This week, Kit faces the fight of his life. His challenge? Convince Roland that he is not in fact a brazen con-man, and he deserves to keep his job. The only problem with that? Roland doesn’t believe a word that comes out his mouth. Things are about to get interesting.
About
The second episode of The Kit Curran Radio Show, ‘The New Broom’, aired on the 9th of April 1984 on ITV. Produced by Thames Television and written by Andy Hamilton, it stars Denis Lawson as ‘Kit Curran’, Clive Merrison as ‘Damien Appleby’, Paul Brooke as ‘Les Toms’ and Brian Wilde as ‘Roland Simpson’. Additional guest stars this episode include Debbi Blythe as ‘Sally Beamish’, Joseph Marcell as ‘Constantine’ and Maev Alexander as ‘Joanne Short’.
Availability: Out on Region 2 DVD as of 2018. Be aware that the iTunes version is actually Series 2 mislabelled as Series 1. The watch quality of the DVD is better than these screencaps suggest—it’s certainly an improvement over the VHS rips of re-runs that were circling before it was released—but you can tell the footage hasn’t been best preserved.
The New Broom
The episode opens with Kit’s regular caller, George. His complaint this week? The local civic theatre is producing a controversial new play, featuring a nun who takes her clothes off and ravishes a gardener—in his words, of course. Kit is dismissive of George’s concerns. He reveals to Les that he currently dating the actress playing said nun, because Kit has never met a controversy he can’t entangle himself in.
While it remains utterly ridiculous that Kit has successfully cultivated an entirely separate persona so he can pocket another paycheck, watching Lawson switch seamlessly between the two personas is fascinating; he’s flawless, and does it so easily. (Made possibly more impressive by the fact that neither personas uses Lawson’s natural speaking voice, which is Scottish. Lawson’s an old hand at accent work; he doesn’t get a lot of chance to use his natural accent around this time, though it does become more prevalent in his work through the years.)
Oh, Sally’s back! How delightful! And oh, what an outfit—I want her heart-shaped glasses, where do I get a pair of those? She’s filling in for Damien as a temporary replacement newsreader (Damien has been summoned by Roland), and the essential news story of the day is that an imminent strike by bakers could produce a bread shortage. We also learn here that Les considers bakeries an essential service, and they shouldn’t be allowed to strike.
Roland wastes no time in commencing his station improvement plan by conducting a round of firings. While Damien is first in the firing line, and Les almost certainly next, the person who he truly wants to be rid of—without notice!—is Kit. Kit, never one to go down without a fight, has a cunning plan to get out of it: convince Roland that he is part of the masonic brotherhood. After all, Roland looks like the type to be a mason, right?
To no one’s surprise, this plan doesn’t work, though the sequence in which Kit attempts to signal Roland is straight up hysterical and utterly barmy. And we get to see Kit’s neon green socks! Kit quickly starts on plan B—sucking up to Roland. Unfortunately, Kit may need plans C and even D to get out of this one, especially when Roland begins to enquire after Wildman, Kit’s alter-ego. After all, it would be impossible for Wildman to present himself in person to be fired, given that he doesn’t exist. Instead, Kit spins a very tall tale about how Wildman has vanished to Tibet. Roland, having wised up since the previous week, doesn’t believe a single word Kit says.
The b-plot of this episode revolves around the transformation of the security guard, Constantine, from a truly lacklustre laissez-faire attitude to checking passes, to an overzealous one. Roland gets caught on the wrong side of his new found dedication to the job.
Kit appears at work the following day determined to win Roland over, come hell or high water. (Sidenote: of course Kit has a briefcase with a picture of his face on it, why wouldn’t he.) His plans may well set him on a path straight to hell. It starts tame, talking about these very excellent programmes he heard on the radio—that Roland just happened to produce—and evidence of a clearly faked mass letter writing campaign. But Kit’s words are nothing compared to what he’s managed to arrange. To the surprise of everyone, in walks a nun.
“About Kit Curran—the man’s a saint.”
Words which have never before been spoken, and likely never will since.
The nun speaks up in Kit’s defence, informing Roland of all the various charity campaigns Kit has supposedly masterminded, like fixing the convent roof of St Yvonne’s, and flying in an Australian surgeon to operate on little Tommy Brisbane. Meanwhile, Kit is busy making phonecalls to Roland’s direct line in his defence, an exercise which is mostly just an excuse to showcase Lawson’s impression skills more than anything else. (I’ll allow them the indulgence. It’s really very fun to watch.) Roland might not believe a word out of Kit’s mouth, but he’s falling for the story from the nun hook, line and sinker. And so the entire station staff gets to keep their jobs!
There’s just one kicker; how on earth did Kit convince a nun to come to his defence? Well, turns out … he didn’t. Because, as you might remember from the start of the episode: his current fling is playing a nun. And she’s come into the studio for an interview! Only by the grace of god does Roland not recognise her. So Kit emerges victorious from this latest scrape.
This is the first, but by no means the last, Lawson snog we’ll witness as we make our way through his filmography. Though it must be said, this is a particularly long one. Pity it’s mostly obscured by the glass.
Verdict
Kit’s wardrobe is finally starting to perk up, with a gaudy yellow shirt and some neon-green socks, but he’s still missing his trusty neon wristwatch and there’s not a scrap of neon pink in sight. Luckily, Sally’s glasses more than make up for it, so a+ wardrobe.
The B-Plot of this episode doesn’t actually pay off properly until episode four, and I always forget that the scene there isn’t in this episode. It would probably work better here, honestly—I wonder if it originally was written as part of this episode and got cut for time. (More on that later.)
The nun plot is hilarious, and proof that Kit will always be able to get out of anything. If his own scheme fails, he’ll manage to talk someone else into running the con for him. Nothing is too convoluted for Kit to consider it to be a workable option.
For all that Kit is portrayed as a bit of a ladies man, this is the only episode of the series where we see him actually having any success with women. (Never mind though, there will be plenty of opportunities for Lawson to snog people over checks nearly everything I’m going to review for this blog.) Even then, we don’t actually see them interact much—just the snog, really. Though obviously she likes him well enough to come in and lie to his boss for him (that, or she’s really gotten into the whole nun thing). He must be doing something right.
The talk about the baker’s strike is likely a reference to the Miner’s Strike that was getting underway at the time—I’m not sure exactly how far in advance these episodes were filmed ahead of their broadcast—which certainly wasn’t treated very favourably by the media at the time.
Next time
Next week, Radio Newtown faces a familiar problem: a declining listener base. The solution? New content. Also, there’s finally some neon pink clothing. All that and more, to follow in The Kit Curran Radio Show: Bread and Circuses.