Nicholas Frankau as Carstairs in ‘Allo, ‘Allo!
Listen very carefully, we’ll say this only once… one of the British airmen has escaped and made his way onto the Cambridge 105 Kipper the Cat Show this Tuesday (January 26th) at 9.00pm.
Nicholas Frankau, who now lives in Cambridge, and works in the IT industry, played Lieutenant Carstairs in the popular BBC comedy. Nicholas will join his TV producer father John to tell presenter Greg Butler about his grandfather Ronald Frankau.
The show celebrates the amazing songs that came out of England in the early 1930s written and performed with incisive wit, style and elegance by Frankau, along with the likes of Noel Coward and Norman Long.
Ronald had the reputation of a 1930s bad boy and intellectual raconteur. The BBC often banned his sometimes close to the knuckle observations of life.
Ronald Frankau
It wasn’t just John and Nicholas who made a career in the arts. His daughter Rosemary Frankau pursued a career in acting, appearing in many series of the TV sitcom Terry and June, as June’s best friend Beattie. Rosemary’s son, Sam Bain, became a comedy writer and co-created the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show.
Ronald’s Sister Joan, married the historian Henry Stanley Bennett and, as a Cambridge don in her own right, Joan Bennett was one of the defence witnesses in the Lady Chatterley trial of 1960.
So stand by some wonderful music and a fascinating look at the amazing Frankau family and the intellectual music of the 1930s – the sentiments and lessons of which still ring true today.