The Wow Show

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Sketch show staring Mark Arden, Lee Cornes, Mark Elliot and Stephen Frost.

In the 1980s any young radio light entertainment producer worth his or her salt was scouring the comedy clubs and the Edinburgh Fringe looking for the next big thing and signing them up for a Radio 4 series.
In 1985, the year in question for this blog post, BBC Radio 4 was already offering listeners the fifth series of Radio Active and the second of In One Ear. It was also the year you could hear the short-lived sketch show In Other Words…The Bodgers (though this did begat Absolutely) and the second series of Don’t Stop Now-It’s Fundation, an early outing for Hale and Pace. And in January 1985 the latest show to join the comedy schedule was The Wow Show.
The Wow Show was written and performed by four young actor/comedians who were already well known for the fringe stage show bearing the same name. The quartet was Stephen Frost, Mark Arden, Lee Cornes and Mark Elliott. Frost and Arden were teamed up as The Oblivion Boys and worked together on BBC1’s Carrott’s Lib as well as appearing on Blackadder, The Comic Strip Presents… and The Young Ones. Cornes also had The Young Ones and the same Comic Strip episode under his belt. Elliott (also billed under his full name Paul Mark Elliott) had more straight acting credits but like the others also popped up in the Comic Strip (the frankly bizarre s02e07 episode Slags which can be found on YouTube).

The Wow Show ran for two six-part series in 1985, the first starting in January and the second in October. The producer was Jamie Rix who’d joined the Light Entertainment department in 1981 initially producing Beat the Record, Pros and Cons and Three in a Row for Radio 2 before picking up comedy duties in 1983 on Radio Active, In One Ear and The Bentine Years.

From the first series comes this second episode titled For Your Hives Only, a surreal tale set in a beehive. There’s a feel of I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again about this show judging by some of the puns and, a couple of minutes in, Lee Cornes as The Queen Beatrix Herself, sounding not unlike TBT’s Lady Constance de Coverlet.
First broadcast on Saturday 12 January and then repeated on Friday 18 January.

Podcast Link

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Track Listing

• S01E01 – Play Horsey For Me
• S01E02 – For Your Hives Only
• S01E03 – Heaven Is For Fascists
• S01E04 – Gonad’s Alamo
• S01E05 – Snogged Across The Borders
• S01E06 – Whither Internationalism
• S02E01 – Marooned But Not Harpooned
• S02E02 – Narcissus Betrayed
• S02E03 – Weedi, Needi, Greedi
• S02E04 – It Shouldn’t Happen To A Vet
• S02E05 – Clutching At Straws
• S02E06 – Aladdin And The 40 Gook Killers

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Episode List

• S01E01 – Play Horsey For Me
• S01E02 – For Your Hives Only
• S01E03 – Heaven Is For Fascists
• S01E04 – Gonad’s Alamo
• S01E05 – Snogged Across The Borders
• S01E06 – Whither Internationalism
• S02E01 – Marooned But Not Harpooned
• S02E02 – Narcissus Betrayed
• S02E03 – Weedi, Needi, Greedi
• S02E04 – It Shouldn’t Happen To A Vet
• S02E05 – Clutching At Straws
• S02E06 – Aladdin And The 40 Gook Killers

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