It's time for another slightly embarrassing confession. When I was a kid, (in the much maligned mid-to late seventies), I was, as I've divulged before, a serious telly addict.I watched as much as I could and way more than I should have, but that wasn't enough. I bought every TV tie-in book I could find from The Partridge Family to Welcome Back Kotter, Switch to Banecek, Gunsmoke to Star Trek, but even that wasn't enough to satisfy my TV cravings so I actually resorted to sticking my dinky little cassette deck up against the TV speaker to record the soundtracks of my favorite shows to listen to those few precious hours that I couldn't spend plopped down in front of the idiot box. A few years ago, I found a box full of these old cassettes and enjoyed a profound sense of nostalgia, and a slightly less profound sense of embarrassment at my choice of programs, as I listened to them again. The advent of video tape, cable and satellite TV and DVD lessens the need for such anorak-ish activities these days but these are still times when popping an old-fashioned cassette tape into your old-fashioned tape deck is still an old-fashioned good time. Fortunately, the powers that be in British TV agree and have made tons of classic programs available on audio tape.
A trip to Amazon.UK turns up a treasure trove of terrific telly on tape from the classic radio stylings of the pioneering Goon Show (Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and co.), the brilliantly silly ensemble comedy of Round the Horne (Kenneth Horne, Kenneth Williams and the gang) and that "anecdote to panel shows" I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue (featuring Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden) to popular radio-TV crossovers like Just A Minute (the celebrity game show where panelists attempt to discourse on a given subject for a full 60 seconds, it's a lot harder, and funnier, than you might think) to telly stars live in performance like the offbeat genius of Eddie Izzard and the rapid fire style of Ben Elton. Most interesting of these releases are those made from radio broadcasts of popular telly programs and programs created expressly for the books-on-tape market. Here is a brief list of some of the best of these offerings:
Hancock's Half Hour: Tony Hancock did some of his best work in these radio adaptations of his all-time classic series. Teamed with series regulars Kenneth Williams. Hattie Jacques and Sid James, these broadcasts preserve the magical combination of Hancock's comic persona and Ray Galton and Alan Simpson's phenomenal scripts. Unforgettable episodes available include "The Reunion Party", "The Missing Page", "The
