Showing results by narrator "Jonathan Cecil" in All Categories

When Monty Bodkin returns home to England after a year in America, his absence has strengthened his resolve to claim the hand in marriage of his intended, the hockey-playing Gertrude Butterwick. However, his association with an overweight Hollywood movie mogul, his redoubtable wife, and even more formidable stepdaughter sets the scene for complications.

TV’s first ecclesiastical comedy, All Gas and Gaiters was enjoyed by more than 10 million viewers on BBC One between 1966 and 1971. Written by husband-and-wife-team Pauline Devaney and Edwin Apps, it was so popular that a selection of scripts were revised and re-recorded for radio with the same star cast as the television series. Robertson Hare starred as the archdeacon of the fictional St Ogg’s Cathedral.

Uncle Fred, or to give him his full title of Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, fifth Earl of Ickenham, is considered by some as a splendid gentleman - a sportsman to his fingertips. Mr. Twistleton, nephew to the Earl, and otherwise known as Pongo to his friends, has a differing view. He simply describes his uncle as being loopy to the tonsils. But when the eccentric and well-loved Uncle Fred plays Cupid to Lord Emsworth, his old friend at Blandings Castle, little did he know that he would be known as Impostor A and the Lord’s beloved pig, the Empress, as Impostor B....

Bertie Wooster's friend Gussie Fink-Nottle is sentenced to 14 days for wading in the fountain at Trafalgar Square. Bertie is worried that Gussie's fiancé Madeline will be angry because she has a distressing habit of turning her attentions to Bertie when her fiancé upsets her. Bertie has the bright idea of impersonating Gussie, and showing up at Deverill Hall. The situation is wonderfully comical when Gussie shows up, posing as Bertie. Only Jeeves, arriving in his own disguise, can sort out this mess.

Things on board the R.M.S. Atlantic are terribly, terribly complicated... Monty Bodkin loves Gertrude, who thinks he likes Lotus Blossom, a starlet, who definitely adores Ambrose, who thinks that she has a thing for his brother, Reggie, who is struck by Mabel Spence, sister-in-law of Ikey Llewellyn (movie mogul, Ambrose's prospective employer and reluctant smuggler), but hasn't the means to marry her.

The house party at Chateau Blissac, Brittany, features a rather odd array of guests this year. Mr. J. Wellington Gedge is hoping for some peace and quiet while his wife takes herself off for a while. She, however, has invited numerous visitors to the chateau, to whom he will have to play reluctant host. Senator Opal and his daughter are expected, and so is the chateau's handsome owner, Vicomte de Blissac.

If Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge had a fiver for every dodgy scheme he had ever floated, he would be a very rich man indeed. In these ten stories he tries every way of making money, from writing political slogans to opening a college for dogs. In his own eyes, Ukridge is a Great Man and a visionary. In ours, he is English literature's most delightful chancer and one of Wodehouse's greatest comic creations: charming, ambitious, persuasive, optimistic and almost always disastrous.

If Lord Ickenham had not dislodged the hat of Beefy Bastable with a well-aimed brazil nut, the latter's famous legal mind might never have been stimulated to literature. But the incident provoked Beefy to write an expose of the younger generation.

The idyll of Blandings Castle is about to be disturbed, for the Hon. Freddie Threepwood is poised to make his debut as a jewel thief. Freddie, however, is not alone: Blandings is simply brimming with criminals and impostors all intent on stealing Aunt Constance's 20,000 pound diamond necklace. It is left to the debonair Psmith, with his usual aplomb, to unscramble the passion, problems, and identities, of one and all.

These wonderfully funny short stories feature a cast of outrageous characters, all plotting to save themselves from wedlock, poverty, or ignominy - with various degrees of success. This recording includes the following stories: "All's Well with Bingo", "Bingo and the Peke Crisis", "The Editor Regrets", "Sonny Boy", "Anselm Gets His Chance", "Romance at Droitgate Spa", "A Bit of Luck for Mabel", "Buttercup Day", and "Ukridge and the Old Stepper".

