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Round the Horne

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This is a joint effort by SchroCat and Tim riley. Round the Horne was is a BBC radio comedy of the 1960s, a formative influence on one of us as a teenager (the other wasn't alive in the 1960s and so has no excuse whatever). We have been revising the article with the aim of bringing it up to FA standard. We have tried to give the show comprehensive coverage though we hope we have avoided being too solemn about it. We regret the lack of pictures, but we are restricted by Wikipedia's rules on copyight images, and have tried to break the text up with, we hope, enlivening quote boxes. All comments and suggestions on this and indeed on anything else will be gratefully received. We hope you find the article wangles your nurdles. – SchroCat and Tim riley talk 19:07, 6 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Dudley

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  • How about the blue plaque for where Williams was living at the time?  
  • Faute de mieux, maybe. What think you, SchroCat? (I had no idea KW lived in Allsop Place till 1970. I lived in the next-door (and much less posh) block from 1971 to 1975, but as he was still alive there was no blue plaque in my day.) Tim riley talk 09:24, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • "For the fourth, Took was joined by Johnnie Mortimer and Brian Cooke and Donald Webster." This reads awkwardly to me. It does not say that Fledman left and it has "and...and". I think it would be better to say the fourth was written by Took, Mortimer, Cooke and Webster.
  • "received the backing of the BBC's director general". I would give his name here.
  • The last two and a half paragraphs of 'Background' seem to me rather about the format of the series.
  • "Horne's role was similar to that of Jack Benny, Fred Allen and Tommy Handley, "as a 'stooge' rather than a joke-wielder, frequently switching roles between announcer and in-sketch performer"" Is this right? It is years since I have heard the programme, but I remember Horne as an accomplished 'joke-wielder'.
  • This is a direct quote: I can see what they are coming from - with the J&S he was very straight (so to speak), while in his monologues he was a little more flexible, but was still fairly straight, leaving the innuendos and jokes in the listeners' minds. - SchroCat (talk) 08:53, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've never heard recordings of Fred Allen, but George Burns in his deadpan way, and Tommy Handley in his rapid-fire one, both got off some very funny lines while nonetheless being the feed for Gracie on the one hand and the ITMA cast of eccentrics on the other. Tim riley talk 09:24, 8 March 2019 (UTC) (I see I should have been referring to Jack Benny, not George Burns, but the point is much the same, and I'll leave my first comments unaltered. Tim riley talk 09:27, 8 March 2019 (UTC))[reply]
  • "Feldman became increasingly successful on television, particularly with At Last the 1948 Show (1967); deciding to concentrate on writing and performing on the screen and left the series." It is with some trepidation that I raise a matter of grammar with Tim, but the second half of this sentence does not sound right to me. If a sentence is divided by a semi-colon, should not both halves be sentences grammatically?
  • Don't hesitate: mea culpa, not Tim's!
  • "The cost fell from £601 a show in series 3 to £486". No change needed but are those figures not absurdly low even for the 1960s?
  • "Julian and Sandy" In the main text the first mention of them is the attempt to write them out and the second the section on them. Neither says who plays them.
  • Many thanks for this Dudley. I've covered some of the straightforward ones, but there are a couple we'll need to think through a little more. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 08:53, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Dudley, my thanks too. In truth it has been something of a tightrope walk, trying to write authoritatively about the show without killing the jokes. We hope enough have survived to give readers a chuckle in between absorbing our high-minded scholarship. Tim riley talk 09:24, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Wehwalt

