Contemporary Arts

TELEVISION AND RADIO

I AM not one of those who listen to the Light Programme variety shows for fun; and until

a few days ago I had always beep puzzled by the contradiction of the general ineptitude of the scripts and the sympathetic appreciation

of the studio audiences. What was there in these laboured jokes and childish puns that the audiences found so excruciatingly funny? What sort of people were the audiences? Had they all been 'rigged'?

With these questions in mind, I went along last Sunday night to the rEolian Hall to hear

this week's recording of Ted Ray Time, which has always seemed to me one of the weakest of the regular programmes. The

initial auguries were certainly unfavourable.

The audience seemed little different to what one sees in any cinema any day of the week; but all. I learned, were seeing the show free.

Some had been given tickets by friends on the staff; the majority had simply sent in requests to the BBC (it appears that anyone can do this). Well, here was one reason for the generosity of the applause; for clearly some people would wish to show their gratitude for the privilege of being in the place at all. The point was well taken by Ted Ray. who ap- peared ten minutes before the recording to give us what a young man next to me (an old hand at the game) described as 'the warming- up process.' If you find anything remotely funny in the script.' he said, 'we would like to hearlt little laugh. And in this respect remem- ber that you didn't pay to get in.'

My worst misgivings were beginning to be confirmed. Yet as soon as the programme started, they were dispelled. For there was no

doubt that the show was extremely funny. And what made it funny was the manner,

rather than the matter, of what was said. Ted Ray himself, for instance. On the air he sounds like a second-rate TomMy Handley; in the flesh he has the same cocky jauntiness and infectious gaiety of Tommy Trinder.

Mrs. Chinnery. the adenoidal charlady, I have always imagined to look as she sounds, antique and unkempt. But Joan Sims, who

plays her, is an attractive girl, and to achieve Mrs. Chinnery's voice she pats on a terrible

expression that reminds one of a youthful Somerset Maugham. This was very funny. So was the prop man who rushed on to the stage to rub two pieces of wood in front of the mike to simulate Ted Ray's chattering teeth; so, too, were the facial exprelsions of Mr. Peter Sellers and -Mr. Kenneth Connor in a variety of improbable roles; so was Mrs. Muzzleprop, a bald, thick-set, heavily moustached man wearing a little silk scarf. And what made it

even more funny was that all these people, dressed in thrtir ordinary clothes, were reading

their scripts instead of having learnt them by heart; in fact, the sillier the jokes and situa- tions, the funnier the reading of them seemed.

show (and others like it) might not be done, in its entirety and exactly as it is, on television. 1 believe, in all seriousness, that it might be immensely successful.

LUDOVIC KENNEDY