Picture from The Guardian

Perhaps surprisingly for such a big fan of radio comedy, I was late finding the nonsensical panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue on Radio 4. The first time I heard it I had actually tuned in on a Sunday lunchtime to listen to Just A Minute to find Clue replacing it. Jack Dee was the host and I didn't know any other different. I was vaguely aware that the show had been going a long time and that Jack Dee wasn't the original host, but I have only recently discovered old episodes presented by Humphrey Lyttleton and have started listening with renewed interest.

As a panel show it is strange how this one has survived for forty three years given how it doesn't really lend itself to the casual listener. It took me a few goes to get into the swing of it and at one point attempted to work out the rules to the game 'Mornington Crescent' before I realised that it was perhaps better that I didn't read into it. The comedy of repetition is something I am a big fan of; I still won't allow an ambulance to speed past with its sirens on without turning to whoever I am walking along with, even if I am just walking the dog, and declaring that the driver won't sell many ice-creams at that speed. Call backs and repeated jokes are a wonderful thing when done well, and ISIHAC deals it out with wild abandon.

Having recently completed a marathon listening of later episodes of the show thanks to this collection, I dug further into the past and found that someone has (possibly not 100% legally) uploaded several episodes presented by Lyttleton which I am currently working through. My biggest find though was a complete stage recording. In terms of content it wasn't too different to the show I saw in March with Jack Dee hosting, yet each reference is greeted by the audience with a cheer of recognition; the letter from Mrs Trellis from North Wales, Hamish and Dougal, the innuendo laden reason why Samantha has had to go, and of course the variation on the title Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, all of which will mean nothing to the passer by reading this having never listened to the show.

The live version happened to be one of the very few times an episode of ISIHAC was filmed, and is especially poignant because Humphrey Lyttleton died only nineteen days later at the age of 86. At the end of the show he played 'We'll Meet Again' on the trumpet and it gave me goosebumps.

Listening to one of my favourite games 'One Song to the Tune of Another' gave me the idea to form a band (possibly called Mornington Crescent) and perform a one-off gig playing songs in that style. Maybe we could get a job as support next time they tour.

No podcast this week.

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May housekeeping 

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The Sunday Alternative is a free weekly podcast. I am aiming to start making this podcast in a studio with live bands in session. This will cost at least £50 per episode so please give whatever you can.

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@SteveOliver76 

BBC

The podcast had once again been online since last night although without ceremony and once again it had attracted several dedicated listeners who seemingly wait for it to go live. Are these the same people who like cool bands before everyone else has heard of them? "Oh the Sunday Alternative podcast? I liked it at three o'clock this morning but it's too popular now that it's Sunday afternoon". This could become quite a good game; I put a mystery word in the podcast and upload it in advance without advertising it, and the first person to tweet me the mystery word gets some kind of prize. They will have to tweet me before I start doing the advertising tweets and Facebook posting though otherwise it doesn't count. Thanks to a good night of sleep I was awake early enough to do the podcast admin before going out to lunch, and even had time to listen to Just a Minute for the first time in ages.

I'm glad I didn't have to record the podcast today as I am full of cold and have been dosing myself up all day. Weirdly, I actually felt the cold coming on last night, something I have never experienced before. One minute I was sat eating my dinner and the next I could feel all the symptoms of a cold making themselves comfortable. This is why I was able to wake up early this morning because I simply went to bed to attempt to combat it. This afternoon I went shopping and stocked up on Lemsip, cold relief tablets, and Ibuprofen and did my usual trick of fighting this cold to the death. Possibly because I managed to nips thing in the bud and start taking the medication at an earlier stage, the cold already seems to be on its way out. I don't stop for illness so I think I annoy my ailments by standing my ground. This afternoon Mandi ran me a hot bath but I couldn't stay in it for too long as it started to make me sick and dizzy.

Although I was feeling a bit groggy I was well enough to catch up with the blog having neglected it a bit during the week while I got on with other work. I had written them up in draft form but needed to tidy them up before publishing, I also managed to email a script off in the hope that something will finally go ahead.

