The Fully Authorised History of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue: the Clue Bible from Footlights to Mornington Crescent by Jem Roberts

Author:Jem Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2010-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

10

The Winning Formula

JOHN, JO AND Bill weren’t really walking out of the I’m Sorry story of course, because very soon after striking any further Clue recording dates out of their diaries, they were back at the Playhouse recording the very final series of I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again. Naturally, there was no way they could get through a whole series of Radio Prune self-indulgence without mentioning the Antidote to Panel Games experiment – Graeme’s pet project was pilloried within five minutes of the first episode, when our gang of ragamuffins try and sneak their way back onto BBC Radio without the DG noticing, and are instantly discovered by the man himself.

JC: Three years ago I vowed that you lot would never work for the BBC again, and you keep trying to wheedle your way back, don’t you?

BO: I haven’t wheedled, sir!

JC: You think I don’t notice? Who did that rotten despicable clever-dick so-called quiz show, hmm?

JK: Oh, I rather like Twenty Questions . . .

JC: Not that, not that. I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Script or something, that was you, wasn’t it? Yes, yes, it was the title that gave it away. You didn’t fool me. Call that a panel game? Don’t make me laugh.

BO: We didn’t.

But it wasn’t until the end of the next summer, in 1974, that Graeme and John Cassels knew for sure that Bill was officially out of the game, and they would have to find a new permanent line-up for the third series. Barry and Tim were raring for more, but there was an empty seat waiting to be filled by someone with bags of the requisite nerves of steel – and, as Garden has it, ‘a large helping of “what the hell”’ – required to make it through two sessions of semi-improvised stupidity a night.

A Large Helping of ‘What the Hell’

In between these barely scripted shenanigans, Tim and Barry were having a whale of a time with jokes old and older in Hello, Cheeky. Despite the (trad) nature of so much of the humour in the shows, it attracted such a following that ITV commissioned two series of a television version in 1976 – which sadly were such a flop that it even earned a drubbing from Bill and Graeme in an episode of The Goodies. Tim explains today that ‘The shame with the television is that obviously when you’re doing very quick characters, you have to get into a costume or a hat or something very, very quickly, and on the television they never saw us moving from one to the other, so they just saw somebody appearing on the screen, probably with a hat or a wig or something slightly crooked, whereas what I’d wanted was a long shot so you can see the problems, and that’s part of the fun of somebody getting there on time to do the character, and it just didn’t really work on television, it was a shame. But it was good fun on radio. Solid, corny, good fun.

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