History Radio / TheBurkissWay

--> "To be honest, Sir, I think people are getting fed up with all these eyeballs on the screen in the first place."

--> '''Leonardo''': "Ah ha ha! Just like that! Just like that! Ah ha ha!"
--> '''Suspect''': "What on earth was that?"
--> '''Detective''': "That was an artists impression. [''audience reaction''] No, don't harrass me, I don't write this..."

--> "That was Bob Langley Gives You The Willies, with Burkiss spelt wrong."

--> "And as for your producer John Lloyd of Europe, I've told him before about using my phone calls to secretly slip in his silly closing announcements!"

* InTheStyleOf: The Quinn Martin version of LittleWomen.
--> "I shall never forget that melancholy winter's evening in August, when Amy, Jo, myself and the other one sat in the gathering dusk, our somber faces betraying the inward sense of despair we all felt so deeply. Was it, I wonder, the depressing gloom of our surroundings? Was it the stark chillness of the still night air? Or was it the four stiffs lying on the carpet with knives in their backs?"
--> [''Hawaii 5-0 theme tune starts playing'']
--> "Little Women! Starring William Fat as Jo, Beth, Meg and Amy!"

--> '''Mr Sausagemachine:''' It's still a bit, um, gratuitously smutty, somehow.

---> "Wardrobe Mistress: Fifi Burkiss. Wardrobe's Very Angry Wife: Naomi Burkiss. Set Dresser: Bill Burkiss. Welsh Dresser: Dai Burkiss. Titles: Lord Sir Duke The Marquis of Earl His Royal Highness Burkiss. Fight Arranger: Nigel Rees' mother in law, Mrs. Burkiss. Man Who Pours Out Fred Harris' Tea: Alfred Burkiss. Man Who Holds Up Fred Harris' Little Finger In The Air While He's Drinking His Tea: Bob Oliver Burkiss. Colour by Burkisscolour. Token Non-member Of The Burkiss Family: John Burkiss. ''Real'' Token Non-member Of The Burkiss Family: Denise Coffey. Nee Burkiss."

-->"I believe it's a sort of theological discourse on my faith in the certainty of resurrection to God's holy kingdom. What's it called again?"
-->"Err... ''Film/DraculaHasRisenFromTheGrave''."

--> "Starring the Yorkshire Dales. With some actors in front of them sometimes."

--> '''Louisa:''' Cor blimey, your majesty! If you wern't so bleedin' busy sitting on your bleedin' throne, you'd see what a fine mess the bleedin' country's in! Cor blimey, I mean to say! Have some lobster thermidor garnished with tiny sautéed BBC props! If you pulled your bleedin' finger out, our poor bleedin' soldiers bleedin' in bleedin' France, instead of bleedin' the bleedin' country apart, would be bleedin' the bleedin'-
--> '''Announcer:''' Next week, Louisa says 'bleeding' to Tsar Nicholas the Second of all the Russias and Alexandra; 'Cor blimey your highness' to the Grand Duchess Mary of Hess and Saxe-Coburg; and 'Pull your bleedin' finger out' to eight hereditary peers, two archbishops - one orthodox, the other heterosexual - and a photo of Queen Mary.

--> "Attention earthlings! I must warn you all that unless you surrender to us immediately, we shall be forced to ''put on pairs of glittery tights!''"
--> "Not the tights! They wouldn't dare!"
--> "Ooooh yes! We shall also slip into the shirts with strings up the front, get out the badly designed motorbike boots and ''ponce around with lots of women with no bras on!''"
--> "I may have my hands full here..."

--> '''Announcer''': Now, Studio - I hope you don't mind if I call you that...
--> '''Studio Audience''': [together] No, go right ahead.
--> '''Announcer''': Oh good. Well now Studio, I'm very sorry we can't actually pay you for this guest appearance in The Burkiss Way, but I'm afraid I haven't got enough Polos to go round!
--> '''Studio Audience''': [together] Go round what?
--> '''Announcer''': Ha ha! Very good, but in future stick to the script!

* SoundToScreenAdaptation: with a revised cast, including the return of Denise Coffey, LWT's ''End of Part One'' is essentially ''The Burkiss Way'' for television. Unfortunately it was [[ScrewedByTheNetwork badly scheduled]]. A DVD release is due November 2012.

