The Clerks
by Rhys Adrian
Rhys Adrian - The Clerks
BBC Radio 3
Broadcast: Sunday 26th November 1978
"The Clerks" is a play for two, with a brief contribution at the end by a third, unwelcome presence. Freddie Jones and Hugh Burden are
in cracking form as a pair of buoyant drop-outs, down but not out, sleeping rough, stealing from supermarkets and eking out their wine
with cleaning fluid. They are former Foreign Office personnel, perhaps even M.I.5, haunted by memories and paranoid suspicion. Both
highly articulate, they reminisce with relish, reconstructing for the listener a mad, unnerving world of spies and informers, of checks and
data and dossiers. At the end they home in gleefully on the interloper, played by Gerald Cross, reducing him to gibbering in no time.
With Hugh Burden [Hugh], Freddie Jones [Freddie], and Gerald Cross [Gerald].
Note: "The Clerks" was a winner of the Prix Futura in 1979.
50 min.
Jim