Once again I was glad to see the listening figures are still increasing despite the technical difficulties brought about by my rubbish old podcast computer. There are some unfortunate gaps where the songs didn't start when they should have but I used to do that on the radio so maybe it's nothing to do with the equipment after all. This does of course highlight the importance of your donations of your donations because I would like to start recording The Sunday Alternative in a studio as if it was a radio show with live music and that isn't cheap. Failing that I will just use it to buy a new computer to record the podcast on, which counts as a legitimate business expense. Either way, your money will go to provide free entertainment online and is cheaper than a TV Licence, which of course means that none of the money goes to Jeremy Clarkson.

Listen to this week's edition of The Sunday Alternative here.

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March housekeeping 

To purchase my audio books, albums, and books, please visit my Shop & Donations page.

I am trying to raise the money to extend The Sunday Alternative, read about it here.

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Every penny that I receive via the PayPal button will be used to fund future projects such as podcasts, short films, comedy sketches, documentaries, and more. They will be made available for free online and I will not personally benefit financially. All help is greatly appreciated.

steveEoliver@gmail.com

@SteveOliver76 

Radio comedy is something that allows your imagination to get a good workout; you can conjure up scenes in your head without it occurring to you that the actors are in reality standing at a microphone with the script in their hands. Although radio comedy is still thriving, either on ‘proper’ radio or via the unrestricted medium of podcasts, it is still seen by many as a springboard to having your own show adapted for television. This should not be the case as radio (in my opinion at least) far superior to television in all ways. A good radio sitcom or sketch show can paint pictures that television simply couldn’t do, certainly not for the same budget. Take for example On The Town With The League of Gentlemen, a 1997 Radio 4 series and compare it to The League of Gentlemen, a television series that began life in 1999; certain changes of character had to be made to accommodate the move to the small screen. Adrian Edmondson’s Radio 2 sitcom Teenage Kicks is another example of the transition not working, as ITV remade it and it was terrible. A look around the websites for Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra reveals a whole wealth of comedy old and new, none of which I hope makes it to television. I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue is one example of a brilliant radio series that just wouldn’t work on television, Just a Minute is the lesson in how it doesn’t always work.

Although radio comedy is still popular, I feel it is a shame that it appears to have had its glory days as far as mass appeal is concerned. Obviously prior to television radio was King and the entertainers were the superstars of their day. In the post-war years this continued as very few people owned (or rented) a television so radio was the way to be amused and informed. Sunday lunchtimes saw the likes of Round the Horne and The Navy Lark providing the soundtrack to the family dinner. Radio 4 Extra, something of a UK Gold of the airwaves, repeats classic radio comedy and makes them available to listen to again on the website.

While I enjoy the history and significance of these old shows, I tend to find listening to them a little tiresome. Time has not been kind to a great deal of these programmes, and what was once thought of as hilarious comedy just sounds old fashioned and laboured. Some things have weathered the ravages of time; Hancock’s Half Hour (which ran in tandem with a television version although the two worlds never collided) still sounds as fresh today as it no doubt did the first time it was broadcast, which can’t be said for a lot of 1950s radio comedy.

The importance of radio comedy, if ‘importance’ is the right word, seemed to have hit its final peak during the 1970s. Television sitcoms such as Dad’s Army and Steptoe and Son were re-recorded as radio programmes, Whatever Happened to The Likely Lads is another example. The BBC didn’t simply play the audio from the original, the cast performed radio scripts in front of an audience. I’m not entirely sure why they did this, unless radio still outnumbered televisions in the majority of households as late as the 1970s. Radio evidently was still highly regarded though, as Morcambe and Wise continued to host a radio show throughout the 1970s when they were at the height of their television reign.

