Radio Production

Strauss House Productions comprises a team of associates from a range of multi media fields. Working independently of each other, as well as together, their combined talents form a highly efficient and creative team which is able to draw from a range of experiences.

We produce special features, documentaries and series for regional and network radio.

BBC Radio 2 logo

Barry’s Musical Masterpieces

BBC Radio 2: 10pm 13th, 20th & 27th January 2016.

Produced by Strauss House Productions.

Producer Clair Wordsworth, Executive Producer Hilary Robinson.

Barry Humphries

Barry Humphries presents a new three part music series for BBC Radio 2

Barry Humphries presents a selection of his musical memories and aims to transport listeners to a bygone era with vintage records. As a little boy growing up in far-off Melbourne during the 1930s and 40s, Barry was captivated by the sounds and music emanating from his parents’ wireless set. During childhood illnesses, Barry’s mother placed the radio set in his bedroom and little Barry was so entranced by the music that he tried to make whooping cough, measles and mumps last as long as possible. Barry’s early musical memories include Fred Astaire, Flanagan and Allen, The Comedian Harmonists, Joseph Schmidt, Harry Roy and Judy Garland among others.

In the second programme on 20th January, Barry Humphries celebrates the age of the wireless. The show opens with Henry Hall and the BBC Dance Orchestra performing the song ‘Radio Times’ (a copy of the sheet music for which was issued with the 1934 Christmas edition of the magazine of the same name). Also musical comedians Norman Long and Stanelli perform an ode to the BBC Licence Fee with the song ‘All For Ten Shillings A Year’.

In the final programme on 27th January, Barry Humphries recalls his first job working at a major record label in Melbourne in the early 1950s during an historic time in the music industry. The era of 78 r.p.m. was over and the 1950s were the Age of the Microgroove! Also, Barry remembers his arrival in London on 1st June 1959 when there was a sense that London was a city on the verge of change. He arrived just in time to catch Randolph Sutton giving his last performances at the Metropolitan Musical Hall on Edgware Road before it was pulled down to make way for the West Way and just before a new generation made their mark on British theatre in the 1960s.

The best Radio 2 series in this, or any month for as long as I can remember

The New Statesman

Humphries weighs every word in his script, switching between what a child would hear in a record and what time has since taught him about it. He speaks lightly, firmly, allusively, letting the listener make connections to the music and its context.

Gillian Reynolds, The Telegraph

Good Morning Sunday

A weekly programme of music and guest interviews steered towards the religious and ethical issues of the day. Hilary first worked with Don Maclean on the programme and then spent six years producing Aled Jones before going freelance. Now she occasionally supports the existing production team producing Clare Balding and Hardeep Singh Kohli. Other stand in presenters have included Eamonn Holmes, John McCarthy, and Sally Magnusson.

The Robeson Files

Documentary presented by Dotun Adebayo

A moving and powerful documentary in which Dotun Adebayo looked at back at the extraordinary talents of one of the greatest American recording stars of the early 20th century, Paul Robeson, at how both the FBI and MI5 colluded to try and crush both his career and social justice activism, and examined his extraordinary relationship with the miners of South Wales.