Parsley Sidings

Parsley Sidings was a BBC Radio sitcom created by Jim Eldridge. It starred Arthur Lowe and Ian Lavender, together with Kenneth Connor from the Carry On films. The scripts are by Jim Eldridge. The show is set in a sleepy out of the way railway station on the main line between London and Birmingham, in the Midlands. The main characters are the station master, Mr Horace Hepplewhite; his son, Bertrand; station porter Percy Valentine; Mr Bradshaw, the signalman; and station tannoy announcer Gloria Simpkins. The guest cast in some episodes included Bill Pertwee and Roger Delgado. The announcer for the programme was Keith Skues. The series was produced by Edward Taylor, and was broadcast on BBC Radio 2. Due to the BBC's former practice of wiping tapes after the broadcast of a show, only a minority of the 21 episodes produced were still in the BBC archive - Goodbye, Parsley Sidings and The Entente Cordial are aired on BBC 7 occasionally and have always been in the BBC archives, while A Night Out, A Bird in the Hand and The Secret Agent were recovered between 2001 and 2003 as off-air recordings from members of the public. These episodes too have been aired, in early 2007, on BBC 7. All the other episodes are known to exist in private hands.