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Radio comedy sketch show. Starring Chris Emmett, Nigel Rees, Fred Harris, Denise Coffey and Jo Kendall. Sketches written by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick.



Good quality recordings. Includes some in Broadcast Quality at 320 Kbps.



Chris Emmett (a.k.a. Eric Pode of Croydon!) co-starred for 25 years with Roy Hudd in the sketch comedy The News Huddlines and other shows (including Huddwinks and Crowned Hudds).



Nigel Rees became well known as deviser and host of the long running radio panel game Quote Unquote.



Fred Harris may not be well known to fans of British radio comedy as he worked mainly in television, where he's perhaps best remembered from Play School.



Jo Kendall is the sexy girl from the cult Sixties sketch comedy I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again.



Co-writer David Renwick went on to great success in television, as creator and writer of the sitcom One Foot in the Grave featuring the perpetually grumpy Victor Meldrew, and the even more surreal mystery series Jonathan Creek starring Alan Davies.







The Burkiss Way is a comedy largely based on puns. Each broadcast (known as a "lesson") is a collection of sketches, but these blend into each other in a stream of surrealism in the tradition of The Goon Show and I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, but reaching even greater depths of absurdity.



Many of the later programmes have a remarkably complex structure, as the show temporarily leaves one sketch to join another, often returning to the original sketch much later in the programme. A programme might be dropped on the floor and broken, only to be reassembled in the wrong order; or the closing credits might appear at the start of the show, which would then work its way methodically backwards to finish at the beginning of the script.


The full title of the show is The Burkiss Way to Dynamic Living,
with each episode supposedly being one in a course of forty-seven
lessons presented by Professor Burkiss, teaching listeners how to achieve that dynamic state.



The episode of Series 3 known as Bruce's Choice and Start New Series the Burkiss Way is a single episode masquerading as two half-episodes, the first of which pretends to end the current series, while the second pretends to begin another. This was not inconvenient for the BBC at the time, who originally designated the show only by numbering the 47 broadcasts consecutively, as "lessons" 1 to 47.



To preserve listeners' sanity, I have adopted the BBC's approach and ignored this artificial division. The BBC and I treat the third series as a single set of 14 episodes. Otherwise, one of the half-hour broadcasts would have to be assigned to both of two different series, one of which would comprise only three (actually, only two and a half!) broadcasts...



To further muddy the waters, there are two broadcasts labelled Lesson 39, both of which are entitled Repeat Yourself the Burkiss Way, and which both have identical beginnings. This may have seemed a funny joke when written down! It certainly adds no clarity to this weird show.






This preservation project is fraught with difficulties. In addition to the matters mentioned above, the project is further complicated by BBC cuts and bans that go back a long way (with thanks to Darren Lee for providing these details).



After the show's original run, two of the episodes were censored on their very first repeat, namely Lessons 28 and 47, all repeats of which are cut, although the cuts to Lesson 47 were restored in 2009 (on some repeats only: see the additional notes on Lesson 47, below). Altogether, four broadcasts present particular problems, as follows.





Lesson 6 (Win Awards the Burkiss Way) : A "banned" episode. Never broadcast on BBC 7 nor subsequently, it is not lost nor wiped: the episode was issued on CD with the rest of Series 1. Seemingly it was "too difficult" to create a suitable timeslot for repeating the episode, which is much shorter than all the rest of the series (15 minutes only).



Also, there is a mystery as to whether an "orphaned" sketch, parodying a speech by 1950s British prime minister Harold Macmillan, belongs to this episode. That sketch is included here, on the end of Lesson 6 (but should probably not be included in that broadcast). It talks about Mrs Thatcher, who only became Tory Party leader in 1975; and about Harold Wilson, who resigned as the Labour Party's leader in March 1976. Lesson 6 first aired in October 1976, so might have included the sketch, but it would be a more credible argument if the episode had aired 6 months earlier.



Because Chris Emmett was also in The News Huddlines, a political sketch comedy series which began in 1975, the Macmillan sketch could equally well be from a 1975 or 1976 edition of The News Huddlines. The sound quality of the sketch is much poorer than the rest of this recording of Lesson 6, indicating it was NOT originally part of the recording; but in spite of the bad sound, the performer impersonating Macmillan does sound like Emmett.



Radio Times magazine scheduled the original broadcast in a 15 minute timeslot, which indicates the Macmillan sketch (which runs 2 minutes) was not a part of the episode (which, without it, runs 15 minutes). The shortness of the scheduled timeslot precludes the additional sketch.





Lesson 28 (Ignore Programme Titles the Burkiss Way) : One sketch in the original broadcast which suggested that ITV newscaster Reginald Bosanquet didn't mind the occasional "tipple" was cut from all repeats, because he complained !





