Who but an Englishman, the legendary Sir John Franklin, could have managed to die of starvation and scurvy along with all 129 of his men in a region of the Canadian Arctic whose game had supported an Eskimo colony for centuries? When the corpses of some of Franklin’s officers and crew were later discovered, miles from their ships, the men were found to have left behind their guns but to have lugged such essentials as monogrammed silver cutlery, a backgammon board, a cigar case, a clothes brush, a tin of button polish, and a copy of The Vicar Of Wakefield. These men may have been incompetent bunglers, but, by God, they were gentlemen.

From Ex Libris : Confessions Of A Common Reader by Anne Fadiman (1998)

• Futurist Stories No. 1 The Muff
• Oubliette Of Fops
• The Sinus Chambers
• Futurist Stories  No. 2: To Algiers
• A Tin Of Button Polish

This episode was recorded on the 22nd April 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.

Those of you familiar with the important Hooting Yard Book o’ Days will know that precisely six years ago today, the very first episode of Hooting Yard On The Air was broadcast on ResonanceFM. I will be celebrating by drinking a flask of aerated lettucewater and sacrificing a (vegan, marzipan) goat.

Once upon a time, of course, radio shows were fugitive, ephemeral things, but today, with the wonders of podcasting, untold hours of Mr Key’s babbling remain available for you to download from the ResonanceFM archive. Apparently, thousands of people do, certainly more than ever read this blog.

This seems as good a time as any, then, to note that a new podcast maestro has taken over the reins, whose self-appointed task is to increase the frequency of releases. Past programmes have been issued as podcasts generally about once a fortnight, but the plan now is for them to appear twice a week, until the backlog is cleared.

For an insight into the tremendous technical challenges of the process, I refer you to this piece from the 2006 archives. Little has changed, save perhaps for the metal from which the maestro’s hat has been welded.

My thanks are due to the podcast maestro and his predecessors, and you can make their dedication to this noble cause worthwhile by subscribing, downloading, and listening, for so long and so often that Mr Key’s voice haunts your dreams. And please remember that the very existence of ResonanceFM is a fragile and rickety thing, and your donations to the station will help it to survive.

• Six Long Years Of Wittering ‘N’ Babble.
• The Private Memoirs & Confessions Of An Ignorant Ornithologist
• Ringer Sedgeweg Again, Again.
• Blodgett’s Mucky Proclivities
• The Modern Pig
• More About The Modern Pig
• Victorian Magic
• Hell, Its Bells
• Excerpt
• Map Tip

This episode was recorded on the 15th April 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.