On the aforementioned BBC website I found something of historical interest last night; a sequel of sorts to Dad’s Army. The pilot episode of It Sticks out Half a Mile starred John Le Mesurier and Arthur Lowe and was recorded in 1981. Wilson is now a bank manager and Mainwaring a customer after a loan to buy the pier. Lowe died before they could make a full series and the idea was scrapped until 1982 when the series kicked off, this time with Ian Lavender and Bill Pertwee joining in. The first episode was basically a remake of the pilot with slight adjustments made to accommodate the change of starring roles, and makes interesting listening. Not being written by the Dad’s Army writers Jimmy Perry and David Croft made a slight difference, as only a writer really knows the characters they have created. It is likely that in those days the material was owned by the BBC as the idea of independent production companies wasn’t in full force. The pilot was only discovered because the writer kept a copy, the BBC had wiped it, as recently as the early 1980s this was still fairly common within the walls of the Beeb, which is unbelievable given that they should have learned their lessons earlier.

What I like most about this series is that it was made for radio and not television. Location wise it was no doubt cheaper and easier to do it this way, (although they did make a television version some time later which tanked) but goes to show how listening to something rather than watching it makes things much more interesting. Audio comedy is something I would like to get into when I have more time; I am currently working on a one-off sitcom episode which will see the light of day next year.

Almost in the words of Why Don’t You, why don’t you switch off your TV set and do something better like listen to the radio instead.

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This weekend has been brilliant, just lots and lots of doing nothing. Every now and again it is nice to just turn your brain off, in fact it’s a shame you can’t remove it and put it in a glass of water by your bed as people do with false teeth. Maybe there’s a Dragon’s Den idea in here somewhere; as we devote too much time to work and leisure time becomes more valuable, we should have two brains that are interchangeable, one for work and one that only allows relaxation. On Friday afternoon you remove your work brain and put in your leisure brain so that your weekends and holidays aren’t ruined by thinking about work. You don’t receive work related emails or phone calls on Saturday or Sunday and this idea works on the same principal. The important thing would be to remember to make sure you changed brains back around, I would say that making it part of your Sunday evening routine would be the best way; iron clothes, arrange keys, wallet, and phone on the kitchen table, set your alarm, change brains. If you went to bed with your weekend brain still in you wouldn’t wake up until lunchtime and that wouldn’t go down well at work.

Yesterday was your average Sunday; I didn’t wake up until noon which meant I missed Just a Minute on Radio 4, assuming it is still on that is. A cup of tea and a shower was all I needed to wake myself up before going to my dad’s for lunch. We had a roast dinner followed by coffee and newspapers, (I know I shouldn’t eat newspapers). Jack had a mini-lunch made up of leftover meat, veg and gravy. In the evening we did another handful of episodes of Frasier on DVD, currently on the second series of the four we have so we’ll soon need to stock up. Without checking I don’t know how many episodes were made but I am keen to see it through.

Today I decided to ease myself in gently to the working week by doing nothing but catching up with my emails, but only got halfway through my inbox before realising it wasn’t going to be a one day job and giving up to write my blog up to date instead. The weekend entries were saved in draft so I just needed to edit them properly before I published them. While I was doing this I listened to a load of new music for the next Sunday Alternative podcast that I will be recording on Friday. Unfortunately, a heavy workload doesn’t make for very good daily blogs so hopefully readers will take the rough with the smooth and put up with a few boring blogs until the next time I write to a customer service department to complain about crisps.

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If you’ve enjoyed reading this, please consider showing your appreciation by way of a donation using the PayPal button above this blog. Every penny will be used to create free online content. There are currently plans for a comedy sketch series, an online cookery and music show, a video version of The Sunday Alternative and plenty more including documentaries, short films and podcasts.

Listen to The Sunday Alternative here.

Gary and his girlfriend Teegan had us round for dinner last night, and I was shattered when we got home. The four of us had a lovely time (I am assuming, I can only speak for two of us) and a great meal that Gary had prepared. It still feels grown up having friends that we can do this with, far better than drinking cheap cider that cost 10p a litre and roaming the streets kicking bins over and smashing wing mirrors. Incidentally, that’s what we did before dinner. Not really, I was just being hilarious.

