Round the Horne

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Round the Horne is a BBC Radio comedy programme starring Kenneth Horne, first transmitted in four series of weekly episodes from 1965 until 1968. The show was created by Barry Took and Marty Feldman, who wrote the first three series. The fourth was written by Took, Johnnie Mortimer, Brian Cooke and Donald Webster. Horne's supporting cast comprised Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden and, in the first three series, Bill Pertwee. The announcer was Douglas Smith, who also took part in the sketches. 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 the earlier series. The show was the successor to Beyond Our Ken, which had run from 1958 to 1964 with largely the same cast. By the time the new series began, television had become the dominant broadcasting medium in Britain, and Round the Horne, which built up a regular audience of 15 million, was the last radio show to reach so many listeners. Horne was surrounded by larger-than-life characters including the camp pair Julian and Sandy, the disreputable eccentric J. Peasmold Gruntfuttock, and the singer of dubious folk songs, Rambling Syd Rumpo, who all became nationally familiar. The show encountered periodic scrutiny from the BBC management for its double entendres, but consistently received the backing of the director-general of the BBC, Sir Hugh Greene. Horne died suddenly in 1969; the BBC decided that Round the Horne could not continue without its star and they cancelled plans for a fifth series that year. Over the following decades Round the Horne has been re-broadcast continually, and all...