Beyond Our Ken
| Genre | Sketch comedy |
|---|---|
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language(s) | English |
| Home station | BBC Light Programme |
| Starring | |
| Announcer | Douglas Smith |
| Written by |
Eric Merriman Barry Took (s 1–2) |
| Produced by |
Jacques Brown (s 1–5) John Simmonds(s 6–7) Charles Maxwell (s 1) |
| Air dates | 1 July 1958 to 16 February 1964 |
| No. of series | 7 (+ 2 Christmas specials) |
| No. of episodes | 123 |
Beyond Our Ken (1958–1964) was a radio comedy programme, the predecessor to Round the Horne (1965–1968). Both programmes starred Kenneth Horne, Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden and Bill Pertwee, with announcer Douglas Smith. Musical accompaniment was provided by the BBC Revue Orchestra. The name is a pun on Kenneth Horne's name and the (now mainly Northern English and Scots) word , meaning "knowledge or perception".
Eric Merriman had previously written material for Kenneth Horne on Henry Hall's Guest Night and Variety Playhouse and written some stand-up comedy material for Barry Took. In June 1957 the BBC Radio Variety department asked Merriman to come up with an idea for a radio series starring Horne. Merriman devised a format for the show with the working title Don't Look Now. The original memo on the subject still exists in the BBC archives.
The proposal was for a solo comedy series based on a formula of a fictional week in the life of Kenneth Horne. Other memos from the BBC archive show how the proposed format evolved and the discussion of alternative titles (including Around the Horne).
Beyond Our Ken featured characters similar to those later featured in Round the Horne, for instance Betty Marsden's Fanny Haddock (which parodied Fanny Cradock). It was also notable for Pertwee's Frankie Howerd impersonation, Hankie Flowered, and Hugh Paddick's working-class pop singer Ricky Livid – the name being a mickey-take on contemporary pop singers' stage names such as Tommy Steele and Marty Wilde. Another favourite was Kenneth Williams' country character, Arthur Fallowfield, who was based on Dorset farmer Ralph Wightman, a regular contributor to the BBC radio programme Any Questions? Fallowfield's lines were full of innuendo and double entendre – on one occasion Horne introduced him as the man who put the sex in Sussex. Fallowfield's reply to any question began: "Well, I think the answer lies in the soil!" On one occasion, Paddick's character Stanley Birkenshaw, aka "Dentures", who would re-appear in Round the Horne, gave a noble and rather damp version of Hamlet's soliloquy: "To be or not to be, that issssssssssh the quesssssssssshtion ...".
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