* BigBrotherIsWatching: the spoof of ''NineteenEightyFour'' starring one WinstonSmoth.

--> "Mr. Mouthdribble's attempts to offer the D'Oyly Carte a nice bag of sweeties brings new meaning to the phrase 'Macintosh's Rollo.' "

* BBCQuarry: The Burkiss spoof of ''BlakesSeven'' was called ''Blake's Shot in Old Gravel Pit''.

* BBCQuarry
* BigBrotherIsWatching

* BillyBunter: Turns up as a character several times - First as an assistant to LordPeterWimsey (a NamesTheSame gag); then as part of an episode long spoof of the Greyfriars stories; then finally an adult Bunter appears as "the Assistant Fat Owl of the Mathematics Department", being interviewed by the school board about his habit of [[ImAHumanitarian eating the pupils]].

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Quite a few examples, but nothing beats Ghengis Khan angrily informing a narrator that he's "an idiot with a capital C!"

-->"Err... ''Dracula Has Risen From The Grave''."

* MyNameIsNotDurwood: In one sketch, a mad tax official keeps referring to everyone (including himself) as "Pronderghast". When a man who is visiting to complain about his tax bill finally manages to communicate that his surname is not Pronderghast, the official responds by asking his secretary Miss Pronderghast for a set of name-change forms.
** Subverted in a different sketch when a boss keeps pronouncing his employees surname differently every time he uses it. It appears to be this trope until the boss suddenly asks him to "stop changing the letters in your name around when I'm trying to talk to you!"

Over the course of the first series, which starred Chris Emmett, Nigel Rees, Fred Harris and Denise Coffey, the show's adherence to this conceit gradually loosened; By the middle of the second series (in which Denise Coffey was permanently replaced by [[Radio/ImSorryIllReadThatAgain I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again]]'s Jo Kendall) the idea had been abandoned completely except as a vague FramingDevice to be called on whenever the writers felt like it, and the show had taken on its true form as a surreal, absurdist sketch show mingling satire, parody, innuendo, and Pythonesque deconstruction of the radio medium itself.

The show developed an immediate [[CultClassic cult following]], its recording sessions attracting audiences so large they starting spilling out of the seats and onto the stage. Unfortunately, its chances of a breakthrough to mainstream popularity were scuppered somewhat when it and everything else on radio were overshadowed by the blockbuster mega-success of the original [[TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]. The fact that DouglasAdams had contributed several sketches to early shows didn't stop them thereafter spoofing it and him (as "Mr. Different Adams") from an only semi-fake position of bitterness and jealousy. It also really didn't help that Adams had explicitly based the character and temperament of Marvin the Paranoid Android on that of Andrew Marshall, who was naturally inclined to revenge.

* SpecialGuest: Peter Jones himself turns up in one of the shows [[TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy Hitchhiker's]] spoofs, delivering a Guide monologue that turns into a rant about The Burkiss Way's habit of mocking other 'much more successful' shows, and the poor quality of it's impressions: "This one, for instance, sounds absolutely nothing like me."

* {{Will}}

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/burkisscast_6139.jpg
[[caption-width:350:How To Pose For Strangely-Coloured Photographs The Burkiss Way, as demonstrated by Fred Harris, Nigel Rees, Chris Emmett and Jo Kendall. (Denise Coffey was appearing as a jar of vapour rub at the Old Vic.)]]

** The final show, "Wave Goodbye To [=CBE=]s The Burkiss Way", featured a number of pre-recorded announcements, voiced by DavidJason, mocking the [=BBCs=] crawling and obsequious coverage of the Queen’s birthday. These were cut entirely from repeats, shortening the episode by a full six minutes. They were eventually restored for a special broadcast as part of [=BBC7s=] celebration of the shows thirtieth anniversary, with Marshall and Renwick joking that it was okay to put them back [[HilariousInHindsight now that David Jason had safely got his knighthood]].

* SoundToScreenAdaptation: with a revised cast, including the return of Denise Coffey, LWT's ''End of Part One'' is essentially ''The Burkiss Way'' for television. Unfortunately it was [[ScrewedByTheNetwork badly scheduled]] and [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes hasn't had a DVD release]].

