The Burkiss Way

… or you too can have a transcript like mine!

☞︎ Go directly to the transcripts ☜︎

If you’re wondering what The Burkiss Way is, a brief and not wholly inaccurate description would be to call it some sort of Monty Python transported to the radio. It was a sketch show that ran on BBC Radio 4 between 1976 and 1980 and contained lots of absurd and surrealistic humour combined with a boatful of parodies. Others have written more eloquently about it, so I just refer you to them here:

• Laughterlog
• Transdiffusion
• Wikipedia
• … and TV Tropes, too.

This page is mainly intended for holding my transcripts of various Burkiss Way episodes, so you can more easily check which episode a famous personality hailing from Croydon appeared for the first time in, find out just what Mr. Different Adams saw comedy as, or just generally refresh your memory which episode contained your favourite sketch. It’s still very much a work-in-progress, though, but that’s no reason not to enjoy what’s already there.

If after reading all of this (or some of the transcripts) you’d like to actually listen to the Burkiss Way for yourself, you can find episodes in various places:

• Series 1 was officially re-released by the BBC on CD a few years ago, although nowadays it’s out of print again. The same content also seems to be available via Audible or iTunes, or possibly other, similar sites if you’re so inclined.
  Note that Lesson 6 doesn’t include the (if somewhat apocryphal) Macmillan sketch if you're interested in that, though.

• BBC Radio 4 Extra occasionally repeats the Burkiss Way, so you can catch it that way if you’re willing to wait for it. Lesson 6 never seems to get repeated, though, so you need to obtain it elsewhere, and there might be some minor additional edits nowadays (there’s at least one in Lesson 2 and another one in Lesson 24). Come to think of it, Lesson 8 hasn’t been repeated since 2013, either, and the Series 4 Christmas ‘Easter’ special is missing as well, so you’d have to look elsewhere for at least those episodes after all…

• Copies of varying provenance and quality are also floating around on the rest of the Internet if you look for them on pages collecting old radio shows and suchlike. Ben Newsam has had a complete-looking collection for example (and much more if you’re looking for other classic BBC radio comedies as well unfortunately not directly available at the moment), although the apocryphal Macmillan sketch is missing from Lesson 6, too.
  That one is included in the Internet Archive’s copy of the show, although that in turn is at least missing the first minute or so of Lesson 4, so pick carefully.

So enough with the introduction now, and ☞︎ this way along to the transcripts.