Gordon Crier

Gordon Crier (1912 – 16 September 1984) was a Scottish radio and television producer and writer.

His early successes included Band Waggon, the first comedy show designed for radio, broadcast by the BBC from 1938 to 1940, co-produced by Crier and Harry S. Pepper.[1][2] After the first three shows had flopped, the scriptwriter was dismissed and a team of Crier, Vernon Harris, Arthur Askey, and Richard Murdoch was brought in. They made Band Waggon the most popular radio show of the 1930s.[3]

In 1950 Crier was a founding member of the Lord's Taverners, with John Snagge, Roy Plomley, Brian Johnston, and others, a group of actors and BBC men who enjoyed watching cricket from the Tavern pub at Lord's Cricket Ground.[4]

In January 1952, Crier was arrested in Germany by the Russians, while organizing a tour by Gracie Fields, but was soon released.[5]

By 1953, Crier was working for an advertising agency, but he remained a friend of Ronnie Waldman and continued to feed ideas for programmes to the BBC.[6]

Selected credits

Notes

  1. Peter Hay , Canned Laughter: The Best Stories from Radio and Television (1992), p. 42
  2. Bandwaggon at britishcomedy.org.uk, accessed 30 July 2016
  3. Gordon Bathgate, Voices from the Ether: the history of radio, p. 58
  4. Charlotte Breese, Hutch (A. & C. Black, 2012), p. 152
  5. Gordon Crier returns to London after arrest by Russians dated 24 January 1952 at itnsource.com, accessed 30 July 2016: "Producer Gordon Crier returns to London and speaks of his arrest by the Russians, and his wife welcomes him home"
  6. Louis Barfe, Turned Out Nice Again: the Story of British Light Entertainment (Atlantic Books, 2013), [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XHbFLkrXezMC&pg=PT61#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 61
  7. 1 2 Owen Dudley Edwards, British Children's Fiction in the Second World War (Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 666
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