No Successors to Itma I sincerely wish that I could
discern a new Variety programme likely to enliven the evenings now drawing in. I have been listening expectantly to Luck's Way, with Miss Ethel Revnell in its series of " domestic comedies," and grieve to record that its three authors appear content with run-of-the-mill Cockney fun. Mr. Ted Ray is a comedian of some celerity, but his Ray's A Laugh continues to look slightly shop-worn. It is the laughter of the "gag "; and— unless this sort of material is fresh, which this programme's is not— I declare myself no gag-eater. As for Stand Easy, I sit writhing.
What really is the matter ? I suggest that these programmes con- trive no radio personality of their own, no illusion. Irma had a wild logic ; its world was as lunatically all-of-a-piece as Carroll's or Lear's. Much Binding, again, creates its own radio illusions it is highly fantastical, but it very shrewdly, having discovered a world of its own, compels our acceptance of it. It is strictly I have sometimes thought that the failure of B.B.C. variety was due to the lack of talent in the British music-hall, but I'm not so sure; Mr. Max Miller, for instance, is a music-hall comedian of great gusto, but on the air this week in Variety Fanfare he seemed to have evolved no radio equivalent of his outrageous music-hall charm, and little came across to compensate us for missing the sight of that seraphic gallery-wards leer of his. No: B.B.C. variety must be planned for radio, and no programme has yet come along to begin to fill the wide and aching void left by Irma.
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