Radio Active to return as a live stage show
- 1980s Radio 4 sketch show Radio Active is returning as a live stage show at the Edinburgh Festival
- Angus Deayton, Helen Atkinson-Wood, Michael Fenton Stevens and Philip Pope will all return
- The stars will perform two classic radio scripts in front of audiences
Radio Active, the hit 1980s sketch show, is to return as a live stage show.
The original cast including Angus Deayton, Helen Atkinson-Wood, Michael Fenton Stevens and Philip Pope will reunite to perform two of their classic radio scripts live as part of a daily show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August.
Producers confirm: "Britain's first ever national local radio station Radio Active returns to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe after a 27 year break."
Based around a fictional commercial radio station, Radio Active started life as a live sketch show created by Oxford University students Angus Deayton and Geoffrey Perkins at the 1979 Edinburgh Fringe. The duo then transferred the format to Radio 4 in 1980. It ran for seven series before transferring to BBC Two in the form of KYTV.
A special reunion episode of Radio Active was broadcast in 2002, however the format hasn't been revived since. Geoffrey Perkins died in 2008 and the new live production is dedicated to his memory.
Talking about the new staging, producers say: "Among other classic characters expect to catch up with long suffering radio host Mike Channel, original foodie Anna Daptor, the calamitous Nigel Pry and the accident prone Martin Brown, as well as the cast's original musical creations, responsible for such parody bands as The Hee Bee Gee Bees and Status Quid."
Speaking to The Scotsman newspaper at the weekend, Deayton said he had drawn inspiration from seeing scripts of Hancock's Half Hour recreated at the festival in The Missing Hancocks.
Talking about the history of Radio Active, the former Have I Got News For You host explained: "The original Radio Active show we brought up to Edinburgh was called You'll Have Had Your Tea. I think we actually came up with the title before we came up with the show. We never performed it in Oxford, we only ever did it in Edinburgh, it was pretty much a child of the festival. We performed it in St Mary's Street Hall, which the Oxford Revue shared with the Cambridge Footlights.
"The show was based around a commercial radio station, as that had just started in those days - all the sketches were linked by a DJ on stage. The next year the show had become Radio Active and that one led to the series on Radio 4. We came back to Edinburgh under our own steam quite a few times. We were the biggest-selling show one year, by virtue of the fact we were in a big old cinema."
Radio Active will be at Pleasance One on the 3rd - 28th (not 16th) August 2016 as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.