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  • "The fourth was written by Took, Johnnie Mortimer and Brian Cooke and Donald Webster." Something of a multiple "and" there.
  • "compere" I might link for the vocabulary-striving.
  • "All except the last series featured music by Edwin Braden, played by the band "The Hornblowers", with a song in the middle of each show performed by the close-harmony singing group the Fraser Hayes Four; in the fourth series, the music was by Max Harris with a smaller group of players than Braden's." I"m not getting the "Braden's" bit.
Just a few more things.
  • "camp" is linked on its second use in the article body.
  • Could I get away with saying the first was just the base camp? No, I thought not. Shall amend. Thank you.
  • "The first of the new characters" I take it that this means that she had no analogue on Beyond Our Ken? If so it might be clarified.
  • "and Anthony Wormwood-Nibblo, the Hoxton cat thief and heiress fail to materialise." Heiress?
Most interesting.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:48, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Wehwalt. I dread to think what a respectable American makes of these British shenanigans, but we are glad of your thoughts! Tim riley talk 20:41, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by SN43129

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To me, "After physiotherapy" reads better with a comma following? Freestyle and bobsled one word? "much married", hyphenated?

Per WP:ACCESS, I'd check that your quote boxes are AAA colour-contrast compliant; the grey one, particularly. Not sure using different colours is necessary, actually; they could be a distraction.

Yes, I wondered about this. One the one hand in the absence of permissible pictures one wants as much visual variety as possible in the quote boxes, but on the other there is the imperative need to do right by accessibility. I hope we may get further suggestions on this. Tim riley talk 20:57, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Later: I've tweaked the colours of the quote boxes to match that of the info-box: it is safe to assume the latter is OK from the accessibility point of view, and so the quote boxes will be similarly OK. Thank you, SN – a most valuable point, duly taken. Tim riley talk 19:19, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"Contained parody and satire within its sketches": the final three words seem kind of superfluous.

Suggest some subsections in "History" and "Reg characters".

Any more images available? Two for an article this size...how about the studio, old scripts, that kind of thing?

I wonder if all those websites should be archived SC  :)

Nice article. They were the days  :) Barry Took! ——SerialNumber54129 19:25, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

We don't have any more images that are free, and it's difficult to argue that they are really necessary for a radio programme! We don't have any free images for the studio or texts, which is a shame. - SchroCat (talk) 14:00, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

We already subdivide the two main section (the history into four section; the characters into a section per character, which seems to be about right. Do you think these should be divided further? - SchroCat (talk) 12:51, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, SN, for these helpful comments. Tim riley talk 20:57, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by KJP1

