This episiode, first broadcast on the 8th of September 2004 corrects significant misconceptions concerning the naming of dogs and the origins of America.
* Name That Cur – Dobson on the naming of dogs (A stern corrective)
* Escape From a Ship on Fire
* Eighteen Questions: Where Are the Snows of Yesteryear?
* Gigantic Balls of Volatile Gas
* Pining and Pothorst (The history of America corrected).
A particularly eerie episode of Hooting Yard, first broadcast 12th May 2004. This episode contains extracts from Frank’s possibly soon-to-be released anthology: Obsequies For Lars Talc.
* “Hello Darkness My Old Friend” – a nightmare.
* “Two Ponds”
* “Andrewmotionopoly”
* Career Change – Working for L’Oreal
* Pang Hill News – The Burning of Pang Hill Orphanage
* Mrs Gubbins – An Update
* Background information on “Hooting Yard on the Air”
* Obsequies for Lars Talc
This special episode of from the 5th of May 2004 contains a single epic recitation; “The Phlogiston Variations” is a heavily-annotated history of Chlorine Winslow’s orchestral masterpiece, and has much to say about the bouffants of maestro conductors, the sonic possibilities of farming implements, and the the life of the greatest Alaskan composer of the last (and possibly next) five-hundred years.
After an extended and inexcusable delay, we are delighted to offer you this download of Hooting Yard On the Air, first broadcast on the 21st of April 2004.
* Pen portraits of ship’s captains: Captain Flask
* Rebranding of the seven dwarves
* Hound of the Cargpans
* Technical problems on the Hooting Yard Website
* Mrs Gubbins Throws a Fit
* ‘Dobsonia’ – Four extracts from the Autobiography of Dobson
* Recipe of the Week: “Aphabet Soup”
* Istvan and Zoltan – part one of an exciting series
* The Disgusting Bilge of Cadet Vig
At a loose end one blustery Thursday morning, Dobson decided to write a lengthy critical analysis of the The Life & Times of Captain Cake. He began, as he always did, by sharpening his pencil. That done, in a single burst of inexplicable enthusiasm, he penned an essay much, much longer than his usual pamphlets. It is a bewildering piece of work, caustic and trenchant even by Dobson’s standards, and was issued in fifteen weekly instalments. Flush with cash from the sale of his Big Mysterious Piece of Hardboard, Dobson took out advertisements in the press to announce his new part-work, offering the first issue at a discount price, and including a two-inch high plastic figurine of Captain Cake* as further inducement.
Each of the fifteen instalments addresses a different aspect of the text. So, for example, Volume IV is entitled Welk, Bankhead, Loy : There’ll Be A Welcome In The Hillsides while Volumes VIII and IX both concentrate entirely on the game of ping pong. Long out of print, this superb (if unintelligible) essay is ripe for reassessment in the 21st century which Dobson did not live to see. Over the coming months, the Hooting Yard Foundation hopes to publish on this site a hypertext version of the essay. Be in no doubt that it will prove a boon to scholars worldwide.
Note: This was the first regularly scheduled broadcast of Hooting Yard on the Air
