The Avengers, “Love All”.
G.C. Edmondson, “Blessed Are the Meek”.
Albert Guy de Maupassant, “Ghost”.
Price Of Fear, “Out Of The Mouths”. (about 1980).


Segment One and Two:

The radio serial, “The Avengers” was produced and transmitted in South Africa between 6th December 1971 and 28th December 1973. It featured adoptions  of scripts first aired on the very successful British T.V. show, “The Avengers”. The show starred Donald Monat as John Steed, and Diane Appleby as Emma Peel. Two top  agents of  the British  secret service.

The radio show was served up pretty much following the style and tempo established by the  BBC Television series during it’s run  from 1961 to 1969. Just like the television series the South African radio presentation features outlandish, quirky villains, mad scientists and secret organizations .  A little James Bond, a touch of Smersh and Specter, some Napoleon Solo and Illya  Kuryakin a hint of U.N.C. L.E. and Thrush. Oh, and just a little Max and 99. Broadcast weeknightly from 1971-1973 on Springbok Radio, the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s English-speaking wing. The stories were slightly re-jigged for an episodic cliff-hanger format. Each episode is just under 15 minutes including short advertisements for the sponsors (cold water OMO) and one or two other products per episode., I have removed the introduction from episodes 2 onwards of this serial, it was exactly the same as the ending of the episode before and this avoids needless repetition when listening to all six episodes one after another. By doing this I hope to make the experience closer to the TV experience.

“Love All”  was, like the majority of the stories used for these radio programmes, based on an episode of the final TV series of The Avengers, with the Tara King role re-written for Mrs Peel.

Uh-oh, secrets are leaking from within again, this time from the missile department. And this time the higher-ups involved are caught doing strange things, like jumping out of a second story window to escape house arrest. When one wizened chappy winds up shot in his car, the scent of perfume points to only one possibility: He was in love.


Segment Three:


Is comprised of two short stories read by minor box volunteers.

The first story is, “Blessed are the meek” written by G. C. Edmondson and was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction Magazine in the September 1955 issue.

Although generally called a science fiction writer he also wrote Westerns under the names Kelly P. Gast, J. B. Masterson, and Jack Logan. As he could also speak six languages he did translating work as well. His science fiction career began in 1955 with a story in Astounding. Over the years he produced several novels which gained some note for their interest in time travel and Latin America.

This is the link to the electronic text of the story:

Here is a small article on Edmondson at Wikipedia:

The second short story, “Ghost” is from, Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) a popular 19th-century French writer,considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form’s finest exponents.

A protégé of Flaubert, Maupassant’s stories are characterized by their economy of style and efficient, effortless dénouement. Many of the stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s and several describe the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught in the conflict, emerge changed. He also wrote six novels.

Tales of ghosts and apparitions date back to ancient times and can be found in almost every culture. Pliny the Younger (c. 63 – 113 AD) writes of a fellow philosopher who had a chilling experience when he rented a large house in Athens to investigate rumors that it was haunted, and the Chinese philosopher Mo Tzu (470-391 BC) wrote: “If from antiquity to the present, and since the beginning of man, there are men who have seen the bodies of ghosts and spirits and heard their voices, how can we say that they do not exist?” Here is the Wikipedia article on Guy de MaupassantHere is an electronic text collection of several short stories colection by this author.

 

Segment Four:

Price Of Fear, “Out Of The Mouths”.

The Price Of Fear was a Horror-Mystery program produced sporadicly by BBC Radio. Enormously successful in the United Kingdom and abroad, it produced  a total of 22 episodes between 1972 and 1982.

For it’s writeing talent the show drew from a pool of talented new writers, such as William Ingram (who wrote the majority of the scripts). Dramatizing the most chilling stories they could find the show often  did  adaptations of the works of established writers: Roald Dahl,A.M. Burrage,Bram Stoker and others.

The Show was hosted by, and usually starred Vincent Price. Price whose background in horror and suspense on radio,television and, of course, movies backdropped the series in a way only a handful of performers could. Mostly though it was the way Price narrated these tales (as though he himself had actually lived them) that was responsible for the success of the show.All of that said, “out of the mouths” does not star Vincent here he services the narrator of a tale of the unforeseen danger of a scientist trying out advanced theories on his newborn son.

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