Looking For Trouble

BBC Light Programme
1955-1956
Starring Jimmy Jewel, Ben Warriss, Betty Paul, John Blythe

Press publicity photo for Jimmy & Ben

Following on from radio comedies Up the Pole and Jimmy & Ben (already covered) the next starring radio comedy series for Jewel & Warriss was Looking For Trouble, which lasted 2 series in 1955 and 1956 on the BBC Home Service. 

As a break from Ronnie Hanbury, who had written Up the Pole and Jimmy & Ben, both series of Looking For Trouble were written by Len Fincham and Lawrie Wyman, who had been writing together for a few years in the early 50s including Morecambe & Wise's first television series flop Running Wild. They also wrote for Peter Jones and also Peter Brough of Educating Archie fame (for other appearances outside of EA). Wyman would go on to have much greater solo success a couple of years later when he created and wrote the long-running radio sitcom The Navy Lark (1959-1977) and its various spin-offs. Looking For Trouble was produced by Jacques Brown who worked on many hit radio comedy shows including Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh, The Goon Show and, after this series, Beyond Our Ken.

Broadcast on the BBC Home Service, Series 1 of Looking For Trouble lasted 11 episodes on Mondays at 20:30-21:00 between 2nd May and 11th July 1955. Series 2 lasted 12 episodes on Wednesdays at 19:00-19:30 between 7th March and 23rd May 1956. The very first episode was recorded earlier as a pilot on Monday 13th December 1954 with rehearsals that morning from 10:00 at Aeolian Hall room 2 then recording at the Playhouse that evening between 18:00 and 18:45 with the recording being intended for the Light Programme rather than the Home Service that eventually broadcast the series. Whilst not broadcast as a standalone pilot it eventually went out as the first episode as I have the original script for that pilot episode and the cast list is exactly the same as episode 1 and no others so one and the same. 

Looking For Trouble saw Jimmy and Ben play a pair of incompetent private detectives getting caught up in various cases and finding a way to muddle through more by luck than skill. 

It's usually very hard to find any plots and series details for these long lost forgotten radio shows as the newspaper magazine listings rarely went into radio comedy synopsis or even episode titles and few to nobody remembers them but having a script I at least have a flavour of this show. 

The pilot/first episode has the episode title Love Trouble on the script. In it Peggy Baxter (played by Betty Paul) wants to marry her boyfriend John Fairfellow (John Blythe). Peggy is a ward of retired Colonel Edward Burlap (Michael Shepley), her uncle. Her deceased parents left her an inheritance in trust that she gets when she marries and her uncle needs to approve of the match. He won't hear of her marrying Fairfellow as the Colonel has also rejected all her past boyfriends. Unbeknownst to Peggy this is because the Colonel has already borrowed/stolen the inheritance on the advice of his secretary Jarvis (John Gabriel) to pay bills and needs time to replace it. With Peggy becoming increasingly frustrated at the lack of an acceptable match the Colonel worries that Peggy will defy him this time and elope with Fairfellow so Jarvis hires a couple of detectives to follow Baxter and Fairfellow and prevent them eloping. This is where Jewel & Warriss, Detectives, come in, unaware of the criminal backstory of their hiring. Jarvis also suggests that the Colonel and he arrange a fake burglary to steal and sell Peggy's valuable jewellery collection inherited from her parents in order to replace the misappropriated money quicker, whilst using the stupid detectives as fall guys for the burglary. But as Jimmy and Ben incompetently try to foil the midnight elopement of the couple they instead unwittingly foil Jarvis' burglary. Also in this episode is Gene Anderson as the Colonel's Irish maid. As well as playing Jarvis, John Gabriel also plays the Turkish Bath Attendant when Jimmy and Ben follow Fairfellow to the Turkish Baths keeping him under surveillance.

Betty Paul and John Blythe go on to remain regulars throughout the series but whether they continue to play Peggy and Fairfellow through all other cases or act as repertory support playing different characters each week is unknown as I have no other plot synopsis or character names beyond this one script. It would seem unnecessary for those characters to stick around for unrelated cases with this one wrapped up though so I would err towards them changing characters each week here. Betty Paul had also been a regular in Jewel & Warriss' earlier radio hit Up The Pole (1947-1952) playing the girlfriend of Jon Pertwee.

There was usually a familiar face/voice guest appearing in most episodes too, mostly once apiece although former I.T.M.A. star Fred Yule appeared in a number of episodes. Some of the other guests would go on to be much bigger names than they were at this time, for example Arthur Lowe guest appeared in episode 5, future early Z Cars star Leonard Williams (Sergeant Percy Twentyman) appeared in episode 2. Series 2 had less guest stars but Sydney Tafler appeared in the first of S2.

I'm not sure if the rest of this series went out live or pre-recorded, but in any case as with the earlier Jimmy & Ben sadly no episodes of Looking For Trouble are known to survive in the archives so if, like the pilot, any were recorded in advance, or off-air, they were subsequently junked.

Jewel & Warriss here play their usual act as already established in Up the Pole. Jimmy is the childish naive simpleton (still doing his 'Arry, 'Arry, 'Arry shtick ftom Up the Pole) whilst Ben is still incompetent but a bit shrewder and wiser than Jimmy. 

The contemporary critics and public weren't too kind on this one. As big of a hit as Jewel & Warriss were with Up the Pole their act was an acquired taste and their energy more than the quality of their material carried them through at the best of times. Being from the Music-Hall and slapstick school of comedy didn't always translate well on radio anyway but the consensus here was that the scripts weren't good enough and TBH based on the pilot script I have we're not looking at The Navy Lark here! There's a couple of chuckles but boundless energy isn't enough to carry a show and as critics noted in reviews at the time the weak scripts gave little to the supporting cast to work with. 

Jewel & Warriss would go on to star in one more radio series following this before breaking up, that was The Jewel & Warriss Show which lasted one series of 13 episodes from November 1958. I'll cover that one another time.

Below is the opening few pages of the pilot script showing the set-up of Looking For Trouble (it's eight pages before Jewel & Warriss show up in what appears to be The John Blythe Show until then). As with Jimmy & Ben I've also got an original press publicity photo for Looking For Trouble and also included a review from newspaper clippings.