Sound Charades

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Sound Charades is a variant of charades played on BBC Radio 4's "antidote to panel games", I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. As with some other ISIHAC games, such as Celebrity What's My Line?, the game has been created by taking an existing game and removing the central concept. As Humphrey Lyttelton puts it: "In the original, the players were not allowed to speak, resulting in much hilarity. Our version differs subtly in two ways."

The format of the game is largely similar to the original. One team is given the name of a book, film, television or radio series. They announce the number of words and the format, and act out a short improvised play, conveying the title, usually by means of a rather forced pun.

For instance, the clue for the BBC 2 science documentary series Q.E.D. was:

"I want some scratchcards."

"Well, Edie, you just join that line of people."

"I want some scratchcards."

"Just stand behind that man there, Edie."

"How can I get my scratchcards?"

"Edie, how else can I put this?"

["Queue, Edie"]

As the above shows, the sketches would often belabour the point somewhat. This was particularly true in later years when Graeme Garden and Barry Cryer invented the characters of Hamish and Dougal, two rural Scotsmen who featured regularly in the sketches, and later were given their own series, You'll Have Had Your Tea.

Another tradition in the later years was that Humph's initial explanation of the game would mention the television version of charades, Give Us a Clue. This would inevitably involve a double entendre about either Lionel Blair or Una Stubbs, for example:

The master of the genre was undoubtedly Lionel Blair, and who will ever forget him, exhausted and on his knees, finishing off An Officer and a Gentleman in under two minutes?

We particularly recall one very early show when Una Stubbs scored maximum points after the teams took only a few seconds to recognise her Fanny By Gaslight.

Humph usually announces, just before the "mystery voice" tells the listeners the title of the subject, that the team to perform it and the audience are being shown it on the "laser display screen" (sometimes described in more elaborate terms). This is, in fact, the programme's producer running on to the stage holding a large card with the title written on it — a joke only for the benefit of the studio audience (and to make listeners wonder why they laugh a moment after the words "laser display screen"). Occasionally, particularly if the apparatus has been described with more ridiculous lavishness (with terms such as "multiplex", "digitally enhanced" etc.), Humph has added another joke based on its actually being a big card by saying it has been "so generously funded by our hosts".