Running time 30 mins Language(s) English | Country United Kingdom TV adaptations BBC2 (1977-1983) | |
Genre Musical Humorous panel game Home station BBC Home Service and BBC Radio 4 | ||
My Music was a radio panel show which premiered on the BBC Home Service on 3 January 1967. It was a companion programme to My Word!, and like that show featured comic writers Denis Norden and Frank Muir. The show was last recorded in November 1993 and broadcast in January 1994. It was also broadcast via the BBC World Service. There was also a television series on BBC2 which ran for seven series between 1977 and 1983.
My Music followed My Word!'s pattern of two teams of two competing in a series of challenges, based this time on music rather than words. Again, the quiz element was subordinate to the entertainment. In later years, each episode featured a final round in which each contestant was required to sing a song, regardless of his vocal ability. Initially, this was a genuine test of whether the contestants knew the songs, but later the songs were always ones that they were certain to know. Indeed, towards the end Denis Norden decided what song he would sing, supplying some rather bizarre ones. Many of these were written by the English music hall songwriters R. P. Weston and Bert Lee.
The teams were:
The show was hosted for its entire run by composer Steve Race, who also set the challenges (after an early period in which they were set by series creator Edward J. Mason) and provided piano accompaniment where appropriate (except in the first five series, in which accompaniment was provided by Graham Dalley on mellotron). Neither Race nor Wallace missed a single one of the more than 520 episodes broadcast.
Graham Dalley, the series' first accompanist, also composed the signature tune, and his original mellotron version was used from 1967 to 1975. A new arrangement of the theme, featuring trumpets, bass guitar, electric guitar, conga drums, and cabasa, was used from 1976, and was succeeded in 1983 by an arrangement for piano and harpsichord.
Producers of the series included Tony Shryane and Pete Atkin.
In the United States, the show was syndicated on the WFMT Fine Arts Network until 1 October 2013, when BBC ended US distribution.