Leonard Barras Complete Radio Broadcasts

As some of you will know, the download links on previous Barras posts are now dead. The recordings had been accumulated and uploaded piecemeal as other Barrasophiles kindly assisted in filling the gaps. I have taken the opportunity to rearrange the recordings into chronological order and am now happy to present them here.

1982 - Sideways a Bit
1983 - Certain Vicissitudes
1984 - Very Likely (three episodes)
1985 - Up The Tyne in a Flummox (five episodes)
1986 - Further up The Tyne in a Flummox (four episodes)
1988 - Even Further up The Tyne in a Flummox (four episodes)
1989 - Flummoxed Four Times (four episodes)
1991 - Eva and Adamson (four episodes)
1993 - Eva and Adamson Again (four episodes)
1996 - Quintessentially Flummoxed (four episodes)

Leonard Barras - I think this really is the complete archive now

Hold the front page of the Wallsend Weekly Buffoon!

Up the Tyne in a Flummox

Public Exposures
A Poultice for a Poet
A Fearful Conflagration
An Elderly Frame
The Finger in the Filing Cabinet

Flummoxed Four Times

This is the order in which the stories are given on the BBC cassette.  I stand to be corrected about whether or not this is also the order in which they were broadcast.  I'm guessing it was a series of four broadcasts with two stories per episode. 

Just About Everybody Out

Speed Bonny Greengrocers Horse
It Was Possibly Watling Street
What Day It Was
The Millenium Minus A Bit
Under Canvas With Trapezium
Several Extra Marital Relations
What Charm Can Soothe

Stories 3, 4, 5 & 6 were posted here earlier.  Here are episodes 1, 2, 7 & 8.

UPDATE. Dead download links removed. Please see post of 16 June 2015 for a complete set of recordings.

Leonard Barras - Eva and Adamson Again

Episode 1
The Marks of Marriage & Unachievable Gazebos
Episode 2
Relativity With A Vengeance & A Rancorous Agency
Episode 3
Too Late for Horsewhipping & But Not Much Fire
Episode 4
Three and a Half Thoughts & Obloquy, Mostly Unheaped

Thanks again to Bill Radcliffe for these.

UPDATE. Dead download links removed. Please see post of 16 June 2105 for a complete set of recordings.

Leonard Barras - Flummoxed Four Times

Courtesy of Pete Marchetto, here are four stories from Flummoxed Four Times:

It was Possibly Watling Street
The Millennium Minus a Bit
Under Canvas with Trapezium
Whatever Day It Was

Also, thanks to Bill Radcliffe for supplying the missing sentence and Bruce Goatly for re-editing, this includes the complete version of Sideways a Bit

All Barras devotees out there please keep watching this space.  More recordings are coming in and - dare I say it -  I think the gaps in the archive will soon be closed.

UPDATE. Dead download links removed. Please see post of 16 June 2015 for a complete set of recordings.

Leonard Barras - the missing episodes

Further to my post of 1 January, I am indebted to Bruce Goatly for filling the gaps with the following:

Eva and Adamson
Part 4 - Either That or Bursitis; Achieving the Unintelligible
(This corrects the title previously given)

Sideways a Bit
The first few words ("The trouble with Tully was...") are unfortunately missing and the next phrase ("nobody ever listened to him.") is muffled because it was at the start of the cassette.

UPDATE - post of 3 February 2012 "Flummoxed Four Times" also includes a re-edit of "Sideways a Bit" with the missing first sentence reinstated.
UPDATE - 18 August 2009

I recently got hold of a copy of the book "Up the Tyne in a Flummox" (you should be able to pick it up cheaply on Amazon). It states that "The various pieces collected in this volume were broadcast on Radio 4 between 1982 and 1986". (The earliest Barras recording I have was first broadcast in 1983, but I believe "Sideways a Bit" was from 1982. Outaspaceman [a keen champion of LB] has suggested there was an earlier series called "Up the Tyne in a Flummox", which would seem logical since I have "Further..." and "Even Further...")

The book includes "Certain Vicissitudes" (a one-off episode), all of "Very Likely" and three quarters of "Further up the Tyne in a Flummox". There are also four titles for which I do not have recordings, viz

A Fearful Conflagration
A Poultice for a Post
Public Exposures
The Finger in the Filing Cabinet

So it seems that the quest for Barras recordings is not yet over.

I tried a Google search for - Barras "A Fearful Conflagration". Nothing led me to "Up the Tyne in a Flummox", but there were a number of hits on Romanian websites, from which it appears the book was translated into Romanian with the title "Iubire in bataia vintului" i.e. Love in a Windy Place. (I'm not sure if there is a direct Romanian equivalent of "flummox".) Here is an example http://anticariat.net/carti/62551/Iubire-in-bataia-vintului-BARRAS-Leonard

"Wallsend Amnesia" looks even funnier in translation! Note the reviewer compares Barras to Chesterton. I look forward to hearing from LB devotees in Romania.

UPDATE. Dead download links removed. Please see post of 16 June 2015 for a complte set of recordings.

Leonard Barras

If you found this blog while searching for Leonard Barras, he will need no introduction from me. If you do not know of him, his obituary in The Guardian will tell you something about the man and his work. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/apr/03/culture.obituaries
They describe him as "Beachcomber meets Flann O'Brien" and others have compared him to Ivor Cutler and Spike Milligan. I'd say there are also similarities to Peter Tinniswood and N.F. Simpson.

During the 1980s and 1990s, BBC Radio 4 made several broadcasts of Barras reading his own stories. I taped a number of them and here they are. There is the odd bit of intereference but overall I think the quality is fair. At any rate, as far as I know, none of Barras's readings are commercially available at present, so I think they are better than nothing. If anybody out there can add to the collection, please leave a comment or e-mail me direct at the address given in my profile.

Certain Vicissitudes

Very Likely (three episodes) -
Love in a Windy Place
Nothing Like Flute Practice
Third Time and Still Unlucky

Further up the Tyne in a Flummox (four episodes)
Last Night, Ah Yesternight & Not the Food of Love
A Number of Mean Things & The Case of Many Legs
Ambition's Debt & A Sanctified Artefact
A Hanging Matter & Her Voice Was Ever Soft

Even Further up the Tyne in a Flummox (four episodes)
Much Persuasion & Rhubarb, A Conservative View
Find Truth for Yourself & The Turnip in the Night
Worms Have Eaten Them & Quite Unlike A Singing Bird
Laid on with a Trowel & Everything but Vertigo

Eva and Adamson (three of four episodes)
Not Another Oven Glove & Loping through the Slush
All Circumstances are Grey in the Dark & Words without Songs
Lampooned with Love & Nothing To Do with a Hereford Bull
missing episode:
Battle of Bursitis & Achieving the Unintelligible
The recordings I have are a mixture from the first broadcasts and repeats. Somehow, I managed to miss the fourth episode both times.

Quintessentially Flummoxed (four episodes)
Days of Reflection & Relatively Absolute
Suffering is Permanent & Vibrating in the Memory
Only Stars Above You & After Me In Vain
Such Love as Spirits Feel & After the Flood

Text file with dates of broadcasts

UPDATE. Please see post of 3 August 2009 for additional episodes.
UPDATE. Dead links removed. Please see post of 16 June 2015 for links to the complete collection of recordings