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Radio Active (radio series)
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Radio Active (radio series)
Radio Active is a radio comedy programme, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 during the 1980s. The series grew out of a 1979 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show presented by The Oxford Revue and starred Angus Deayton, Geoffrey Perkins, Michael Fenton Stevens, Helen Atkinson-Wood and Philip Pope. The first episode was broadcast in 1980, and it ran for seven series.
The show is based on a fictional radio station (described as "Britain's first national local radio station") and the programmes that it might transmit. Initially the radio station concept was used simply as a loose framing device for otherwise unlinked sketches and songs, but as the show developed, the episodes became more thematically focused, each one lampooning a different broadcasting genre and sometimes even a specific programme such as Down Your Way (parodied as "Round Your Parts"), In at the Deep End ("Out of Your Depth"), Ultra Quiz ("Gigantaquiz"), The Radio Programme ("The Radio Radio Programme") and Crimewatch ("Stop That Crime UK").
The programmes often pitch the "modern-media" regular characters against older stereotypes of foreigners and "establishment types" such as generals and politicians, though the programme rarely strays into the "alternative comedy" vogue of contemporary political comment. However some episodes in the final series made reference to real-life events: "Probe Round the Back" is a parody of investigative journalism which revolved around the Cambridge Five and contains allusions to Spycatcher and the Zircon affair, and "The Flu Special" satirises the then-current HIV/AIDS public awareness campaigns.
In "Bedrock", the fifth episode of the first series, which was written by Perkins, Fenton Stevens' character says: "Alright, maybe Ringo Starr wasn't the best drummer in the world. Alright, maybe he wasn't the best drummer in the Beatles, but he's a name." After comedian Jasper Carrott told the same joke on his BBC One show Carrott Confidential in 1987, it became an urban legend that John Lennon had actually said it during his lifetime.
Most of the original characters on the show are named after pieces of sound equipment, including:
Also on the station's staff are:
Other recurring characters include:
The second series sees the characters become more defined, with Mike Channel revealed as the station's longest-serving presenter and resentful of the more popular younger hosts, especially Mike Flex, whom Channel frequently complained had taken "his" mid-morning show. At the same time, Nigel Pry gains the idiosyncratic speech patterns and propensity to injury that became his defining traits, and Mike Stand is effectively reinvented as a completely new character, changing from an old-school rock DJ in the first series, to a giggling, infantile children's presenter. Although he would come to be regarded as a main character, Martin Brown is not introduced until series 4, and was originally intended as a one-off character (he is so incompetent that during his first show, the station's other presenters are revealed to be listening in another studio and laying bets on how long it will take for Sir Norman to fire him – which duly happens at the end of the episode) but was so well-received that a brief appearance by the character was added to the final episode of the series, before he was brought back as a regular in the fifth series.
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Radio Active (radio series)
Radio Active is a radio comedy programme, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 during the 1980s. The series grew out of a 1979 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show presented by The Oxford Revue and starred Angus Deayton, Geoffrey Perkins, Michael Fenton Stevens, Helen Atkinson-Wood and Philip Pope. The first episode was broadcast in 1980, and it ran for seven series.
The show is based on a fictional radio station (described as "Britain's first national local radio station") and the programmes that it might transmit. Initially the radio station concept was used simply as a loose framing device for otherwise unlinked sketches and songs, but as the show developed, the episodes became more thematically focused, each one lampooning a different broadcasting genre and sometimes even a specific programme such as Down Your Way (parodied as "Round Your Parts"), In at the Deep End ("Out of Your Depth"), Ultra Quiz ("Gigantaquiz"), The Radio Programme ("The Radio Radio Programme") and Crimewatch ("Stop That Crime UK").
The programmes often pitch the "modern-media" regular characters against older stereotypes of foreigners and "establishment types" such as generals and politicians, though the programme rarely strays into the "alternative comedy" vogue of contemporary political comment. However some episodes in the final series made reference to real-life events: "Probe Round the Back" is a parody of investigative journalism which revolved around the Cambridge Five and contains allusions to Spycatcher and the Zircon affair, and "The Flu Special" satirises the then-current HIV/AIDS public awareness campaigns.
In "Bedrock", the fifth episode of the first series, which was written by Perkins, Fenton Stevens' character says: "Alright, maybe Ringo Starr wasn't the best drummer in the world. Alright, maybe he wasn't the best drummer in the Beatles, but he's a name." After comedian Jasper Carrott told the same joke on his BBC One show Carrott Confidential in 1987, it became an urban legend that John Lennon had actually said it during his lifetime.
Most of the original characters on the show are named after pieces of sound equipment, including:
Also on the station's staff are:
Other recurring characters include:
The second series sees the characters become more defined, with Mike Channel revealed as the station's longest-serving presenter and resentful of the more popular younger hosts, especially Mike Flex, whom Channel frequently complained had taken "his" mid-morning show. At the same time, Nigel Pry gains the idiosyncratic speech patterns and propensity to injury that became his defining traits, and Mike Stand is effectively reinvented as a completely new character, changing from an old-school rock DJ in the first series, to a giggling, infantile children's presenter. Although he would come to be regarded as a main character, Martin Brown is not introduced until series 4, and was originally intended as a one-off character (he is so incompetent that during his first show, the station's other presenters are revealed to be listening in another studio and laying bets on how long it will take for Sir Norman to fire him – which duly happens at the end of the episode) but was so well-received that a brief appearance by the character was added to the final episode of the series, before he was brought back as a regular in the fifth series.