WEDNESDAY, March 27th at 7pm: MY WORD! Selections from the chiseled pen points of Frank Muir and Denis Norden


Frank Muir CBE (1920-1998) and Denis Norden CBE (1922-2018) many not be familiar names to many, but they were one of the top comedy writing duos – and successful writers, authors, presenters and entertainers – in the UK working both on radio and television.

Together they wrote BBC Radio‘s Take It From Here for over 10 years, and then appeared on BBC radio quizzes My Word! and My Music for another 35.

Muir was additionally a writer on the 1960s satire programmes That Was The Week That Waswhich launched the television career of David Frost (perhaps most internationally recognised for his interview with President Nixon following the latter’s resignation from office), and The Frost Report., again featuring David Frost. Muir went on to become Assistant Head of Light Entertainment at the BBC in the 1960s, and was then London Weekend Television‘s founding Head of Entertainment. However, he is probably most fondly remembered in the UK as a team captain on the  long-running BBC 2 witty comedy quiz series Call My Bluff, and as a voice-over artist in a number of famous UK television commercials.

Norden partnered in writing with Muir for more than 50 years, writing and producing radio and television shows for some of the top entertainers in the UK in those mediums during the 1960s. As a writer in his own right, Norden penned a number of Hollywood film scripts, including Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell and The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom, and wrote, narrated and starred in A Child’s Guide To Blowing Up A Car – a behind-the-scenes featurette showing how a stunt used in the James Bond movie Thurderball was put together, and which now appears on the 2006 ‘Ultimate Edition’ Thunderball DVD. Norden is perhaps most famously known for It’ll be Alright on the Night, his show featuring out-takes and bloopers from film and television, which ran from 1977 through to 2006, much of the material from which was “borrowed” by NBC in the United States for Dick Clark’s Bloopers.

(text above gratefully reprinted from Inara Pey: Living in a Modem World 3.24.19)

Join with Corwyn Allen. as he celebrates these two great British writers with selections from their work.

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