When we got home in the early hours of the morning, there was still work to be done – do I ever stop working I hear you ask – so I set about uploading the podcast to its host site and set up the page. Once I had done that I did my usual emailing of the PR people and record labels that had an act being played in the hope that they spread the word via social media. My night didn’t end there, I found the time to load the washing machine and of course take Jack out for a walk around the block to tire him out before bed. As a result of all this I slept until quarter past twelve today. I had a fuzzy headed bad tempered start to the day of rest, not least because I missed out on listening to Just a Minute on Radio 4.

It was my turn to bath Jack, a job we normally do before going to my dad’s for lunch, but due to having some work to do regarding The Sunday Alternative (I know, I work too hard) there wasn’t time so I did it later.

After lunch I had intended to do some more CD copying of various radio shows, podcasts, and live sessions. However, I made the mistake of buying a pack of blank CD-R discs from Wilkinson’s, the pretend Woolworths. The discs were impossible to use, you couldn’t get anything on them yet they told me they were full. Utter shit. Thankfully I kept the receipt so I will be going back to make a fuss and get my money back (it’s only four pound but it isn’t the principle, it’s the money) before remembering that buying cheaply from tacky little shops like Wilko is a false economy. This of course did nothing for my mood, so I pretty much wrote today off as a waste of time.

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My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

If you’ve enjoyed reading this, please consider showing your appreciation by way of a donation using the PayPal button above this blog. Every penny will be used to create free online content. There are currently plans for a comedy sketch series, an online cookery and music show, a video version of The Sunday Alternative and plenty more including documentaries, short films and podcasts.

Listen to The Sunday Alternative here.

Another early night last night (by my standards) followed by a fairly late sleep in. with everything that’s going on at the moment it is doing me the world of good catching up on sleep and forgetting about my career. Not switching the computer on helps, not checking my emails or going on Facebook (it’s still going y’know) and Twitter is easy and more people should have a little Internet detoxify every so often.

After feeding the animals and making myself a cup of tea I sat down to listen to some radio. Al Murray’s show on Planet Rock seemed to be live, yet when it finished I found that when I skipped through the channels he was hosting a supposed live show on Five Live too. I’m usually good at telling a pre-record and a live radio show apart but this had me confused at first and it took me a little while to work it out. With this not being a Sunday Alternative weekend I didn’t have all the publicity to do, so I listened to Just A Minute while Mandi bathed Jack (it was her turn) before we went to my dad’s for lunch.

Mandi went home and I stayed behind to use my dad’s CD/DVD burner to copy some more of my audio archive onto disc. I managed to get some radio versions of The Sunday Alternative copied along with the sessions I recorded for The Sound of Nottingham UK, and my January 2013 audio blog (a short lived venture). This freed up some USB space which in return made the laptop a little lighter too. When I got home I filed them away in my archive with some written stuff and some gig posters thanks to the document wallets I bought on Friday, (occasional readers might have missed the news that I bought some document wallets on Friday so for their benefit, I bought some document wallets on Friday). It’s a long job but I’m chipping away at it.

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My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

If you’ve enjoyed reading this, please consider showing your appreciation by way of a donation using the PayPal button above this blog. Every penny will be used to create free online content. There are currently plans for a comedy sketch series, an online cookery and music show, a video version of The Sunday Alternative and plenty more including documentaries, short films and podcasts.

Listen to The Sunday Alternative here.

