The News Huddlines : Roy Hudd : 1975 to 2000 : UPGRADED

(2 stars; 1 review)

UPDATE :   MASSIVE FIND OF NEW EPISODES FROM 1975, 1976 & 1977 The News Huddlines Selected episodes, 1975 to 2000 Roy Hudd , Chris Emmett and June Whitfield take a humorous look at the lighter side of the week's news. Satire. A weekly sketch-based radio comedy series from the Beeb, in which comedian Roy Hudd pokes fun at the week's news stories. The series ran from 1975 until 2001, a total of 51 series over 26 years, sending-up leading political figures, celebrities, and even Royals. Mainly centered on British news, and always topical, some of the jokes may be difficult to understand now: like all topical comedy, the point of each joke generally depended on the audience's familiarity with the stories that were in the news in the UK during the week preceeding each Thursday's broadcast (early in its history it aired on Wednesdays, but eventually Thursdays were found to be more convenient). Recorded in front of a studio audience on Thursday lunchtime, and broadcast at 6.30pm the same day. Unlike some topical sketch shows at that time, this show always had a studio audience: what you hear on the recordings is NOT canned   laughter. I know: I was there! The comedian Roy Hudd , for whom the Huddlines is named, was (obviously) the first choice to star in the show. Chris Emmett was likely chosen as Roy's co-star, when the show launched in 1975, because he did a brilliant impression of Harold Wilson, who was then the British prime minister. June Whitfield joined the series in the mid-1980s. Prior to that, other female comedians co-starred on the show. The inclusion of a woman in the sketches was very necessary, to impersonate not only Mrs Thatcher, who was originally leader of the Opposition and then became Prime Minister, but also to play both the Queen and the Queen Mother. In the early days a female co-star was also needed to play Harold Wilson's wife Mary, and Jim Callaghan's wife. In the show's earlier years the usual female impressionist in the sketches was the comedian Janet Brown . In addition to her impression of the Iron Lady (i.e. Mrs Thatcher), and various Royals, watch out for her performance as BBC current affairs reporter Esther Rancid... (wonder who that might be???) New readers start here — Politics in the 1970s By 1975 Harold Wilson (he of the flasher mac and jokes about his 1968 currency devaluation) was Prime Minister again.  But he quickly resigned, and the Labour Party fought over whether Jim Callaghan (informally known as Sunny Jim ) should succeed him, who famously went on holiday in the Bahamas to avoid suffering in the Winter of discontent. ('Crisis? What crisis?') Denis Healey , Labour's Chancellor of the Exchequer with the sheepskin eyebrows, bankrupted the country in 1976, and Labour had to beg the International Monetary Fund for a bailout.  And you thought that only happened in 2008!  Domestically, Dennis the menace's novel economic strategy, Labour's new Pay Policy of fighting inflation by banning pay rises for workers, was continuously mocked on the show! The Common Market — endlessly mocked by the writers — was as unpopular as ever, with new anti-EEC leader Jim Callaghan constantly complaining about huge unsaleable agricultural surpluses — the European butter mountain and wine lake, paid for by Britain, which alone was now paying all the bills! Political references on the show to Wedgy Benn refer to the communist Anthony Wedgewood-Benn , who represented the loony-left in the Labour Cabinet, with regular jokes about his unpopularity...  amongst even his Cabinet colleagues! Labour's female MP Barbara Castle sulked through the second half of the decade after losing the race to become the first woman leader of the Party to that other old woman, Jim Callaghan!  No, but seriously folks, actually she sulked because she lost to Margaret Thatcher in the race to become Britain's first female party leader. Lots of jokes poking fun at the Liberal Party led by Jeremy Thorpe and David Steel which formed a parliamentary coalition with Labour, known as the Lib-Lab Pact, to prop up Callaghan's unpopular minority Government. Jokes about the former prime minister and part-time yachtsman Ted Heath , who in 1975 lost the leadership to Mrs Thatcher, will turn up regularly on the show once the Conservatives win the 1979 general election.  At that point Labour will lurch to the left, and replace the defeated Sunny Jim with Michael Foot , another MP from the loony-left: a man said by Roy Hudd to possess all the sartorial elegance of Worzel Gummidge.  Having lost in 1979, Labour look set to lose again in 1983 with Foot underfoot...  And again in 1987...  And again in 1992! Labour's dominance by the loony left under Foot leads some of its MPs to break away: the so-called Gang of Four led by Roy Jenkins will defect in 1981 to found a new party, the S.D.P.,  but which, with only four MPs, quickly becomes a sitting target for jokes about lost causes . You can catch up with it all here folks, as the News Huddlines rolls triumphantly on through the whole of the 1980s and 1990s — finishing only when a wily producer at Granada lures Roy Hudd into defecting to ITV in the 21st Century, by offering him a part on Coronation Street : the only show ITV had which had been going as long as the Huddlines !

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.