#oneaday Day 437: '50s Fun

Since my post the other day about The Goon Show, I've been revisiting a bunch of '50s and '60s BBC radio comedy shows, including more Goons, and also another favourite of my family's, Round the Horne.

Both shows remain fascinating to me, because they are both the perfect example of what radio as a medium had to offer — particularly in a time where not every household had a television. Both are fantastic examples of how vividly talented performers can conjure an almost visual image in your mind using nothing but their voices; both are wonderful examples of how a creative format can produce something truly memorable.

And dear lord, they are both dirty. As a kid, I had a vague idea of some of the more scatological references — it's hard not to notice Major Bloodnok's gastrointestinal problems in The Goon Show, for example — but in the last few days, I've been reading up on a few bits and pieces about both The Goon Show and Round the Horne, and it seems like both shows were able to slip a hell of a lot past the BBC higher-ups. Although in the case of Round the Horne in particular, there are suggestions that the BBC higher-ups were very much in on the joke, and more than happy to skirt the boundaries of what would be considered "decent".

I've learned a lot I didn't previously know. I didn't know that Grytpype-Thynne's habitual insult of "Charlie", for example, is actually an abbreviation of the rhyming slang for what is considered to be one of the most offensive words in the English language, even today — or indeed that Grytpype's name was a reference to one's bumhole, though in retrospect I should have figured that one out much sooner.

And in the case of Round the Horne, I learned that the flagrantly homosexual characters Julian and Sandy (who, let's remember, were on the radio at a time when it was still illegal to engage in homosexual activity here in the UK) were not, as I'd originally believed, speaking a strange nonsense language, but in fact a real form of cant slang known as Polari. This was used among the homosexual community — and numerous other groups besides, including those in showbusiness and the criminal underworld — prior to the reforms brought about by the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 as a means of communicating without attracting any… unwanted attention.

There are some aspects of these shows that wouldn't fly today — particularly some extremely racist caricatures performed without shame by the cast of The Goon Show… though at the same time it's also worth noting that the show had a black man (Ray Ellington) performing musical interludes on the show every week. Ellington often made cameo appearances in the main show, too — inevitably playing some sort of racist stereotype and seemingly genuinely having a lot of fun doing so.

It was a different time, for sure. A better time? Probably not; society has made a lot of progress since then in a lot of ways. But when you bear in mind the context in which these shows were originally recorded… they were truly cutting-edge. And as time goes on, it kind of becomes more and more awe-inspiring to me that these shows not only existed in the first place, but remain relevant to a certain degree even today.