The Morton Pessel Show, by GST member Tony Bilbow and ex-BBC colleague Mike Fentiman, set in a 1962 radio studio (at the time of the Profumo scandal), was an engaging piece of nostalgic comedy that made the audience  laugh out loud a number of times. The basic idea, a criminologist telling true crime stories that a bunch of actors animated with their voices, allowed humour to develop on two levels - the rather daft stories themselves and the antics in the studio.

Each act featured a half hour radio programme. The first one was about a series of music hall performers being smashed to death by a brick, illustrated deliciously in a balletic mime by Fred Griessen in a black balaclava. The crimes were investigated by two inadequate policemen, Roger Rose and David Lane, and witnesses came in the form of Charles Dickens (Richard Kinder), Karl Marx (Rusty Ashman), and various Londoners (Sonia Woolf  as Bunty the gin-sodden actress letting rip firstly with her luvvie, and then with her full blown cockney, was a marvel). The funniest joke (based on rhyming slang- “pony and trap”) passed by most of the audience, but everyone enjoyed the idea of Dickens and Marx getting their best ideas from trite things the daft detectives said. And who can resist old ones like this , when the maid (Miriam  Clark) answers the door to the policemen: “Mr Charles Dickens?” - “No, I’m Ruby!” I loved the idea that it was nose-print technology the police were developing in the 19^th century, and that bricks didn’t yield much forensic evidence because they are porous. I won’t give away the identity of the murderer, in case this play  turns out to be as long-running a hit as The Mousetrap, but I did like  the chatty dialogue between the condemned man and the hangman who it turned out were old mates.

In the second, a farmer and his horse are killed by poison darts, just after the village newspaper woman (Sonia again as a country widow with a bike) has been knocked over by a farm cart driven by the murdered man (David) It turned out he may have been more than just a friend. Another  inept policeman played by Rusty, and various antipodeans came into the picture before David and Richard then became the lawyers in Sonia/Mrs Posset’s court case  (one snooty and dashing  - and obviously destined to lose in this deliberately clichéd scene -  the other elderly and ailing and cleverer),  tried by Roger as the judge. I won’t go in the detail of the foul play that was revealed -  except to say it hadn’t entirely unreasonable to put a stop to what the victim had been up to.

The studio antics involved the self centred hedonistic star of the show (played by author and director Tony Bilbow) reporting on his times with the Cliveden set. As older members will know, this included the society osteopath Stephen Ward, and good time girls Mandy Rice Davies and Christine Keeler. He had led on his studio assistant Jenny (Miriam) and was now callously dumping her. Rusty as Jeff the studio engineer was always taking the mickey out of Morton Pessel, and I’d have liked Tony to give him some more arrogant sneering waspishness. If it is produced again I think it needs to be played by someone who can do nasty rather stronger than the very charming Mr Bilbow.. Fred was a pleasure as a fey dinner-jacketed studio announcer, and they all played well the idea that they would rather be in the pub. As Sonia/Bunty  put it “I only had a couple of gin and tonics …and another six”  There wasn’t much of a storyline for anyone else and  Liz Amiel’s talents were a bit uncalled-on as the producer,  but there were lovely little touches for everyone in an evening that gave us a load of laughs from a very good team.

I later found myself explaining the references to younger people. It is quite hard to convince anyone that Jimmy Clitheroe was amusing. You had to be there, I think  

Tony Newton