** Besides the aforementioned Mr Different Adams, the shows other recurring character based on a real person is Lord Russian Emigre, a shamelessly downmarket showbiz empresario (his production of ''Oedipus Rex'' cuts all the stuff about murdering his father and marrying his mother to make room for a hillbilly dance routine), clearly intended to be Baron Lew Grade. He reappears in an episode of ''End Of Part One'' under the even blunter name of Lord Jewish Caricature.

[[caption-width:350:How To Pose For Strangely-Coloured Photographs The Burkiss Way, as demonstrated by Fred Harris, Nigel Rees, Chris Emmett and Jo Kendall]]

* AchillesHeel: The Greek hero Testiclese. It wasn't his heel his mother held him by when she dipped him in the Styx, but [[GroinAttack oooh he wishes it was]].

* [=~Once For Yes, Twice For No~=]

* [=~What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?~=]

** "Pass Examinations The Burkiss Way" has an illiterate customer mispronounce the show's name as "The Burgess Wog" during the testimonials spot at the beginning. This line is omitted in current repeats.

* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Erich von Daniken, author of ''Chariots of the Gods'' and other best-selling books about how mankind was helped along by AncientAstronauts, was spoofed in one sketch as Eric Von Contrick, author of ''Spaceships of the Gods'', ''Some More of the Spaceships of the Gods'' and ''It Shouldn't Happen to a Spaceship of the Gods''. (At the end of the sketch, the Ancient Astronauts show up to demand a cut of the profits.)

* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Erich von Daniken, author of ''Chariots of the Gods'' and other best-selling books about how mankind was helped along by AncientAstronauts, was spoofed in one sketch as Eric Von Contrick, author of ''Spaceships of the Gods'', ''Some More of Me Spaceships of the Gods'' and ''It Shouldn't Happen to a Spaceship of the Gods''. (At the end of the sketch, the Ancient Astronauts show up to demand a cut of the profits.)

* FramingDevice: As stated, the show originally used the 'radio correspondence course' conceit as a framing device. When this was dropped, framing devices actually multiplied; episodes would frequently use more than one, [[NestedStory nested inside each other]], and the writers became experts at moving back and forth between them at the most unexpected moments. For good examples, see "First Prize the Burkiss Way", in which the show is a long game of 'The Dinosaur/Cheese Interlude'; "Get Cut Off the Bur-", which uses [[OneThousandAndOneNights the Arabian Nights]]; "Write Extremely Long Titles the Burkiss Way", which frames the episode inside [[TheMuppetShow an entirely different show]]; and "The Man From the Burkiss Way", which manages to trap ''all future Radio 4 broadcasts for the rest of time'' inside its framing device.

The show developed an immediate [[CultClassic cult following]], its recording sessions attracting audiences so large they starting spilling out of the seats and onto the stage. Unfortunately, its chances of a breakthrough to mainstream popularity were scuppered somewhat when it and everything else on radio were overshadowed by the blockbuster mega-success of the original [[TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]. The fact that DouglasAdams had contributed several sketches to early shows didn't stop them thereafter spoofing it and him (as "Mr. Different Adams") from an only semi-fake position of bitterness and jealousy.

Over the course of the first series, which starred Chris Emmett, Nigel Rees, Fred Harris and Denise Coffey, the show's adherence to this conceit gradually loosened; By the middle of the second series (in which Denise Coffey was permanently replaced by [[ImSorryIllReadThatAgain I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again]]'s Jo Kendall) the idea had been abandoned completely except as a vague FramingDevice to be called on whenever the writers felt like it, and the show had taken on its true form as a surreal, absurdist sketch show mingling satire, parody, innuendo, and Pythonesque deconstruction of the radio medium itself.

* TheCameo: Tim Brooke-Taylor makes a one line appearance in "Avoid Like The Plague The Burkiss Way". The debt Eric Pode of Croydon owes to his Lady Constance deCoverlet character from [[ImSorryIllReadThatAgain ISIRTA]] is acknowledged by having her turn up where Pode is expected. Turns out it's Eric Pode ''pretending'' to be Lady Constance.