Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Rumpo on the Radio


I dont' write about British radio much but this was too great to pass up. Kenneth Charles Williams  played the character Syd Rumpo on the BBC "Round the Horne" comedy program. It ran from 1965 until 1968 in 4 weekly episodes.

The Rumpo Character is part Woody Guthrie and part Bob Saget  in the role of an old English folk singer. The songs vary from the nonsensical to pretty clear sexual innuendo. To my knowledge we never had anyone like this in American broadcasting even though plenty of actual folk music was quite dirty.  Instead we ended up with Burl Ives. Epic fail.


*Credit to Veg for first showing me this.

2 comments:

  1. Tom Lehrer is a great pick but so far as I know he spent no time in radio. As the story goes, he was played on the BBC before he ever got any US airtime.

    That might make an interesting post on it's own...

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