The News Huddlines - Series 41

The News Huddlines : Series 41 Roy Hudd , June Whitfield and Chris Emmett take a humorous look at the lighter side of the week's news Satire. A British sketch-based radio comedy series, in which comedian Roy Hudd pokes fun at the week's news stories. The series ran from 1975 until 2001, a total of 51 series over 26 years. Each episode lasts for half an hour and consists of topical sketches, songs and one-liners. The News Huddlines is mildly satirical. The material is in a traditional British comedy style, generally aimed at an older audience, with every gag ending on a recognisable punchline. Each weekly broadcast is loosely based around a series of ‘news items’ — usually convenient pegs on which to hang one-liners of greater or lesser topicality — and sketches about events in that week’s news. These sketches are usually about public figures, many of whom reappear regularly and have distinctively exaggerated or fanciful characterisations. For instance, the ex-prime minister’s wife Norma Major, as voiced by June Whitfield, seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to Eth, her character in The Glums , a widely-remembered segment from the 1950s comedy series Take It From Here . Certain members of the royal family (a Huddlines staple) are likewise not copied from life, such as The Queen Mother, who is portrayed with a Cockney accent. Roy Hudd, the show's star and principal comic, was a genuine trouper from old-time music-hall. Unlike his two co-stars, June Whitfield and Chris Emmett, who both were radio and tv actors by training and experience, Hudd was a stand-up comedian with an extensive background in live theatre, gained in the dying days of the music-halls. To have expected a genuine music-hall comic to render a performance different from that given by the boisterous - and unflappable - Hudd would have been unrealistic. Every aspect of the Huddlines is dominated by his well-honed instinct for how to catch and hold a mass audience with a fairly broad, slightly subversive, and mildly bawdy humourous style -- which was the trademark of the best comedians on the halls. Hudd recreated the appeal of the music-halls on the radio, and delivered a massive audience for the show each week, that effortlessly kept him on the air for 26 years.

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.