From the author, whom the Times called "a comic genius" and "an old master of farce", are 11 further stories featuring such eccentric characters as Freddie Widgeon, Cyril (Barmy) Fotheringay Phipps, Percy Wimbolt, and Pongo. Young Men in Spats includes the following stories: "Fate", "Tried in the Furnace", "Trouble Down at Tudsleigh", "The Amazing Hat Mystery", "Good-bye to All Cats", "The Luck of the Stiffhams", "Noblesse Oblige", "Uncle Fred Flits By", "Archibald and the Masses", and more.

My Man Jeeves, first published in 1919, introduced the world to affable, indolent Bertie Wooster and his precise, capable valet, Jeeves. Some of the finest examples of humorous writing found in English literature are woven around the relationship between these two men of very different classes and temperaments. Where Bertie is impetuous and feeble, Jeeves is coolheaded and poised.

The peaceful slumber of the Worcester village of Rudge-in-the-Vale is about to be rudely disrupted. First there’s a bitter feud between peppery Colonel Wyvern and the Squire of Rudge Hall, rich but miserly Lester Carmody. Second, that arch-villain Chimp Twist has opened a health farm, and he and Soapy and Dolly Molloy are planning a fake burglary so Lester can diddle his insurance company. After the knockout drops are served, things get a little complicated. But will Lester’s nephew, John, win over his true love, Colonel Wyvern’s daughter Pat, and restore tranquility to the idyll?

When Bingo Little falls in love with a tea-and-bun-shop waitress at a Camberell subscription dance and Bertie falls into the mulligatawny, there's work for a wet-nurse. Who better than Jeeves? With his usual savoir-faire and panache Jeeves unties the tangles and irons out the creases in his unflappable and inimitable way. "I always say, and I always shall say," proclaims Bingo Little, "that you've only got to stand on Jeeves and fate can't touch you."

The one thing that could be expected to disturb the peace of life at Blandings is the incursion of imposters. And Blandings has imposters like other houses have mice. On this occasion, there are two of them: both intent on a dangerous enterprise.

When Maud Marsh flings herself into George Bevan's cab in Piccadilly, he starts believing in damsels in distress. George traces his mysterious traveling companion to Belpher Castle, home of Lord Marshmoreton, where things become severely muddled. Maud's aunt, Lady Caroline Byng, wants Maud to marry Reggie, her stepson. Maud, meanwhile, is known to be in love with an unknown American she met in Wales. So when George turns up speaking American, a nasty case of mistaken identity breaks out.

Joey Cooley is a golden-curled child film star, the idol of American motherhood. Reginald, Third Earl of Havershot, is a boxing blue on a mission to save his wayward cousin from the fleshpots of Hollywood. Both are under anesthetic at the dentists when something strange happens - and their identities are swapped. Suddenly Joey can use his six-foot frame to get his own back on his Hollywood persecutors. But Reggie has to endure everything Joey had to put up with in the horrible life of a child star - including kidnapping.

The instinct of the true Porterhouse man faced with a crisis is to reach for the bottle and then to fall back on the subtle tactical skills honed at Cambridge down the centuries: blackmail and kidnap. But will these be enough? Menaced on all sides - by the collapse of the Chapel, by the tentacles of organised crime, and by the hovering threat of the abominable Dog’s Nose Man - will Porterhouse be forced to unleash the most fearsome weapon in its armoury - the college food?

When Tubby informs his fiancee that her new hat makes her look like a Pekingese, she is naturally incensed. But it is when he questions the validity of the story of her narrow escape from a beastly, hungry shark that the engagement is firmly called off. But love is in the air for Gussie Fink-Nottle. He abandons his beloved newts to court the new object of his affections, the dreamy and romantic Miss Madeline Bassett. He is dressed as Mephistopheles...and it appears that even the Devil can rely on Jeeves.

When Maud Marsh flings herself into George Bevan's cab in Piccadilly, he starts believing in damsels in distress. George traces his mysterious travelling companion to Belpher Castle, home of Lord Marshmoreton, where things become severely muddled. Maud's aunt, Lady Caroline Byng, wants Maud to marry Reddie, her stepson. Maud, meanwhile, is known to be in love with an unknown American she met in Wales. So when George turns up speaking American, a nasty case of mistaken identity breaks out.