Lines from My Grandfather’s Forehead

Eight episodes of the vintage BBC Radio comedy starring Ronnie Barker

Created by Ronnie Barker and producer John Fawcett Wilson, Lines From My Grandfather’s Forehead ran for two series on BBC Radio 4 from 1971-72, winning a Writers' Guild Award for best radio comedy series. Scripted by Gerald Wiley (the pseudonym used by Ronnie Barker) and a team of writers including David Nobbs and Miles Kington, this ‘sequential entertainment for radio’ featured sketches, monologues, music and poems.

Among the hilarious sketches performed here, you’ll meet a struggling vicar, a Welsh birthday card poet, a perplexed psychoanalyst and a forgetful actor, and learn about the life of a great Englishman. There’s also an odd romantic tryst, a grave digger’s wedding, a bizarre slice of Shakespeare and a spoof of Paul Temple, and we hear the facts of life from the Minister for Population. Plus, treat your ears to an operatic train announcement, a poem for a man with a plan, the Aurora Borealis Waltz and a song about a beautiful – but sadly teetotal – maid….

Brimming with witty wordplay, this cornucopia of clever comedy stars ‘The One Ronnie’ – Ronnie Barker – with Terence Brady, Pauline Yates, Ann Beach and John Graham.

NB: Some of the humour on this recording reflects the era in which it was first broadcast

Cast and credits
Starring Ronnie Barker
With Terence Brady, Pauline Yates, Ann Beach and John Graham
Pianist: Gordon Langford
Banjo: Dick Abell
Written by John Graham, David Nobbs, David McKellar and Peter Vincent, Donald Monat and June Dixon, Myles Rudge and Ted Dicks, Pete Spence, Chris Allen, David Climie, Allan Scott and Chris Bryant, Tony Bilbow, Mike Fentiman, Chris Miller, Robert W. Service, Gordon Langford, Arnold Brown, Donald Churchill, Don Currell and Andy Kelvin, Charles Griffin, Miles Kington, Roy Lomax, Max Harris, Terence Brady, Peter N Christie, Bert Fisher, Christopher Langham, Katie Moss, Guy Boas, Kevin Paul and Harold Arpthorp, Peter Campbell, Ted Clayton and Patrick Ennis, Frank A Terry and Gerald Wiley
Produced by John Fawcett-Wilson
With thanks to Keith Wickham of the Radio Circle for supplying some of these audio recordings


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