Roy Hudd

Enter a lost world of entertainment with this celebration of the post-war heyday of variety, in a BBC4 programme shown last month. Michael Grade is our qualified guide - he joined the family theatrical agency in 1966 - and delivers a warm and funny show, full of good anecdotes. That's because he lets veteran entertainers and agents do much of the talking - Val Doonican, Bruce Forsyth, Ken Dodd, Roy Hudd, Barry Cryer and Janet Brown among them. Although largely filmed at the London Palladium, many of their recollections concern the third rate halls, the "number threes" - Bilston Theatre Royal and Attercliffe Palace keep cropping up. They are unforgettable, but for all the wrong reasons, as are tales of theatrical digs. A parade of clips features comics, ventriloquists, dancers, jugglers and animal acts - from Max Miller to Memory Man, and Kardoma the flag act to Koringa the lady snake charmer. Nostalgia, social history, however you label it, there's nothing po-faced about this supremely entertaining show.

This two-part documentary received glowing reviews when it debuted recently on BBC Four. Lord Grade (whose various roles in broadcasting have included chairman of the BBC, chief executive of Channel 4 and executive chairman of ITV) looks back at the postwar golden age of variety theatre and meets an array of well-coiffed, cardigan-clad old school entertainers including Val Doonican, Ken Dodd, Barry Cryer, Roy Hudd and Janet Brown - whose memories of performing with Max Miller are particularly amusing. Grade is knowledgeable and passionate about his subject: his father was a theatrical agent, his uncle Lou a celebrated impresario and he spent much of his childhood roaming round music halls. The result is a warm, nostalgic elegy for a lost world - one ultimately destroyed, of course, by the very medium through which this lament is broadcast.

Much as I love the story about a young Des O'Connor pretending to faint on stage at the Glasgow Empire in 1969 rather than risk further exposure to the toweringly unsentimental crowd, there's a cynical part of me which wonders if the yarn hasn't been a wee bit embroidered.

I didn't expect Michael Grade's The Story Of Variety to rubbish it, and sure enough we got the director's cut (special edition).

Des continued with the ruse backstage, said Grade, so the stage manager carted him off to Glasgow Royal Infirmary where the nurses where persuaded to wield extra-sharp scalpels. That quickly brought him round and he was back on stage for the second house.

But this was a smashing show. Hoofers and troupers and agents with great names like Dabber Davis shuffled into the warmth to reminisce about a showbiz tradition born after WW2 as a more respectable version of music hall - then killed off by TV and a desperate lurch into nudity.

Liverpool alone boasted 25 variety theatres, according to Ken Dodd, who evoked the roar of the greasepaint like this: "Lovely darkened rooms, lovely smell of oranges and cigars - then that lovely rumpty-tumpty sound." But just as many anecdotes related to life away from the proscenium arch: on the road, Aberdeen one night and Plymouth the next, never seeing home for 18 months, not actually having a fixed address, the big meet-up on the railway platforms of Crewe - the digs!

Some landladies were "Artists only - no straight people". Some put out tablecloths for actors but not for "twice-nightlies", as variety acts were known. Roy Hudd recalled the Christmas Eve he hoped for respite from what had been a tyranny of baked beans: "Beans again, but with one chipolata buried in them."

Another variety veteran, Scott Saunders, remembered a landlady who was more obliging: "I got back to the digs late and the pianist Semprini was shagging her on the kitchen table. 'Oh Mr Saunders, what must you think of me?' she said, and just carried on."

This might look like yet another excuse to wallow in light entertainment's golden era and be reminded once again of Eric & Ernie, Frankie Howerd et al. But while a dire clip of Max Miller may make you wonder quite how golden this era actually was, this is largely wonderful stuff, rich with anecdotes told by veteran showbiz raconteurs. Variety didn't just involve comedy, but jugglers, musicians, hoofers, and acts who spent their entire careers doing just one turn. Among those recalling the high jinks and dismal lodgings of those bygone days are Ken Dodd, Val Doonican, Roy Hudd and Mike Winters.

Enter a lost world of entertainment with this celebration of the postwar heyday of variety. Michael Grade is our qualified guide - he joined the family theatrical agency in 1966 - and delivers a warm and funny show, full of good anecdotes. That's because he lets veteran entertainers and agents do much of the talking - Val Doonican, Doreen Wise (widow of Ernie), Bruce Forsyth, Ken Dodd, Roy Hudd, Barry Cryer and Janet Brown among them. Although largely filmed at the London Palladium, many of their recollections concern the third-rate halls or "number threes" - Attercliffe Palace in Sheffield and Bilston Theatre Royal keep cropping up. Unforgettable, but for all the wrong reasons, as are tales of theatrical digs. In contrast, a parade of clips features comics, ventriloquists, dancers, jugglers and animal acts - from Max Miller to Memory Man, and Kardoma the flag act to Koringa the lady snake charmer. Nostalgia, social history... however you label it, there's nothing po-faced about this supremely entertaining show.

While we're grateful for anyone trying to make us laugh right now, Hudd and Quantick's Global Village never quite hit the spot. Sketches ranged from the surreal - a complaint from one of Nigella Lawson's breasts that "we never even get a mention, it's always her bloody food!" - to what the show referred to as "deliciously daft" vignettes inspired by everyday life. Someone of these had potential, like the man complaining that the drawing from his adopted African child is substandard. "I pay £14 a month and what do I get? A crap lion." But the radio sudoku sketch - a running gag about how fantastically dull such an idea would be - was just fantastically dull.

Now, I know there's no greater irritant than people whining that comedy is "just not funny". A GSOH is overwhelmingly a subjective thing and Roy Hudd has had 50 distinguished years on radio. But the same policy statement did suggest Radio 2 take more creative risks and with a series of comedy masterclasses starting next week, let's hope that's where it starts.

HQ (Saturday, Radio 2) brought the great Roy Hudd back to Radio 2 in a sketch show written by many hands among them those of his co-performer David Quantick. Quantick is a brilliant comic writer. As a performer, he has a way to go. Still, he warmed up nicely as the show went on and in the utterly unvulgar sketch where each of them played one of Nigella Lawson's breasts, overcame his awe of Hudd enough to stop reading his lines and let them bounce.

Roy Hudd and David Quantick join forces to keep the winter blues at bay. Here's a brand new sketch show full of old-fashioned fun, also starring Anita Dobson and Kevin Eldon, promising sauce and silliness. Both Hudd and Quantick have formidable reputations in this field, Hudd from all those years on this network's renowned News Huddlines (when there was a live band, a luxury only Wogan is permitted these days on his dire Sunday show) and Quantick as Radio 2's incumbent on its Blagger's Guides.

What a joy to have comic actor Roy Hudd back on Radio 2. He's joined in this new sketch show by David Quantick (The Blagger's Guide), Anita Dobson and Kevin Eldon for what we're promised will be "a half-hour of epic silliness". It's something of an inspired idea to team these two together. Self-confessed middle-aged grump Quantick, whose writing demonstrates a wonderful sense of the absurd, should prove the perfect partner for radio legend Hudd, who for 26 years kept us laughing with the excellent News Huddlines. If this is as good as that series, we're in for a treat.