Just before Christmas 2010 BBC Radio 4 broadcast Cheque Book and Pen, a fictional drama on how Les Dawson might have got to host Blankety Blank. Working with Woolyback Productions we recorded on location, edited, tracked and mixed this production which was the afternoon play on 16th Dec 2010 at 2:15pm.
Johnny Vegas pays tribute to the legendary Les Dawson in a comic flight of fancy. Les has a way with words but is northern, rather crumpled, a little shambolic and an unknown quantity, and delightfully unpredictable when he is faced with representing a national institution. Nicholas Parsons is Farson, a resplendent foil for Dawson. Farson embraces and embodies the hammiest forces of the ‘traditional BBC’. A nemesis to Les and all he stands for and aims to subvert. This homage is a pure joyous farce, taking full artistic license in imagining how the BBC might have engaged the iconic Les to become a game show great in its eighties flagship, Blankety Blank.
Cast:
Les ….. Johnny Vegas
Farson ….. Nicholas Parsons
Helen ….. Shobna Gulati
Dave Parkins ….. Mick MillerBBC Executive ….. Mark Chatterton
Number Two …… Paul Foot
Doris (Barmaid) ….. Catherine Kinsella
Other parts ….. Peter Slater (and cast).
Written by Andrew Lynch and Johnny Vegas.
Sound Design: Mike Thornton
Directed by Jim Poyser
Producer: Sally Harrison
A Woolyback Production for BBC Radio 4.
I have had great fun working on this production with challenges like a scene in a Manchester club where Les is on stage doing his act whilst the BBC executives were in the audience commenting on his performance. Another scene, that took a few goes to get right, was a montage of agents all ringing the BBC offering their clients for the new presenter of Blankety Blank. Also look out for Shobna Gulati playing a lovely cameo part as the queen phoning the BBC exec to complain.
We were unable to get the original Blankety Blank theme clean but we did get Les’s first show from the BBC archive and I was able to weave that into this production.
Johnny Vegas used to be the ubiquitous clown of the moment but, having been promoted as the most unpredictable man in light entertainment, became slightly too unpredictable and now seems required to attempt reinvention as a character actor. The acute afternoon play he co-wrote, Cheque Book and Pen, conjured up the ghost of Les Dawson, with Vegas doing an impassioned impression of the comedian in his awkward Blankety Blank days. Nicholas Parsons, who happily seems to have forgotten where self-parody lies, was the dame of the piece, playing himself as a devious game-show host rival. Vegas’s play discovered a moral of its own in the compromises Dawson was forced to make to become a prime-time star; in a bravura closing argument, he put the case that creativity had nothing to do with packaging or consumers but was all about “doing what you believe is right and doing it your way”. Try telling that to Simon Cowell.
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Seven radio producers – all based in the north of England – have joined forces to launch a new co-operative venture – ‘Radio Wizards’. It’s equally remarkable that their aim now is to work together on every kind of sound production... except radio!
"It’s taken over a year to get to this point," says ‘wizard’ Mike Thornton, "but now we’ve got a viable business plan, we’ve launched our website and we’re already starting to attract commissions. As a facilities provider we decided to facilitate this partnership and set them up with a web site to help kickstart this excellent partnership."
