New Title Tuesday: Bigamy Killed the Radio Star
How an unlikely BBC radio pioneer, John Henry, became Britain’s first comedy superstar—and why his story still resonates today.
In his new biography Bigamy Killed the Radio Star, author Alan Stafford unearths the extraordinary story of John Henry, the unassuming office clerk turned radio megastar, whose deadpan comedy routines captivated early BBC audiences. Known to few today, John Henry, whose real name was Norman Clapham, achieved enormous fame in the 1920s as one of the BBC’s first comedic talents. But as Stafford reveals, Henry’s career – and personal life – were as volatile as his rise to fame was meteoric.
Alan, celebrated for his previous works Too Naked for the Nazis and the Crackerjack book for Fantom, was drawn to Henry’s story by his fascination with the early days of British radio comedy. “I’ve always been a fan of radio comedy, and with the BBC celebrating over a century, I wanted to explore the pioneers who shaped it,” Stafford explains. “John Henry was one of the first and arguably the most talented, capturing the public with his lugubrious Yorkshire humour. Yet his life was a fascinating mix of success and scandal.”
The world Henry entered was a delicate one. As Stafford describes, in 1923 the BBC was still a new concept, and theatre managers feared the novelty of the “wireless” would lead audiences to stay home instead of buying theatre tickets. Major performers were even barred from appearing on radio, which led the BBC to cultivate its own talent. Henry, an unknown office clerk who broadcast under the assumed name John Henry, quickly made an impact with his mournful, dry delivery, capturing the listener’s imagination as he described surreal misadventures with lions, ghosts, and even fictional marital strife.
According to Alan, Henry’s success lay in his ability to connect with listeners. “He had a low-key delivery that was perfect for the crackling, static-ridden radio of the time,” says Stafford. “Listeners often heard him through headphones, much as we do with podcasts today, so it felt as though he was confiding in them directly. He was one of the first to grasp that radio could be an intimate medium.”
In fact, Henry’s impact on British comedy extended far beyond the initial shock of hearing comedy over the airwaves. Alan points out that Henry’s downtrodden, pessimistic persona has become a blueprint for generations of British comedians, from Tony Hancock and Les Dawson to modern-day comics like Jo Brand and Romesh Ranganathan. “John Henry’s comedy was rooted in a very British sensibility of wry, defeated humour,” Alan notes. “It was a style that resonated widely and still does.”
But Henry’s career was filled with complexities and risks that would eventually lead to his downfall. “He had multiple wives and lived a complicated personal life that he worked hard to keep private,” Alan explains. “For a time, he managed to maintain that secret, but when his bigamous lifestyle was eventually exposed, his misadventures suddenly weren’t so funny to the public.”
Alan’s book is packed with not only Henry’s most famous sketches and routines but also the lesser-known facts of his career. Henry was the first radio comedian to have a comic strip, the first to perform live from an aeroplane, and an early experimenter with talking pictures. “He was truly a pioneer,” Stafford says, “and even when you don’t know his name, you see his influence on the way comedy evolved in Britain.”
Bigamy Killed the Radio Star is available now – exclusively via the Fantom website, offering a comprehensive look at the humour and heartbreak of one of Britain’s earliest radio icons.
For fans of British comedy, history buffs, and those intrigued by the golden age of radio, Stafford’s biography promises to be an engrossing read, providing insight into the humour that once captivated the nation and the personal costs that came with early celebrity.
