The Clitheroe Kid

The Clitheroe Kid was a BBC Radio comedy show featuring diminutive Northern comic Jimmy Clitheroe in the role of a cheeky schoolboy, who lived with his family at Lilac Avenue in an unnamed town in the North of England. The pilot show, pilot series, and 16 subsequent series, totalling 290 episodes in all, were originally broadcast between April 1957 and August 1972. Jimmy Clitheroe was 35 years old when he started playing the part on radio, but (in the variety theatres and, later, on television) he could pass as an 11-year-old boy because he had never grown physically beyond that age. Although in later years his lined face gave his real age away, this was not apparent on radio. Created by James Casey in 1956, the show was produced in Manchester, originally by the North Region studios of the BBC Home Service. However, after two series were aired on North Region only, in 1959 the show was deemed sufficiently popular to be moved to the national transmitters of the BBC Light Programme. The radio show was recorded in front of a studio audience, and there were frequently gales of laughter at Clitheroe's schoolboy humour, or at Alfie Hall's mangling of the English language as he tried to explain something, only to make it even less clear, as well as (to the mystification of home listeners) Hall's physical comedy, when he performed one of his trademark falls or other sight-gags. (description from Wikipedia) Collection also includes some interviews, documentaries and other ephemera at the end.