Lesson 41 (Eric Pode of Croydon's Easter Special) : Broadcasts have been rare because it's a Christmas Special. As such it does not fit in with the rest of the series, since the show has rarely been repeated such that Episode 41 would coincide with Christmas. When that has coincided, they have prefered to repeat the show's other Christmas Special instead.




Lesson 47 (Wave Goodbye To CBEs the Burkiss Way) : The final episode. Many jokes in the original broadcast (jokes about the Queen Mother's birthday), lampooning the BBC's grovelling attitude to Royalty, were cut from all subsequent repeats. Today the episode continues to be broadcast in its cut form when repeated on its own, despite being occasionally aired in its full original form as part of the 3 hour special entitled Celebrate the Burkiss Way.







A lot of effort has gone into finding
and presenting here the original versions of the episodes.



So far as
possible, the recordings on this page are uncut, which has not been easy:
details are given above of the long-term cuts to certain episodes,
which began with the very first repeats in the 1980s (but the Reginald
Bosanquet episode, Lesson 28, has proved impossible to find in its original form).


In addition, modern radio repeats of many episodes have suffered censorship cuts for political correctness.



Nevertheless, every modern repeat presented on this page is uncut. This has involved some compromises: in some cases it has been necessary to source the recordings from repeats which aired on BBC 7 (also known as Radio 7) before the latest cuts began, and those broadcasts were at low bitrates. The episodes affected are mainly presented here at 128 kbps only.


Better quality recordings turn up from time to time, and will be added here as they become available.

1. The Burkiss Way - Pilot (Radio 3) - The Half-Open University : Part 1 (27.5Mb)
2. The Burkiss Way - Pilot (Radio 3) - The Half-Open University : Part 2 (27.4Mb)
3. no title (43.7Mb)
4. The Burkiss Way - s01e01 - Peel Bananas the Burkiss Way [Rpt 2022-07-21] (Lesson 1) (22Mb)
5. no title (34.1Mb)
6. The Burkiss Way - s01e02 - Pass Examinations the Burkiss Way [Rpt 2022-07-28] (Lesson 2) (22.7Mb)
7. The Burkiss Way - s01e03 - Escape from Prison the Burkiss Way [Rpt 2022-08-04] (Lesson 3) (22.5Mb)
8. The Burkiss Way - s01e04 - Solve Murders the Burkiss Way [Rpt 2022-08-11] (Lesson 4) (22.3Mb)
9. The Burkiss Way - s01e05 - Keep Unfit the Burkiss Way [Rpt 2022-08-18] (Lesson 5) (21Mb)
10. no title (20.8Mb)
11. The Burkiss Way - s01e06 - Win Awards the Burkiss Way (Off-air tape) [17 minutes only] (Lesson 6) (16.2Mb)
12. The Burkiss Way - s02e01 - Influence Friends and Win People the Burkiss Way [Rpt 2019-06-21] (Lesson 7) (25.1Mb)
13. no title (37.7Mb)
14. The Burkiss Way - s02e02 - Plan Christmas Schedules the Burkiss Way (Lesson 8) (25Mb)
15. The Burkiss Way - s02e03 - Gain Spiritual Fulfilment the Burkiss Way (Lesson 9) (24.8Mb)
16. no title (38.3Mb)
17. The Burkiss Way - s02e07 - Commemorate The Jubilee the Burkiss Way [Rpt 2019-07-26] (Lesson 13) (24.9Mb)
18. The Burkiss Way - s02e07 - Commemorate The Jubilee the Burkiss Way (low bitrate) (Lesson 13) (25Mb)
19. no title (38.3Mb)
20. no title (37.6Mb)
21. The Burkiss Way - s02e13 - Replace The Burkiss Way [Rpt 2019-09-06] (Complete) (Lesson 19) (25Mb)
22. The Burkiss Way - s03e01 - Discover Gravity the Burkiss Way [Rpt 2019-09-13] (Complete) (Lesson 20) (25.2Mb)
23. no title (38.1Mb)
24. no title (38.1Mb)
25. no title (38.6Mb)
26. no title (32.1Mb)
27. no title (38.4Mb)
28. no title (38Mb)
29. no title (25.5Mb)
30. The Burkiss Way - s04e06 - Repeat Yourself the Burkiss Way, Part 2 [Rpt 2020-01-24] (Lesson 39b) 128 Kbps (25.3Mb)
31. no title (38Mb)
32. The Burkiss Way - s04e08 - Eric Pode of Croydon's Easter Special (Christmas Special) (Lesson 41) (24.9Mb)
33. no title (25.8Mb)
34. no title (37.5Mb)
35. no title (24.7Mb)
36. no title (38.2Mb)
37. The Burkiss Way - s05e06 - Wave Goodbye To CBEs the Burkiss Way (Lesson 47) 128 Kbps (24.9Mb)

MP3 files hosted by archive.org.