Radio Drama · Old Time Radio · Comedy

The Will Hay Programme : 1940s OTR Comedy : High Quality

Heard
1945
Episodes
1
Language
English

The Will Hay Programme

More about it

Here are the two rare surviving editions of The Will Hay Programme, starring film comedian Will Hay. Co-starring Charles Hawtree (best known from the Carry On films).

This British radio comedy ran for three series during 1944 and 1945, but only two episodes survive.

Hay is playing Dr Muffin, the inept schoolmaster character for whom he was best known in his cinema films, headmaster of the fictional St Michael's School for Boys. He spends a minimum of time actually trying to teach the boys. Mainly he spends his time running a variety of schemes to exploit them financially.

Charlie Hawtree, who was quite young at the time, if not actually still a schoolboy, plays the leader of the juvenile delinquents who are forever trying to put one over on Muffin, while so far as possible avoiding actually learning anything!

Dr Muffin is a comedy character very much in the tradition of Professor Jimmy Edwards, in the later tv and radio success Whacko! -- they both owe something to the famous Tales of Bendover College, with their philosophy of spare the rod and spoil the child!

For those not in the know, a muffin is a type of toasted teacake which was popular in Britain once upon a time. School masters in the 1930s and 1940s were traditionally known among their young charges by nicknames based on popular foods, such as muffin and crumpet (for instance, there was a well known fictional character called Dr Barmy-Crumpet). The boys frequently refer to Dr Muffin…

Episodes, in broadcast order

  1. The Will Hay Programme - s02e05

    · 29 min

Where it comes from 1

The archive items its episodes are played from, best first, with each one’s rights as its archive states them. An episode two sets both hold is played from the first.

  1. The Will Hay Programme : 1940s OTR Comedy : High Quality

    Old Time Radio · 1 episode here · archive.org

    the Internet Archive states no licence or rights for it.

From the Old Time Radio collection at the Internet Archive, uploaded by the collector named.

More Comedy

Radio drama, old-time radio and historic broadcasts from the Internet Archive (its Old Time Radio collection with the Old Time Radio Researchers' sets, WWII Era Audio Recordings, the Pacifica Radio Archives, the Radio Haiti Archive, German radio plays and listeners' uploads), Wikimedia Commons (with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision's broadcasts) and the Library of Congress. Every episode plays from its archive, which this site does not copy; rights are as each archive states them. Nothing here is called public domain on this site's say-so. In the United States, sound recordings first fixed before 15 February 1972 have federal protection under the Music Modernization Act of 2018, for most until 2067 at the latest, so most American radio of the 1930s to the 1950s is not in the public domain there. Each set shows the licence, mark or statement its archive gives, and says whose it is. Horror, crime, war and westerns are for teenage and adult profiles, racist caricature for adults only, and children’s profiles hear what was made for children. More about these archives.