Remembering the other Archie Andrews
We have already met Archie Andrews,
the iconic American comicbook schoolboy, but let’s not forget the other Archie
Andrews, who in his day was one of the most popular comedians in Britain.
That Archie – the “other Archie
Andrews” if you like – was a ventriloquist’s dummy with his own hit radio show.
Yes, I’ll say that again: a ventriloquist’s dummy with his own radio show.
It was called Educating
Archie and it ran on the BBC Light
Programme for about 10 years from 1950. The general plot was that he was a
naughty boy who was being schooled at home. He gave a succession of tutors a
rag of a time. One of them seen above in a publicity photograph from the BBC
was Tony Hancock.
A little bit of history from Old Time Radio Downloads, ‘The show featured
ventriloquist Peter Brough and his dummy Archie Andrews. Other stars in the
show were Tony Hancock, Benny Hill, Harry Secombe, Dick Emery, Bernard
Bresslaw, Bruce Forsyth and the young Julie Andrews. The show’s fame gave rise
to a fan club with over 250,000 members.’
At its peak it had 15 million listeners and it moved
to television (on the BBC’s rival ITV) in 1956.
The Old Time Radio Downloads website has a number of
episodes and also some episodes are rebroadcast occasionally on BBC Radio 4 Extra.
Tony Hancock who got a big career break on the show
went on to become Britain’s best-loved comedian in the nineteen-fifties and
into the sixties. Hancock’s Half Hour ran on BBC radio before transferring to
television.
One of the radio episodes – The Old School Reunion –
is a spoof on the Billy
Bunter stories. Hancock returns to his old school Greystones
and recalls a comic cane-swishing headmaster played by Kenneth Williams. It
also features Hattie Jacques (both were also in the movie Carry
On Teacher which we saw here.)
“I think I’ll pay a surprise visit to the gym. I
always catch a few bending around there,” is just one of the gems included in
the extract below.
The
full episode is on YouTube
Picture and audio credits: BBC
Traditionalschooldiscipline@gmail.com
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