Irish Public Service Broadcasting - 1950s

'Where Are Our Funny men?'
A Short Survey of Irish Radio Variety
from Radio Éireann Handbook, 1955
by Mícheál Ó hAodha, Director of Productions

Writing in the Year Book for 1950, I had this to say about variety from Radio Eireann: "It's not just a question of the old grey mare of radio variety being not what she used to be it's just that she hasn't been properly broken-in yet! " Much as I should like to claim that Variety is now a trained-to-the-ounce winner, the temperamental behaviour and inconsistent form of the animal, in the past four or five years, makes caution advisable. First of all, there can be no exact definition of what radio variety should be, although there is a popular misconception that it consists solely of a fast-moving, high-pressured stage show, done into terms of sound. In its widest connotation, it can be:-

1. An ambitious sixty to ninety-minute star-studded affair, with singers, comedians, and instrumentalists, complete with a twenty-piece orchestra and choral group, presented before a large audience by a sophisticated Master of Ceremonies. Our 'Christmas at Home' shows and the occasional 'Variety Roll Call' programmes used this formula, which is very successful on special occasions, as it gives our best stage-comedians an opportunity of using just once, on the air, the limited number of suitable sketches and turns which keep them going for months and sometimes years on the stage.
2. The traditional old-time music-hall programme with its lusty chorus singing and comfortably familiar comic patter. A good example is 'The Black Jester Minstrel Show'.
3. The situation-comedy programme, usually in serial form, and often dealing with one particular family, linked by short musical flashes from records. 'The Foley Family' has been a notable success in this field.
4. The straightforward band show, featuring singers and instrumentalists, with a linking script, such as the Thursday Variety Concerts, the Chick Smith series, and the Jimmy Campbell Show.
5. The homespun Céili or Visiting House programme with a leisurely tempo, deliberately keyed to the preferences of country or older listeners, such as 'Take the Floor' or 'The Balladmaker's Saturday Night'.
6. The compèred record programme, or the dramatised script with orchestra, built round a review of theatrical successes, lives of composers or artistes, e.g. ' Stars of French Cabaret,' 'Meet the Music Makers ' and 'I Knew Percy French'.
7. The light-hearted quiz show, such as 'Question Time ' which, with its Siamese Twin, Joe Linnane, still goes-after fifteen years-the seemingly everlasting way of all quizzes. 'The School Around the Cornet' and 'Musical Quiz' have more lately joined the procession.
8. The Newcomers' Hour, or Talent-Scout Programme, such as 'Beginners Please,' which is often a salutary reminder that real discoveries are as rare as they are exciting, and that the national myth that this is a country abounding in talent, waiting to be tapped, dies hard. But a Rose Brennan or an Austin Gaffney must figure as a beginner somewhere, and it is imperative that there should be this open door for all possible aspirants.
9. Lastly, there is the composite radio show, conceived in terms of sound, with an original fast-moving style, distinctive radio comedians and entertainers, and a snappy sophisticated musical combination. The B.B.C.'s 'Itma' and 'Take it from Here,' and many of the American Forces Network shows, have combined to establish internationally this pattern and standard for radio variety, in the stricter sense.

For the first and second categories of variety listed above, which derive directly from the stage, and which sometimes include direct relays from the theatre, there is no longer sufficient ready-made star material, nor a steady flow of comedy-acts and patter which can be readily adapted to radio. We have now no music-halls, no permanent variety or revue theatre. Only cine-variety in the vast Theatre Royal, which, in the main, means spectacle, the twice-yearly revues of the O'D Productions, and the occasional before-midnight sophisticated burlesques at the bijou Pike, survive in a city which had four big and near full-time variety houses four or five years ago. This may be attributed to the international standardisation of the American brand of humour and entertainment in films, musicals, and radio shows, which has its greatest impact on us through the cinema, the Light Programme, A.F.N. and Luxembourg; or one might comment that we, as a people, have never made much of a mark in the entertainment world, as distinct from the drama, even in the nostalgically great days of the Tivoli and the Empire, when Dublin was merely a distant point on the British music-hall circuit.

But to argue that because there is now little stage variety in Ireland, there can be little variety on the air, would be to evade a challenge to the power and inventiveness of sound radio. Nationally speaking, we have no tradition of variety, and the ersatz radio variety programmes such as 'The Ballad-makers' Saturday Night' and 'Take the Floor' command much bigger audiences than variety programmes which seem more deserving of that description. Both these programmes have the widely acceptable ingredients of traditional music, folk-songs and dances, and what the Northerns call 'good crack.' They are shaped in a traditional and distinctive mould, with the seanchaí or the story-teller just hobbling from his seat by the old turf-fire to a microphone which can create a rose-coloured illusion of the days of the 'Kerry Dancing.' Likewise a regional variety show such as the very successful 'The Real Blarney' may strike some as having a distinctive stamp, but an analysis of its ingredients shows the talented and acquisitive Corkmen sticking to old music-hall gimmicks when everyone else seems to have forgotten or discarded them, and apparantly reaping their reward.

It is obvious, therefore, that Irish radio has no ready-made source for scripted variety, and that radio reconstructions of the concert-bill type, or of the visiting and céili houses, cannot fill the bill exclusively and indefinitely. 'Top of the Evening,' 'We Can't Help It' and 'Crack of the North '- all conceived in terms of radio- were experimental programmes which, apart from showing the promise and ingenuity of the scriptwriters and confirming the adaptability and versatility of the R.E.P, served to prove conclusively only what was lacking a radio personality- call him comedian or entertainer- who might be capable of taking on the Bradens, the Bennys, and the Bentleys at their own game.

On first thoughts, the idea of trying to establish an Irish radio personality in such an exalted role may seem, virtually, to be throwing him to the lions who roar in unison wth Metro Goldwyn Mayer's. But we have already a few cards up our sleeve, and as I write, Joe Lynch, a Cork entertainer, who has grown-up with Radio Eireann as an actor, singer and comedian, has just stepped into the arena with his 'Living With Lynch' team, to the practically unanimous acclaim of the critics. By the time you read this in the Handbook for you, the listeners, will know whether this was just another foolhardy sortie or a resounding victory. In either case, the search must go on for the materialisation of that ubiquitous but evasive sprite, which everybody creates in his own imaginings and in his own image- the funny man!