SPEAKING ENTIRELY FOR HIMSELF

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 732, 24 July 1953, Page 25

SPEAKING ENTIRELY FOR HIMSELF

’HEN a BBC man was talking to a\ class of 10-year-olds in an East End London school recently two things soon became clear to him-the children were nearly all fans of Archie Andrews, Peter Brough’s life-like dummy in Educating Archie. Moreover, quite a few of them believed that Archie was a living person, or, at any rate, was able to speak for himself, "How does Archie ‘talk when Brough isn’t there?" was one of the trickiest questions the man from the BBC had to answer. The way Brough the ventriloquist -has_ built Archie into a star is one of the romances of British fadio, Penple, it is said, no _ longer

think of Archie as an arrangement of wood and string. He now numbers fans by the thousand. In one broadcast from the BBC he tried to shoot himself and angry mothers wrote to Brough protesting that he must never do such a thing again, because so many children burst into tears. Panels of listeners all over Britain have agreed that Educating Archie qualified for the National Radio~ Award given by the Daily Mail for the most entertaining programme . in sound radio for 195253. Recently two mem-

bers of the cast celebrated happy events. Hattie Jacques, wife of John Le Mesurier, the actor, gave birth to a son, and Harry Secombe became a proud father-also of a son. During a | break in the show Max Bygraves and his friend, Eric Sykes, the script writer, had a motoring holiday in Spain. Archie had a new head built, and he says that the improved model will enable him to put out his tongue if Mr. Bygraves, or anyone else, irritates him. Our pic- , ture shows Robert Moreton (Archie’s tutor), Archie himself. and © Peter Brough.