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Sorry for the delay. Work's been rather manic. Shall conclude by the weekend, in the event I can find anything to quibble over. KJP1 (talk) 17:45, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Lead
  • "including the camp couple Julian and Sandy" - was it ever made clear that they were a couple? And camp couple leads me to ask 'camp couple of what' "(T)he camp duo"?
  • Opening para. says it ran until 1968. Second para. concludes by saying it came to an end on Horne's death in 1969. The last series was broadcast in June 68 and Horne died Feb 69. Could it be reworded? It's more clear at the end of the History section.
  • "the BBC's third-best radio show of any kind" - does "genre" work better than "kind"?
History - background
  • I got confused by the chronology. The opening para. says Ron Moody was involved in the first series of BOK. The second says he was replaced in the second series by Bill Pertwee. But the second para. also says Pertwee played Hankie Flowered. Was that character not in the first series? Is it possible to clarify?
  • "Eric Merriman objected, contending that he had made Horne into a star, and that "no other comedy series should be allowed to use him"." Does the direct quote need a reference? Is it Cite 16, which comes at the end of the next sentence. You know MoS much better than I.
Broadcasts - 1965–1966: Series 1 and 2
  • "he ended advertising spoof products and giving human sound effects in addition to his normal role" is there an "up" missing here, i.e., "he ended up advertising spoof products and giving human sound effects in addition to his normal role"?
  • "the Conservative politician Sir Cyril Black" - I wonder whether "Conservative politician" does full justice to Sir Cyril, "thundering against decadence in the lonely wilderness". He was, and was considered to be, pretty OTT even in his times. "the strongly-conservative Member of Parliament Sir Cyril Black"?
Main regular characters - Kenneth Horne
  • "International free style gnome fingering at the five minute Hippo Wash Brompton Oratory" - I'm sure it's accurate but that is nonsensical even by the standards of RTH!
Beatrice, Lady Counterblast, née Clissold
  • "Played by Marsden." - Should this actually be a complete sentence?
Julian and Sandy
  • "Horne looks in at a new establishment, usually in Chelsea, with a title such as "Bona Tours"... and is greeted, "Oh hello,..." - Does this need a "with" or a "by", i.e., "...and is greeted with, "Oh hello...""
  • "or to illegal sexual activity in a public lavatory" - were some types of sexual activity in the lavatories legal? Just "sexual activity"?
  • "At the time, gay male activity was a criminal offence in Britain" - any activity? Even bowls? Perhaps, to avoid repetition of sexual activity which appears in the sentence before (but see above), just "gay male sex"?
Daphne Whitethigh
  • "use cold cream to remove those baboon claw marks from one's hip" - just the one hip or "hips"?
Critical reception
  • "According to Took, Round the Horne was broadcast when radio was considered to be on the wane when compared to television; such was its popularity, many thought radio would continue to be a leading form of entertainment – what Morrison describes as "a grand illusion ... a glorious anachronism, like a heatwave in autumn." - I'm struggling to unpack this long and complex sentence. What's the "According to Took" doing at the beginning? And Morrison's quote at the end? I think it's saying, "The show was broadcast at the point when radio as the main medium for entertainment was being superseded by television. The popularity of the show convinced some that radio's appeal would endure but this proved not to be the case." But I'm not sure. I do think it needs a rethink.
General
  • This should really go at the end, and I'll move it, but I don't want to forget it. Some of the language is very English, e.g. "dotty", "common as muck". I just wonder if this may be challenging for a non-native speaking audience? That said, the whole article is likely to be pretty incomprehensible!
  • Teaching the colonials about the finer points of life! I agree some of it may be, but if there are any non-British readers, much of these are understandable by their context, I think. It may be worth Tim and I going over it pre-FAC to iron out what may be seen as local vocabularistic contrafibularities! - SchroCat (talk) 22:12, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

-End of first batch, down to Legacy. It's very funny!-

Legacy - Scripts
  • I found this section a little confusing to navigate. In short, there are, I think, five books: Took and Feldman, 1974; Took and Feldman, 1976; Took, 1988; Took, 1989 and Took and Coward, 2000. I appreciate that readers can work that out from the sources, but wonder if it would help to list them in the preamble to the Scripts section?
Spin off
  • The brevity of this section left me wanting a little more. Specifically, why did the BBC let such a popular show move to ITV for television transmission? Given the short period between the end of Series 4 and the broadcasting of Horne A'Plenty, writing and filming must have begun well before Series 4 had finished. This seems odd to me. Is there any more information?
  • The BBC was in no position to prevent Horne from having a show on commercial television. Why it didn't have the idea of televising him itself we do not know, but having failed to think of it the Corporation had no contractual or copyright reasons to object to KH's appearing on ITV. It seems that the BBC didn't actually miss a trick as the ITV show was a bit of a damp squib. A spot of OR: the Riley family never missed a Round the Horne, but not only did we not watch the ITV show, I don't think we even noticed it was on. I don't remember knowing of its existence till SchroCat and I started our reading for the overhaul of the present article. Tim riley talk 18:43, 19 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's it from me. Fantastically well-sourced, beautifully written and very funny to read. I'll take another read-through over the weekend but it looks in a fine state for FAC. KJP1 (talk) 22:20, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Passing comment

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"the repeal of the anti-gay laws, from 1967 onward" gives the impression that homosexuality became entirely legal in 1967. It most certainly didn't. Perhaps a slightly more nuanced summary? Gog the Mild (talk) 17:53, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. A nuanced tweak will be duly twuck. Tim riley talk 21:01, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks Gog, and I'm sorry that Tim has been twucking in your presence. I have asked him only to twuck in private, but he won't listen. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 21:05, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's OK. I understand that twucking in public is legal now. If I were to find it offensive I would probably be driven round the horne. Do ping me when this goes to FAC. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:54, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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