The town of Throm is perhaps best known for its gorgeous sewers, with their chandeliers, Rococo ironwork railings, and jewel-encrusted access ladders. In spite of the magnificence of their sewers, the Thrompersons fought hard to win that official designation as a town. It is, after all, the size of a village, with the atmosphere of a hamlet, and the public morals of a cluster of shabby huts.

• A Trip From Throm To Bosis
• New Beerpint Book
• The Snivellers
• Tin Vase
• The Pudding Question

This episode was recorded on the 12th October 2009. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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I cast an eye over my visitor. He was horribly disfigured. Indeed, for a moment I thought he must have come into my chamber straight from one of Mr Lovecraft’s purpler passages. But then I recalled that Lovecraft’s works are fictions, and that his characters have no reality independent of the page. I dabbed at my lips with a napkin and asked the nuncio to state his business.

• Disfigured Nuncio
• In Dreams
• Atoll Via ASBO
• Kiss Of The WooHooHoodiWoo Woman
• Onions, Vulgarity, and Crime

This episode was recorded on the 8th October 2009. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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Boffins in a groovelab high in the Swiss mountains have spent years – or is it mere days? – trying to isolate the Hooting Yard Groove, for the betterment of humanity, while Mrs Gubbins has been indefatigable in her attempts to express the essence of the groove in the form of knitted tea-cosies. Every single time she picks up her needles she fails, fails better, but she goes on, she must go on, she can’t go on, she goes on. We will soon have to build a new depot for all those groovy tea-cosies, unless we can find a charitable foundation prepared to accept them.

• Groovy
• Zippy
• Instances Of Inanity In Blodgett
• Big Damp Castle
• I Am John’s Head
• In The Lab At Midnight

This episode was recorded on the 1st October 2009. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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The two most consistently popular search terms leading interweb hikers to swing open the gates of Hooting Yard, far ahead of all rivals, are bees and ectoplasm. Occasionally, some befuddled soul gets here after searching for bee ectoplasm. Another favourite, much to my delight, is Googie Withers, though the 92-year-old screen siren gets misspelled as Google Withers in some searches, which makes one wonder what is going on inside some people’s cranial integuments.

• Googie ‘n’ Bee
• Gish ‘N’ Wasps
• Character Flaw Of Mediaeval Peasant
• Papist Mountain Apothecary
• Sick Amid The Blossoms
• Amateur Dramatics At Sludge Hall Farm

This episode was recorded on the 17th September 2009. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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It is hard to think of an esoteric sect more hidden, more obscure, than the Erk Gah. We know virtually nothing of its membership, its ceremonies and rituals, its raiment and vestments, its perfumes, its symbols, its armaments cache, its hierarchy, its headgear, its idiosyncratic buttoning methods, its potions, its nostrums, its pomposity, its colour schemes, its texts, its insignia, its dietary stringencies, its bucket and spade seaside outings, or its ultimate purpose. Some have suggested that the Erk Gah does not even exist.

• Erk Gah
• Beware of the Cows
• Impugned by a peasant
• Potter’s Arch or Potter’s crank?
• Library Clown Traumas

This episode was recorded on the 10th of September 2009. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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Perusing the shelves of my local branch of Periodicals & Other Ephemera R Us the other day, I noted the existence of a glossy magazine called Black Hair. On the cover was a photograph of a woman with black hair. Leafing through it, I saw it was stuffed full of other similar photographs, and although I did not read any of the articles, all of them seemed to focus exclusively on the particular, narrow topic of women with black hair.

• Black.
• Plums.
• Seed Studies.
• Other Swans In Other Thunderstorms.

This episode was recorded on the 6th August 2010. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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I had several reasons to sail across the Sound to Stick Insect Island. There were rumours of murder and mayhem and pagan sacrifice. My brother had made the crossing a fortnight before, and no word had come from him. My own homecoming was long overdue. And I wondered if the tiny post office still sold those amusing wax dolls of Captain Tod and Cadet Jarvis. The poking of them with pins was a delightful memory of my childhood, and I wanted my own nippers to share the experience, even though it would never be quite the same on the mainland.

A Memoir Of Stick Insect Island.

Gurgles From Hid Grot

I Can Hear Mermaids Singing

Health Tip

This episode was recorded on the 23rd July 2009. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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