My Word!
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| My Word! | |
| Genre | Literary Humorous panel game |
|---|---|
| Running time | 30 mins |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Languages | English |
| Home station | BBC Home Service and BBC Radio 4 |
| TV adaptations | 1 Season (1962) |
| Starring | (Chair) John Arlott (1956-57) Jack Longland (1957-77) John Julius Norwich (1978-82) Antonia Fraser (1982-83) Michael O'Donnell (1983-90) (Panellists) Frank Muir (1956-90) Isobel Barnett (1956-57) E. Arnot Robertson (1957-61) Dilys Powell (1962-90) Denis Norden (1956-90) Nancy Spain (1956-64) Anne Scott-James (1964-78) Antonia Fraser (1979-82, 1983-90) Irene Thomas (1982-83) |
| Creators | Tony Shryane and Edward J. Mason |
| Producers | Tony Shryane, Bobby Jaye, Pete Atkin |
| Air dates | 1956 to 1990 |
| No. of series | 39 |
| Opening theme | Alpine Pastures, by Vivian Ellis (1904-1996). |
My Word! was a long-running radio panel game broadcast by the BBC on the Home Service (1956-67) and Radio 4 (1967-90). It was created by Edward J. Mason and Tony Shryane, and featured comic writers Denis Norden and Frank Muir, more famous (in Britain, at least) for the series Take It From Here. For decades it was also broadcast worldwide via BBC World Service shortwave.
Contents |
[edit] Format and History
The show was piloted in June 1956 on the Midland Home Service and first broadcast as a series on the BBC Home Service on January 1, 1957. Two teams (Muir and a female partner, most notably Dilys Powell, versus Norden and a female partner, most notably Anne Scott-James or Antonia Fraser) faced a series of questions devised by Mason, primarily word games and literary quizzes covering vocabulary, etymology, snippets of poetry, and the like. When stumped by a question, the contestants could be sure of receiving generous partial credit for a humorous answer of enough ingenuity.
In the final round, each team was asked to give the origin of a famous phrase or quotation. Once the answers were given, Muir and Norden were invited to explain the "real" origin of their respective teams' phrases; each proceeded to weave a shaggy dog story leading up to an outrageous pun upon his phrase (a genre later known as the Feghoot). (Although these stories did sometimes purport to explain the origin of the phrase in question, the rule was not strictly enforced, and a story was just as likely to begin "A funny thing happened to me on the way here tonight....") From 1973, the first part of the round was dropped in favour of having the chairman simply announce the accepted origin of each phrase, thus opening up new fields of phrases that would have been too well known or too obscure to be posed as questions. Many of the stories were later collected in a series of books.
The host of the show was originally the cricket broadcaster John Arlott, but he was soon replaced by Jack Longland, who spent over twenty years as chairman. Longland was succeeded by John Julius Norwich and finally Michael O'Donnell. Muir’s partner was initially Isobel Barnett, but she was soon replaced with the film critic E. Arnot Robertson. On Robertson's death in 1961, her place was filled by the film critic and Greek scholar Dilys Powell, who remained with the show until its end, when she was in her ninetieth year. Norden’s first partner was the journalist Nancy Spain, who upon her death in 1964 was succeeded by journalist Anne Scott-James and then in 1979 by writer and historian Antonia Fraser, wife of the well-known playwright Harold Pinter. Fraser took the chair for one season in the 1980s, when her place on the panel was taken by Irene Thomas.
After Edward J. Mason's death in 1971, Jack Longland, with the assistance of Peter Moore, took over responsibility for compiling most of the questions. After Longland's retirement, Moore became the sole question-setter.
The show, which ended in 1990, is still rerun in the United States and Australia. A companion program, My Music, ran from 1967 to 1993.
[edit] Theme music
The theme music to "My Word" was "Alpine Pastures", written by Vivian Ellis (1904-1996).
