The Newsrevue Story

NewsRevue originated as an afterthought. Two writers from a London university revue group, Mike Hodd and Jack Thorington, had spent a year submitting material with varied success to BBC Radio 4's Week Ending. The group was going to Edinburgh with the usual university revue offering of late night tosh, and a selection from the material prepared for Week Ending was cobbled together at the last minute, directed by Tim Miller, for a lunch-time show. It opened on 18th August 1979 at the unpromising time of 1:30pm at the Royal Arch Halls on Queens Street.

To everybody's surprise, NewsRevue was a great success. The show sold out and transferred to a lunchtime season at the King's Head in London. Confirmation that NewsRevue was on the right track was provided when requests came for copies of a particularly scurrilous sex-scandal song about Liberal Party Leader Jeremy Thorpe were received from senior politicians of both the Labour and Liberal Parties.

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