Untitled

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 769, 15 April 1954, Page 17

STILL ON TOP

;-VEN with folded arms and a "trophy" in the middl8, the Take It From Here cast does not quite manage to look like a group of successful footballers. The . tvpical "team" pose seemed called for however ac TIFH

= ee nt «Oe ees reall -..- -_- SS OE OOS Oe had just the National Radio Award for the most amusing programme of the year.

The show with the changed cast shown here has not yet been broadcast in New Zealand, but the absence of Joy Nichols, now in Australia, seems not to have

affected .its popularity. June Whitfield, the blonde at left centre, now takes the speaking parts formerly done by Joy, and Alma Cogan, next to her, the singing. Jimmy, Edwards, moustache rampant, stands at left back, with Dick Bentley, showing few signs of his allegedly great age, on the right. The producer of this weekly jollity, Charles Maxwell, holds the microphone at centre and is flanked by the show Tipt writers, dark and brooding Denis Norden on the left and Frank Muir on the right. Since Take It From Here started in 1948 it has climbed steadily upwards in listeners’ affections. Producer and authofs. follow the technique of that most famous of broadcast variety shows, ITMA, in that they are constantly changing TIFH’s format. No character or catch-phrase, however popular, is allowed to stay for long, and when it has reached the height of its fame it is whipped out and another, soon to become equally popular, inserted in its place. It is, as Dunhill might put it, a Let-us-not-rest on our-laurels-but-go-onwards-upwards-and-ever-upwards type of show.