News at Ten

## Bio

**News At Ten** is a British News program transmitted from London, England and staffed by a number of professional and sometimes whimsical professional news broadcasters. The main anchor is Reginald Boozenquet. Largely professional on-camera, he tries sneaking a drink of ale when the program runs footage to cover his behind the screen antics, but he gets caught when the video runs late and gets mixed up with his reports. His reports include:

* Minister of Homes George Tredder announces that tenants of many slums cant make their high rents
* Queen Elizabeth and King Phillip are viewed departing Buckingham Palace
* Two tenants are forced from their home by high prices and inflation
* The Prime Minister goes on a tour
* Mr and Mrs. Dribble's young son has been found
* Muhammad Ali takes time from boxing to relax
* Enoch Powell talks to his constituents

Boozenquet then transfers to Andrew Gardner (Benny Hill) to cover growing hostilities in the African kingdom of Amphola where a military cue is developing. Correspondent Walter Burke (Benny Hill) reports from the small nation where Chief Magano (Benny Hill) refuses assistance and aide in the up-rising.

Boozenquet also gets reports from Professor Hammond Bruce (Benny Hill) that the English language is becoming extinct. In a clip, he discusses the possibility of reducing it to root letters ("L-O" for "Hello"). This idea is accompanied by a playlet with a forensics expert (Benny Hill) and a police officer (Bob Todd) investigating a murder and speaking only in letters as they discover a girl in her underwear (Clovissa Newcombe) hiding in a cabinet.

Three other newscasters in the series are Ann Afford, who suffers from a wardrobe malfunction on the air and is interrupted by visitors passing through the set, Nathan Whitechurch, a field reporter from the small island nation of Amanda, and Peter Seymour. Seymour debuts in 1977 as the new political correspondent, but when his glasses get broken, he becomes trapped trying to struggle through his first newscast without his glasses and with an extreme stigmatism trying to read his teleprompter, saying "jug of saliva" instead of Yugoslavia and "bath night" instead of "birth right."

## Trivia

* Boozenquet was played by Benny Hill.
* In the opening view of the city, the camera obsesses on an unidentified actress changing in a window; this gag repeats in the later *News At Ten* sketch with Ann Afford.
* The audio/video delay is a gag recycled from the Edith Packet sketch in the The European Song Contest episode,
* Ronnie Brody who worked with Benny several times at the BBC reappears in the location footage for this sketch; by this period, he was a regular sketch character on Dave Allen At Large. Bob Todd appears with him.
* Nicholas Parsons plays an unnamed correspondent in the Chief Magano clip.
* Rosemary Da Costa has an uncredited part as one of the female Amphola natives.
* The "Letters as words" sketch is possibly one of the most clever and brilliant sketches in the series.
* Two pairs of glasses are used in the Peter Seymour sketch. The pair knocked off the table are still visible on the floor when the make-up girl (Jenny Lee Wright) finds the shattered pair.
* Extra cast members in the Peter Seymour sketch are Patrick Newell (the camera guy), Donny Hill (teleprompter man) and Linda Robinson (the stage manager).

## Episode(s)

* News At Ten
* The Bionic Baby
* Great Mysteries with Orson Buggy
* Big Poppa

## Gallery

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