Radio Weekly #18
Radio Weekly With Ian Wolf
This week, Ian Wolf listens to a very overdue train arrival and rants about working in a call centre.
Parsley Sidings
There’s a very good chance that you haven’t have heard of Parsley Sidings – and there’s a reason for that. Namely it was one of the comedy shows that fell victim to the BBC’s tape wiping policy, which saw many shows being lost.
It’s always a shame, but even worse when you learn more about the people involved. The leads are played by Arthur Lowe and Ian Lavender from Dad’s Army; the other two regulars were Kenneth Connor and Liz Frazer, both noted Carry On actors; and on top of that, it was written by Jim Eldridge, the creator of the long-running Radio 4 series King Street Junior, the first comedy drama as we would recognise it today.
Luckily for us, most of the episodes have since been rediscovered and Radio 4 Extra is now giving them their first repeat run since their debut back in the early 1970s on Radio 2.
Anyway, back to the show. The series is set in a small railway station managed by station master Horace Hepplewhite (Lowe), whose family have managed the station for generations. He’s keen on his idiotic son Bertrand (Lavender) to take over, though he really doesn’t want to. The other staff consist of Gloria Simpkins (Frazer) – who is in love with Bertrand – cockney porter Percy Valentine (Connor) and 90-year-old signalman Mr. Bradshaw (Connor again).
Listening back on these missing recordings, there are still some laughs, despite the poor quality of the recordings. However, there’s one big problem, which is that because we’re so used to everyone involved doing much more famous (and superior) work, this fades in comparison. When you hear Lowe and Lavender acting as the Horace and Bertrand, you can’t help but picture Mainwaring and Pike. Shame.
It’s worth listening to Parsley Sidings of course, but it doesn’t stand up in its own right. You’re probably better off watching Dad’s Army, a Carry On film, or listening to an episode of King Street Junior (once the BBC eventually get round to releasing it commercially, which they haven’t yet).
The Headset Set
Something a bit more current, The Headset Set, now in its second series, is a sketch show set in a call centre – written mainly by new writers who came up through the BBC’s “open door” submission based shows like Newsjack.
The Headset Set is set at a firm called Smile5, which sells just about every object you can think of, as well as lots you probably haven’t. The sketches tend to involve bickering amongst the staff of the call centre or customers calling them up making odd complaints or purchases, such as the evil villain complaining that his bookcase doesn’t revolve into a secret passageway.
In the first series, the plot was a lot more centralized, just about the staff at the call centre. But while the characters still remain, the plot seems to have more or less disappeared, with the series becoming more sketch like – and it’s paid off.
The one problem for me is that I’ve got some knowledge of call centres, thanks to a course that I had to do earlier in the year about trying to get work in a call centre.
I don’t have a job in a call centre, I’m not that fussed about getting a job in a call centre, and given the fact that so many of them in my area are closing down, it looks unlikely that I’ll ever get a job in a call centre either. But I had to do the course. And to make things worse, I was doing this in the middle of August, during the Edinburgh Fringe – which for me is the busiest time of the whole year.
It’s because of this, though, that I like The Headset Set. Because listening to a show about a call centre sounds infinitely more preferable to working in one.
