Much Binding in the Marsh

I found something online yesterday which made me very happy. Five words at the head of a 100 megabyte torrent file – "Much Binding in the Marsh". Most people have never heard of Much Binding – it came into its own in that awkward time when the wartime shows were winding down and the peacetime shows hadn’t really started yet. The torrent contained four episodes – there may be more in the archives but only four were ever released on cassette tape. I remember buying that cassette from what was Dillon’s in St Anne’s Square in Manchester some time in 1992. I all but wore it out from over use. Certainly my copy – on top of some wardrobe somewhere these days – wouldn’t be of much use if I wanted a decent digital copy. So to find someone who preserved theirs a little better was a joy. I’ve just listened to the first half of the first episode and it was great.

Much Binding in the Marsh began life as the RAF strand of "Merry Go Round" – a wartime entertainment which also included Eric Barker’s "Waterlogged Spa" (Navy) and Charlie Chester’s "Stand Easy" (Army). The former being the series which young naval officer Jon Pertwee was sent to spy on and which ended up employing him as a way of stopping him reporting their naughty jokes to the war office. After the war, all three went on to evolve into peace time series with creditable runs during those difficult years. Of the three, Much Binding in the Marsh (which ran until 1954) was the most successful. Its format went from an RAF base to a country club and eventually a weekly newspaper but the basic structure remained the same.

The show was written by and starred Kenneth Horne and Richard "Stinker" Murdoch. Kenneth Horne would of course go on to star in two self-titled series, "Beyond Our Ken" and "Round the Horne" for which he will be forever remembered. Ill health and outside business interests – combined with being born a few years too early – meant he was never able to translate his radio success to television and this is a huge shame as he was one of our greatest ever comic performers. He had that gift that Arthur Lowe and Tony Hancock had for being the rock around which comedy would orbit. In Much Binding he was the senior man at the base (or at the club or on the paper) who was in a permanent state of slight befuddlement. The only thing he was absolutely sure of was that he was brighter than Murdoch (which wasn’t always true) and that he was better than Costa (which he was). He would go off at tangents about his time in Sidi Barrani during the war and let slip things best kept between gentlemen ("Not a word to Bessie…")

The show had catchphrases like any other of its era. We like to think that the Fast Show and Little Britain created that style of comedy but really they just dusted it off and gave it a new airing. If anything, the old radio comedies did it even more shamelessly – everything being done in front of a studio audience who would applaud and cheer whenever something familiar happened. So Much Binding only had to have Sam Costa knock on a door, pop his head round and say "Good morning sir – was there somethink?" for the place to fall down. They were more innocent times for sure but there is no real difference between that and Little Britain’s more vulgar repetitions.

Each episode would open with its famous theme tune and the announcer would – often reluctantly – introduce the show. Mr Horne would then segue into "your old friend", Richard Murdoch. Murdoch was a professional sidekick for most of his career. Whether it was Kenneth Horne, Arthur Askey or his heads of department in "The Men From the Ministry", Murdoch could play straight man, bumbling assistant or just jolly good fellow like few others. Murdoch’s great gift was that he was so likable. He had a voice you couldn’t help but love. He never got a really big break in films or television but he worked steadily and was last seen playing Uncle Tom in the early series of Rumpole of the Bailey – a part that was retired from the books when Murdoch passed away in 1990. His stand up routines (which wouldn’t have been called that in those days – it was probably marked in the script as "patter" or possibly "opening remarks") were gently satirical and the audience loved his gags about rationing and austerity.

He would then feed into a jolly dance number by Stanley Black and his orchestra – "Me and My Shadow" or "I won’t Dance, Don’t Ask Me" – that sort of thing. This gave the cast chance to turn their pages over and get to a sketchy, gag-filled section which would’ve sown the seeds of this weeks plot if the episodes had a plot. Here we’d meet Sam Costa and Dudley Davenport. Davenport, an unsubtle upper class twit of the sort the British liked to laugh at in the 1940s (and still do today if we’re honest), played by Maurice Denham. His catchphrases included the fantastically functional "Dudley Davenport at your service sir" (just in case the audience didn’t realise who was speaking), "Oh I say – I am a fool" and his "yuk yuk yuk yuk yuk" laugh. The listeners loved all of them. He would be replaced in later series by his "cousin" Maurice Davenport played by the legendary Nicholas Parsons.

Heard today (I believe it occasionally pops up for short runs on BBC7 but there is so little in the archives that it never gets lengthy exposure) it isn’t terribly funny. I can see why it was funny though and that’s good enough for a brain like mine. I want to take comedy apart and find out how it works. If I don’t put it back together correctly and it stops making me laugh then so be it. There are still some jokes I like – Costa once remarks "Who you calling a lookout? I’ll sue you for arson" which is just the sort of line I like. At other times the show’s lack of professional writers (Murdoch and Horne had little if any involvement in the scripts for their other career hits) does show with scenes made up of parlour game type witticisms ("Mr and Mrs Monasterygarden and their daughter Ena Monasterygarden"). Their strengths seem to be musical comedy as several of the surviving episodes descend into everyone having a turn singing a funny song. And by funny song I don't just mean witty couplings - they did scabre dances, songs in foreign languages and one particular pastiche seemed to cover every single musical genre left in the world. With only a week to write each show, they were wise to play to their strengths even at the expense of the odd awkward segment which didn't work.

Much Binding in the Marsh isn’t one of the classics of the golden age of radio. It didn’t redefine comedy like the Goon Show or hold a nation together like ITMA. It was a good, solid, amusing piece of family entertainment starring two of the most likable and talented radio performers of all time. It is also possible that you wouldn’t be reading this now if it wasn’t for Much Binding – it was the show which first encouraged me to put pen to paper, a coming together which eventually spawned this footling website. Something people generally have very mixed feelings about.

Some audio clips -

The way every show opened