Sunday 6th October

We’ve somehow managed to get Sunday lunch at my dad’s house moved back to a two o’clock arrival time, which frees up my morning to do some more publicity admin for the two radio shows of mine that air on a Sunday. Just a Minute has been replaced by a show called The Museum of Curiosity, which is an enjoyable enough show but isn’t as laugh out loud funny as Just a Minute, The Unbelievable Truth, or I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue so it kind of dampened my Sunday morning. I say morning; it is noon when the comedy shows go out. The American show has two broadcast times over the weekend, so I tend to cater it towards the Sunday broadcast, which is one o’clock in the afternoon over there and six o’clock in the evening over here. It’s pretty cool because it finishes just as The Sunday Alternative starts, in fact I used to say on the American show that I am on live straight after The Sound Of Nottingham UK but I don’t now simply because Trent Sound have a problem with me mentioning other work I do, so it would be wrong to mention Trent Sound as they want to be insular and exist in a Trent Sound bubble. While I’m listening to Radio Four I do all the advertising for the shows on Twitter and Facebook (remember Facebook? It’s making an inexplicable comeback) for later, and also check my emails which is pretty easy on a Sunday because people don’t email at the weekend.

Mandi wasn’t feeling well this morning, so I went on my own to my dad’s. After lunch we went to Goose Fair for one last look around. We actually went to have a look at what we thought was going to be a photography exhibition about the history of Goose Fair, but in reality was just a handful of photographs and posters on the wall of the café. There was some interesting stuff there; a photographer I can’t remember the name of had gained the trust of the travelling fairground community and been allowed to take pictures of various people in their homes. Their lifestyle has always fascinated me, there’s something romantic about the nomadic lifestyle of the travelling fairground that really appeals to me. There seems to be a sense of community that is seldom seen in ‘real life’; when did you last speak to your next door neighbour or someone down your street? I would have loved to have been born into that lifestyle and been passed down the traditional values that communal life on the road brings with it. The arrival of Goose Fair is something that makes Nottingham tremble with anticipation in the run up every year, when the lorries start arriving on the forest and the rides are carefully assembled and you can walk through on a daily basis to witness the progress of your annual fair. The fair itself is an exciting event with the sounds and smells associated with it. We have that pleasure for four and a half days and then it is all over for another year. How can people not get excited by it? These people don’t deserve to live in Nottingham, we should be proud of what we have.

 The ‘Goose Fair fund’ jars are re-started for another year, we have Bonfire Night to look forward to (another excuse to eat mushy peas and mint sauce) and Christmas is just around the corner. As soon as the fair closes on Sunday they start work on pulling everything down. There’s only one more fair to do for the season, before they take up residence in Nottingham for the winter. I often walk past their site and see fairground rides wrapped in tarpaulin and a sea of caravans and would love to go in and ask if I can join them and say goodbye to real life. The reality is that the dogs would probably chase me out of the camp.

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I didn’t go to bed until quite late, as I have been trying to get caught up with things that aren’t really work, but sort of work related. The main bulk of it is catching up with the blog, as I write them daily but save them in draft form until I have time to edit them. Blogger have made a slight change to things, in the best tradition of websites that don’t need changing, it has made it slightly more difficult to use. They have made one change but it’s a ridiculous change, they have taken away the spellchecker. This hasn’t inconvenienced me too much, but I can’t understand why these things happen. Facebook are absolute cunts for doing that, their latest innovation being to move the icons representing friend requests, notifications, and messages from the left hand side of the screen to the right. On the right hand side, it sat next to the word ‘home’, the log in/out circle, and your own name in case you want to look at your profile. Just as I was getting used to this, they decided to put the friend request/notification/message icons back on the left hand side. I know it doesn’t matter what Facebook does with itself nowadays, as it isn’t 2008, but it is making a slight comeback, despite the superiority of Twitter. It’s pissing about with formats and layouts that made me leave Myspace, and give up my website.

If you want proof that Facebook is a fading social network, then my radio show is the evidence you need. I spend a reasonably long time on a Sunday morning doing the admin and promotion for The Sunday Alternative and The Sound of Nottingham UK on Facebook. I barely get any comments relating to the show on Facebook, even when I make subtle hints about the show being the first show in which someone will write a comment. Maybe none of the people on my Facebook can type and listen at the same time. While doing this, I listen to BBC 6 Music and turn to Radio 4 at midday for Just a Minute, and I still manage to type words using a computer, so why can’t anyone else. The show is getting good ratings both live and also does well in the download stakes, but it would be good to interact too. The music that I play is music that you aren’t going to catch by chance on the radio, so to hear from people who have heard something rather rare and maybe been moved to investigate the artists a bit further. Either that or say something about the bands.

