I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue

Humphrey Lyttelton:
The pioneering feminist, Emmeline Pankhurst, was born in Manchester. Starting in 1910, Pankhurst campaigned noisily for women's rights outside Parliament every day from 4 o'clock in the afternoon. She would have got there earlier but she always had a stack of ironing to get through first.

Humphrey Lyttelton:
Well, it's time to meet the teams, and I can honestly say that you couldn't ask for four better comedians. So that's answered your next question.

Humphrey Lyttelton:
I've just received this note from Samantha to say she's been delayed meeting a gentleman beekeeper friend near Warrington. Samantha's just started keeping bees herself and has three dozen or so, and she says her friend's an expert handler. Apparently he carefully takes out her 38 bees, and soon has them flying around his head.

Humphrey Lyttelton:
The teams are going to sing for us now, in the round called "One Song to the Tune of Another". This is a well-established concept, requiring explanation only to anyone who's slept through every show for the last thirty-five years. So I'll be interested to read this. The construction and flow of a song is very much akin to a clothing store mannequin. The clothes represent the words, while the model represents the tune, supporting the words and showing them to their best advantage. Songs can, of course, be given different arrangements, just as mannequins can have limbs swapped around, striking different poses to suit different types of apparel. But, I hear you thinking... "I hear you thinking"? I thought it was tinnitus. But I hear you thinking, teams, isn't there a danger of putting the wrong arm in the wrong socket? And what possible use would there be for a dummy with two left hands? At the piano, Colin Sell!

Humphrey Lyttelton:
Incidentally, you may be interested to know that Colin's musical influences are, in fact, Middle Eastern in origin. Yes, mainly Shiite.

Humphrey Lyttelton:
Listen, I'll tell you something. If I'd known at 7 o'clock in the morning on the 23rd of May, 1921, that I would ever live to sit on a stage here in Salford reading this codswallop... I'd have turned round and crawled back in.

[chat-up lines]

Tim Brooke-Taylor:
Hello! Those clothes would look great in a crumpled heap on my bedroom floor.

Graeme Garden:
So would you.

[chat-up lines]

Barry Cryer:
Was your dad a king for a day? He must have been to make a princess like you!

Jeremy Hardy:
Was your dad a pancake chef? He must have been to make a tosser like you.

Humphrey Lyttelton:
Today, everything on TV is celebrity-driven, of course. I even notice on my pack of breakfast sausages, there's a picture of Antony Worrall Thompson. Underneath it says "prick with a fork".

Humphrey Lyttelton:
Well, I'm afraid it doesn't look as if Samantha's going to be able to make it for this half of the evening at least. I'm afraid she's had to stop off to see a grumpy, old gentleman friend in Stockport, who doesn't like spending his money. He's been phoning her constantly, angrily demanding a visit. Samantha says she doesn't really mind handling his testy calls, and she says if she butters him up properly, she can occasionally get him to splash out.

Humphrey Lyttelton:
So, ladies and gentlemen, as the Hamster of Time spins round on the Wheel of Eternity, and the Lorry Driver of Eternity makes a mental note to scrape it off later, I notice it's the end of the first half.

Humphrey Lyttelton:
Hello and welcome back to "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue", the show to suit all ages... [looks out at the audience]... from the Late Neolithic to the Early Bronze.

Humphrey Lyttelton:
Since this show was first broadcast on the BBC, radio and TV seem to have changed beyond recognition. I recall back in the 1950s how we'd sit looking at this strange wooden box in the corner of the living room, peering at a fuzzy grey face by way of an evening's entertainment. But then, TV arrived. So we put the lid back on Granny's coffin, and took her down to the cemetery.

Humphrey Lyttelton:
On with the show, and our teams tonight are undoubtedly the foremost available comedy talents in the country. [scoffs] Something wrong there. Sorry, that should read, "the four most available comedy talents in the country".

Humphrey Lyttelton:
Oh dear, we've just received this note from Samantha to say she's been held up again. She's agreed to meet up with a gentleman friend at the Midland Hotel, where he's laying on a tasting of French white wines. She's hoping there'll be a better selection than last year, when she was disappointed he only had a Semillon. But she thought it would be impolite not to taste it anyway.

Humphrey Lyttelton:
The teams are going to sing along now with some well-known discs, in the round called "Pick-Up Song". As usual, Samantha was down in the BBC Gramophone Library collecting the teams' records for this. It's pitch-black down there, so Samantha and the elderly archivist have taken to searching the shelves by candlelight, which can be messy. So while Samantha passes down the discs, the nice man holds the ladder while he cleans the dust and wax off in the dark.

Humphrey Lyttelton:
And so, ladies and gentlemen, as the loose-bowelled Pigeon of Time swoops low over the unsuspecting Tourist of Destiny, and the flatulent Skunk of Fate wanders into the Air-Conditioning System of Eternity, I notice it's the end of the show.

Humphrey Lyttelton:
Samantha nearly made it. She's been detained at the last minute in the city's Latin Quarter. An Italian gentleman friend has promised to take her out for an ice cream, and she likes nothing better than to spend the evening licking the nuts off a large Neapolitan.

Humphrey Lyttelton:
Incidentally, Colin's piano playing is widely believed by faith healers to hold miraculous powers. It once made a blind man deaf.