joe Jeffries

I was convinced I had at least a clip of the programme tucked away on videotape but if I did I can’t find it. However I have located this location report from Pat Rowe from Woman’s Hour on 4 April 1988. As well as Hardie, Henson and Dunant you’ll hear producer Caroline Oulton