Wally Who, What, When, Where, Why?

It’s odd, the things which can become obscured so easily.

Take Wally Who?, an early Grant Naylor radio sitcom from 1982, which I’ve written a bit about recently. It is not, to be fair, a series which is currently part of the pop culture zeitgeist. I am not expecting to find huge screeds written about the show in Digital Spy, nor am I expecting BBC Sounds to commission Obsessed With… Wally Who? But there are certain things which you think would be easy enough to nail down.

For instance: the number of episodes of the programme broadcast. That’s fairly basic. In fact, it might be the single most basic fact you could expect to know about a series. And yet every source online seems to have a different answer.

The BBC website lists 5 episodes. My old hangout Ganymede & Titan says 10 episodes. radiohaha also says 10, although erroneously gives the network as Radio 4 rather than Radio 2. The British Comedy Guide gives 5 episodes. Rob Grant himself says 8 were commissioned. Somebody even sent me a copy of what is listed internally at the BBC; they have 5 episodes, although the last one is confusingly labelled Episode 6.

What the bloody hell is going on?

Let’s figure out what we know first. And one thing we absolutely, 100% know is that there are at least six episodes of the show. Ganymede & Titan have five episodes of the show available for download: “Just the Way You Are”, “The Whiz Kid”, “I Want to be in Movies”, “The Painting”, and “The Caravan”. Meanwhile, Radio 4 Extra also have five episodes in the rotation, but they miss out “The Caravan”, and instead play an episode called “All I Want for Christmas”, which isn’t currently on G&T. That’s six episodes of the show, available to listen to right now.

So the next obvious step is to consult the Radio Times capsules from the initial TX. This is slightly more complicated than it needs to be, as the show was actually broadcast twice a week; once on Sundays at 1:30pm, and then repeated Fridays at 10pm. The full capsule was on Friday’s page for the first couple of shows – yes, oddly enough, the repeat – and then more sensibly moved to Sunday.

So, here are the capsules for the episodes which first broadcast between the 7th November and the 17th December 1982:

You will note that Episode 4 is missing a title in the Radio Times capsules. This is, presumably, the episode G&T lists as “The Caravan”. One thing I do know, from somebody checking internally at the BBC for me, is that the BBC don’t hold a copy of this episode at all – explaining its absence from the Radio 4 Extra repeats. Meaning the only place you can actually hear that episode currently is on Ganymede & Titan.¹

All of which is a little complicated. So let’s simplify things; here’s a little episode guide for the show, piecing everything we know above together:

Six episodes, job done, right?

No. Here’s where things get really confusing. Because the Radio Times actually lists four more episodes, continuing in the same Sunday/Friday slots, airing the week after “All I Want for Christmas”. (Skipping Christmas week itself.)

Here are the Radio Times capsules for these four episodes:

You will, of course, spot something unusual about them. Unlike the first six episodes (aside from “The Caravan”), there are no episode titles listed for any of these remaining four. Indeed, any kind of identifying information about them at all.

And something here just gives me pause. I can cope with the Radio Times having generic capsules. I can cope with not having copies of the episodes. I can even cope with the BBC losing the masters of these four shows. But when all three aspects are put together, I get suspicious. How come we know so much about the first six episodes of the series – even down to having copies of all of them – but know absolutely nothing about these last four?

They really do feel like ghost episodes. Do they actually exist?

Whichever way you turn, the answer seems unlikely. Maybe these four episodes really did exist – but for there to be no further information about them at all is very strange. Maybe they never existed, and were just repeats – but repeating the series so quickly is odd, and besides, the Radio Times would normally indicate they were repeats.³ Or maybe something happened, and the series was originally intended to have ten episodes, and then for some reason stopped at six. However you look at it, it seems unlikely, but there has to be some kind of explanation.⁴

The thing is: I’ll find out eventually. The standard BBC systems may not have thrown up the answers, but there will almost certainly be revelations at the BBC’s Written Archives Centre regarding exactly what was broadcast on Radio 2 on those dates. I’ll keep plugging away, and I’m sure the mystery will be solved at some point. Though please let me know if you have any ideas.

But it strikes me as so odd. You really wouldn’t think that it would be so difficult to work out an extremely basic piece of information about a sitcom broadcast in 1982; within my lifetime, in fact, and I’m not yet 40. And let’s not forget, this was a mainstream sitcom. Sure, the programme is barely-known now, but it premiered nationally on Radio 2, and got a repeat in the same week. You can’t get much more mainstream than a twice-weekly broadcast on one of the most popular radio stations in the country. Considering we can find out the most obscure things with a bit of research, you would think finding out how many episodes Wally Who? had would be the easiest thing in the world.

Sometimes, the most obvious things just disappear into the ether.

With thanks to David Brunt and John Williams.