Mrs Darcy, Episode Fourteen

Ah. This is my homage to the work of the late, great Barry Took and Marty Feldman (yes, that Marty Feldman) who were the writers for “Round the Horne”, my favourite radio programme when I was a young lad. I used to love the verbal interplay of those Kenneth Williams / Hugh Paddick “Julian and Sandy” sketches particularly, without having the faintest clue as to what was going on. Ah, such innocence.

What is remarkable is the extent to which “Round the Horne” is still as funny now as it was then (check it out for yourself if you don’t believe me), unlike (say) “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again”, which to my mind has seriously dated. What is equally remarkable is some of the stuff that Took and Feldman managed to get away with in the post-Sunday lunch slot on the BBC in the mid-sixties; one of their characters was a pop singer in a band called The Pubes, for heaven’s sake – how did that sneak through?

I was inspired to write this episode after looking at a book of Napoleonic War costumes. Have you ever looked at one? It must have been the campest war in history. The toughest fighting men in Europe facing each other across the battlefield, each and every one determined to look absolutely lovely. You don’t see that these days, more’s the pity.

Anyway, excuses for self-indulgence over. Here’s the link. Oh, and I’ve tinkered around with the site to improve the navigation, because – as was pointed out to me by at least one recent new reader – it was very difficult to find your way around it.

(A brief footnote: after reading the first fifteen or so episodes, the only comment that Mrs P made to me was that a cuirassier wouldn’t actually wear a bicorn. But, frankly, I think he should have done.)

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