"WLIIA" Radio Episode with Dawn French and Lenny Henry

Radio Episode with Dawn French and Lenny Henry

WLIIA cast

Featured on Whose Line Is It Anyway?
BBC
Album released 6 September 1993 but see below

Comedy
Cassette (probably original copy)

C+

So I was in England in 1996 and picked this up, and I don't even know if I'd known at that point that the impro comedy game show had actually started on radio, in early 1988 I believe.  The format is both familiar enough to be prehistory and different enough to be a little jarring.  Clive Anderson hosts, but not only John Sessions but Stephen Fry were regulars, this time with guests French and Henry (then about four years into their twenty-five-year marriage).  Perhaps because it's radio, and perhaps because it's an all-British cast, it's a wordier, obviously less physical version of WLIIA than would show up on the telly later that year.

I thought about reviewing the individual games, but there are so many comments, by Clive and co, in between games, it felt like one whole.  There are no real standouts here, although of course it is interesting to hear Stephen do P.G. Wodehouse (as Wooster) before being cast as Jeeves.  And John does D. H. Lawrence, as he would on television, and refers to a Chevy Nova, also as he would on the video version of WLIIA.