There is yet another scandal rocking the BBC. You would think they would try as hard as possible to keep their heads down and not piss off the general public too much. However, Jarvis Cocker is absent from his Sunday afternoon show on BBC 6 Music, and I am not covering for him. Last time Cocker took leave from his show, I emailed the head of the station offering my services. I think if everyone refused to pay the licence fee then maybe they will see sense.

The show was a bit stressful tonight, as none of my music was ready in the system for me and I had to really improvise. I don’t want to play the same song twice if I can help it, and we can tell how often a song has been played, and how often. Luckily there were two bands performing live for me. It is nice to have a platform like The Sunday Alternative in which to bring bands to Nottingham and perform. Obviously I am chiefly a Nottingham home-grown music champion, but with already doing NottinghamLIVE and The Sound of Nottingham UK, I am also able with this show to play music from my collection and showcase other bands and singers too. Both of tonight’s bands had a CD to promote, and despite a bit of initial chaos, everything went very smoothly indeed. Explode The TV were on in the first hour, having just played an afternoon festival appearance nearby. They had been very keen to appear, although they originally didn’t want to play live in the studio, just come on and plug the CD and future gigs, none of which were in Nottingham. I didn’t really see the point in that to be honest, and after a lot of emails were exchanged eventually agreed to play. NYA, who I had been introducing as NYA pronounced in initials, ‘En Why Ay’ although they are actually called ‘nigher’ were up next. Two of the band, Anezka Piska and Dan Baker, did a four song acoustic set. It’s great when bands agree to this sort of thing when that isn’t their usual sound. To top and tail their set, I played two of their studio tracks even though they were performing them. Usually this is the last thing the band need, but it was cool to hear the contrast. Describing themselves as rock/metal/alternative, they proved tonight that they can also turn their hands to a beautiful one guitar and one vocal performance. They had done a similar thing the day before in Lincoln, and I recommended they do an EP or album like it, just as an aside to their regular output. I really hope that they do!

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One of my weekend treats is listening to Just A Minute on a Sunday at noon, before we leave for my dad's house. Although I am reasonably new to the show as a regular, I have been aware of it for a long time. The light-hearted panel show has recently turned 45 years old, and to celebrate they are doing a television version for the next ten weekdays. While it was pleasant viewing, the television show didn't really offer anything that we don't already get from the Radio 4 show. Although it was exactly how I pictured it in my mind.

I do feel that this is a show, along with I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, that belongs on radio. Radio allows you to use your imagination in a way that television cannot allow, which is why it is always a bit of a pity when programme makers seem to have one eye on the 'promotion' to telly. The move to television shouldn't been considered a promotion at all, as even by today's technology, nothing replaces imagination. I still have the tapes of a Radio 4 series called On The Town With The League Of Gentlemen. One of the characters is the local shopkeeper, who is only a couple of inches high and needs helping up and down the counter. This wasn't possible in 1999, and so Edward and Tubbs were created. As good as The League Of Gentlemen was, it didn't quite live up to the brilliance of the radio series. The same applies to Little Britain.

Graham Norton stated during an episode of the Radio 2 series The Comedian's Comedian that even animation would have had a problem translating Round The Horne to a visual medium, and he is right. The Goon Show is another example of radio's advantage over television. During the 1950s there was one exception to the rule, Hancock's Half Hour. With no cosmetic change to the format, Galton and Simpson created two separate series with no crossover. Normally, the first series of a television adaptation, (The Mary Whitehouse Experience, Fist Of Fun, and The League Of Gentlemen being guilty) contains re-written radio scripts. Hancock's Half Hour was both a television and radio series, with no dip in quality. In the 1970s, television shows such as The Likely Lads, Dad's Army, Steptoe And Son and Fawlty Towers were remade as radio shows. Situation comedy isn't of a sufficient quality these days for this to work.