J Kingston Platt : Radio Comedy
J Kingston Platt's Showbusiness Handbook : Radio Comedy British radio comedy series. Written and presented by Peter Jones . In character as the fictional showbiz doyen J Kingston Platt, the comedy actor and raconteur recounts spoof tales of his career. Comic monologues written from the perspective of an old showbusiness survivor, telling tall tales from the world of showbiz -- including many indiscreet revelations, with the names changed to avoid libel actions and death threats! All the available episodes are presented here. But there are still various others which are so rare I've been unable to trace them. If YOU have an episode not included on this page, please open a free account and upload the recording to the Internet Archive! Some episodes presented here were especially difficult to find, especially those on the Double Cassette box sets. Series 1 Episode 4, Getting Rid of a Troublemaker , was banned long ago and has never been repeated on the radio, due to its adult themes ( thought to be even more explicit than Episodes 9 and 10, which involve the filming of a pornographic blue movie! ) -- but bear in mind that this is only radio ! The initial recording of Episode 4 uploaded here was sourced from a BBC commercial release on Cassette in 1991. I have since received a set of episodes which were also found on the various Cassette releases in the 1990s, all four of which are extremely rare, none of them having ever been repeated on radio. BBC Radio 7 only repeated some episodes: most of the 1986 BBC series [Series 1] and all the 1993 BBC series [Series 3]. They never aired the complete 1986 BBC series [Series 1], nor any of the 4-part 1988 BBC series [Series 2], nor the 2-part 1989 BBC Christmas Special . BBC Enterprises issued one double-cassette box set in 1991 containing 8 of the BBC radio episodes. When Enterprises declined to issue a 2nd set, Peter Jones re-recorded six of his scripts for a commercial cassette release by CSA Telltapes Ltd in 1994 (marketed as "Audiobooks"), who also released those cassettes whilst the company was alternatively known as CSA Word . There was then a third commercial cassette release under the same title, by Canongate Books Ltd in 1999. Presumably, all three releases are the same set of 6 episodes. These "Audiobooks" are re-recordings, not the BBC radio recordings. They are longer than the BBC episodes (between 27 and 33 minutes, not 24 minutes), as each includes several minutes of scripted additional material. This is why some episodes can be found as both BBC 24 minute recordings and as longer CSA or Canongate extra length recordings. So bear in mind that in addition to the original 21 radio episodes, 14 of which were repeated by BBC Radio 7, and 8 of which were released on the BBC cassettes, a further 6 episodes (all longer versions) were released on non-BBC cassettes. In all, there are four double-cassette box sets: 1 BBC box set containing 8 radio episodes on two 90-minute tapes; and 3 non-BBC box sets containing six longer episodes on two 90-minute tapes. In the episodes presented here, all are radio broadcasts except s02e02 and s02e03.
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.