16 HISTORY
www.southwarknews.co.uk/history
Southwark News, Thursday April 7 2022
History
Walworth was home to the first ever sitcom broadcast on radio
The late great Mabel, aka Grandma Buggins
T
he British have always been known for their sense of humour and the ability to laugh at themselves. One way in which this manifests itself is our enduring affection for the family-based sitcom. Over the years, people have sat together and laughed at classics such as Till Death Do Us Part, Only Fools and Horses, The Royale Family and many others. Little do people know that arguably one of the first ever sitcoms broadcast on radio was based in Walworth and that the writer of The Bugginses had strong links to Southwark, writes Neil Crossfield... Their creator was a gifted woman called Mabel Constanduros (née Tilling). She was born into a wealthy middle-class family in Peckham on March 29 1880, the granddaughter of Thomas Tilling, founder of the famous Tilling’s bus company. He had first set up business in Walworth in 1841, trading as a ‘jobmaster’. This was the Victorian equivalent of a car hire firm and Tilling would rent out horses and carriages from a small stable in Beckford Place. Tilling’s business expanded quickly and within a couple of years he was running a regular bus service into central London. When Tilling died in 1897 he owned around 4000 horses. Mabel’s grandmother was born in Walworth and so it is not unusual that she would have a close affection for the area as she grew up. Mabel remembered going to visit her grandfather and she had real fondness for the people who worked for the company. Every year, Tilling’s would take many of its employees on a day trip out into the country, visiting places like Orpington, Epping Forest or the Welsh Harp Reservoir in Brent, and it is highly likely that Mabel may have gone along. In one of the Buggin’s stories, the incorrigible Grandma says “them buses of William Willing’s is comfortable, well-built affairs.” This is obviously a reference to her grandfather’s bus company, but in this case, the crafty Grandma is planning an insurance fraud on one of its buses by throwing herself downstairs to get compensation for her injuries. Mabel’s upbringing was typical for a middle-class girl in late Victorian London. She attended St. Giles Church in Camberwell, was educated locally (including at Mary Datchelor’s school) and volunteered to help teach poor girls in Lambeth working for the NSPCC. She
married Athanasius Constanduros in 1906, though the union is not believed to have been a happy one. Throughout her childhood, she had been interested in acting and this continued into adulthood. She joined several south London amateur dramatic companies including the ‘Anomalies of Streatham’ and at the same time was attending the School of Drama, Speech Training and
Physical Education, based at the Royal Albert Hall, and run by the formidable Miss Elsie Fogerty. Her dedication and potential must have been noticed: when the BBC held auditions in 1925 for their new radio repertory company, Mabel was signed up, starting her professional acting career at the age of 45. The First World War had seen rapid development in radio technology, as
wireless sets had been used on the battlefields, in the air and at sea. This scientific advance led to the formation of the BBC in 1922, as stronger transmitters meant that radio waves could reach into every household in the nation. It would have been an exciting place to work, as this was a totally new medium and the early staff of the BBC had to innovative in producing
radio shows which would appeal to a mass audience. Radio ownership grew massively during the inter-war period: in 1926 only around 25 per cent of the country had a radio licence but this had grown to around 80 per cent in 1937. Mabel was an extremely talented actress, and her vocal talents were much in demand, though perhaps it was her scriptwriting skills which soon came to the fore, when she created the Buggins. The fictitious family were supposed to have lived at number 17 Halcyon Row in Walworth, though no such street exists. The heroine of the story is Emily Buggins, the mother of the family - the lynchpin who holds them together. She is hard working, caring and always looks on the bright side of life, even though it seems that her family constantly try to sabotage her happiness. She is married to Harry Buggins, who is lazy, feckless and a bit of a drinker. He would rather spend time with his pigeons than with his family. The Buggins have three children: Alfie, Emily and Baby. But the star of the show is undoubtably Grandma Buggins, Harry’s mother, who also lives in Halcyon Row. She is around 80 years old, greedy, selfish and has the ability to suck the joy out of any occasion in an instant. Many other inhabitants of the street featured in the shows, including Emily’s niece Ag and her boyfriend Bert. There were also other bit players like Mr Toovey, Soppy Arthur and the flirtatious blonde bombshell, Florrie Elwood. Most of the characters were voiced by Mabel herself and in one episode of the Buggins, she played seven different characters. As a wealthy, middle-class woman, Mabel could be open to accusations that she was mocking the working classes. However, it would appear that she genuinely felt a strong affinity to the people she portrayed. She had family links to Walworth and wrote in the Radio Times that she and her cowriter Michael Hogan would sometimes spend the day around East Street market listening to the way people spoke. Though the radio shows were comedies, she also produced a series of books based on the Buggins, in which she alluded to the domestic violence, drunkenness and overcrowding which many of the working classes experienced in areas like Walworth. Like the modern-day sitcom, the humorous element of the Buggins derived from them doing everyday things which would seem familiar to families sitting listening to their radios. Daytrips out to the zoo or to Brighton could prove disastrous, however much Emily Buggins tried to get the family to enjoy themselves. Other show titles included The Buggins family Picnic, Father’s Lumbago, Father Sweeps the Chimney, Boat Race Day and Father Buys a Whale. In this episode, the family are on holiday in Norfolk and Harry spends the week’s holiday money on purchasing a dead whale which has washed up on the beach in the hope he can transport it back to London and
