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Listen to Les
Listen to Les
Jan 18, 2026 10:52 AM

Author:James Casey,Les Dawson,Roy Barraclough,Eli Woods,Colin Edwynn,Daphne Oxenford,Full Cast

Listen to Les

25 episodes from the long-running BBC comedy series starring the legendary Les Dawson

For over a decade between 1974 and 1985, lugubrious funnyman Les Dawson had radio audiences in stitches with his hit comedy show Listen to Les.

Included in this collection are 25 vintage episodes, showcasing the gravel-voiced master of mirth at his very best. All your favourite characters are here, including gossip-loving housewives Cissie and Ada; chat show host Cosmo Smallpiece; the elegant Sophisticates and the hilariously dismal Desponds - as well as Wotan, Man of Steel; the debut appearance of comic discovery Justin Jest; and a rare interview with boxer Sugar Albert Ackroyd.

You'll hear tales of 1920s gangsters, Britain's first space hero, and Leonard Shufflebottom: a man so thin, he was once used as a dipstick. Les also pays tribute to a feisty barber and a sheep-headed publican, presents his very own versions of Dallas and Columbo, reflects on the British sense of humour - and reveals how the mother-in-law joke was invented...

Packed with deadpan one-liners, melancholic monologues, side-splitting sketches and unforgettable piano sing-alongs, these classic shows are sure to have your tear ducts prickling with laughter.

NB: Some of the humour on this recording reflects the era in which it was first broadcast

Production credits

Performed by Les Dawson

With Roy Barraclough, Colin Edwynn, Daphne Oxenford and Eli Woods

Written and produced by James Casey

Music by Brian Fitzgerald

First broadcast on BBC Radio 2, 11 August 1974-17 March 1985

© 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Reviews

The Pulitzer prize-winning author's gifts have found their fullest expression . . . [This Other Eden] impresses time and again because of the depth of Harding's sentences, their breathless angelic light

—— Observer

Masterful . . . This Other Eden is a story of good intentions, bad faith, worse science, but also a tribute to community and human dignity and the possibility of another world. In both, it has much to say to our times

—— Guardian

Harding's new novel is suffused with the tremulous imagery and soaring imagination that won him the Pulitzer Prize . . . Exquisite

—— Financial Times

Masterful . . . This Other Eden is a story of good intentions, bad faith, worse science, but also a tribute to community and human dignity and the possibility of another world. In both, it has much to say to our times.

—— Guardian

Harding's new novel is suffused with the tremulous imagery and soaring imagination that won him the Pulitzer Prize . . . Exquisite.

—— Catherine Taylor , Financial Times

Rich and full-bodied in its lyricism, Harding's novel, too, is part warning, part memorial, but perhaps above all, reinforces the power of art to bring us into sympathy with strangers' lives.

—— Daily Mail

Harding invites comparisons with authors such as William Faulkner, Robinson and even Elizabeth Strout . . . This Other Eden . . . begs to be widely read.

—— Spectator

This Other Eden is ultimately a testament of love: love of kin, love of nature, love of art, love of self, love of home . . . The humans he has created are, thankfully, not flattened into props and gimmicks, which sometimes happens when writers work across time and difference; instead they pulse with aliveness, dreamlike but tangible, so real it could make you weep.

—— Danez Smith , New York Times

Powerful . . . a moving indictment of a shocking episode in America's past that is rendered in lyrical prose.

—— Mail on Sunday

[Harding] writes with the gravitas of a mythmaker . . . The pace of Harding's storytelling is stately, his descriptions, even of small events, gorgeous . . . This Other Eden is beautiful and agonizing.

—— Claire Messud , Harper's

Beautiful . . . Perhaps the chief wonder of this novel is its vivid depictions of a community that is loving, longstanding, peculiar, full of surprises, filled with history, both dark and joyous and above all, functional and self-sustaining - until as has happened so many times and so many places, someone comes along to mess it up.

—— TLS

In boldly lyrical prose, This Other Eden shows us a once-thriving racial utopia in its final days, at a time when race and science were colliding in chilling ways. In the stories of the Apple Islanders - especially that of Ethan Honey, spared a destructive fate because of his artistic gifts and his fair skin - we are made to confront the ambiguous nature of mercy, the limits of tolerance, and what it means to truly be saved. A luminous, thought-provoking novel.

—— Esi Edugyan, author of Washington Black

A special book by a rare writer.

—— Rachel Seiffert, author of A Boy in Winter

Harding, who won a dark-horse Pulitzer Prize for Tinkers, again demonstrates his gifts for concision and compassion in a narrative that balances historical fact with fully drawn characters. . . . Sure to be a standout of 2023.

—— Los Angeles Times

There is no writer alive anything like Paul Harding, and This Other Eden proves it: astonishingly beautiful, humane, strange, interested in philosophy and the heart, stunningly written. It's about home, love, heredity, cruelty, and the very nature of art, so completely original it's hard to know how to describe it in a mere blurb, by which I mean: you must read this book.

—— Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Souvenir Museum

Tender, magical, and haunting, Paul Harding's This Other Eden is that rare novel that makes profound claims on our present age while being, very simply, a graceful performance of language and storytelling. Here is prose that touchingly holds its imagined island community in a light that can only be described as generous and dazzling. I have not read a novel this achingly beautiful in a while, nor one in which the fate of its characters I will not soon forget.

—— Major Jackson, author of The Absurd Man

An exquisite book which is both intimate and epic. The writing is polished, precise, luminous. A beautiful testament to people, and whole ways of life, which are have simply been removed from history, and leave hardly a trace behind.'

—— Alice Jolly

A tragic tale beautifully told.

—— The Scotsman

A beautiful, brilliant book - it gives an accounting of the unimaginable losses suffered by a family and by a country, but it is as tender and fierce as it is mournful. It is unafraid to look directly at the worst of the violence and erasure we have perpetrated or allowed to happen, but is insistent that we can still choose to be better

—— Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections

Somehow heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time

—— Yours

Explores themes of female friendship, motherhood, ageing, love and disillusionment. Moyes brings her main characters - a unlikely group of women thrown together - to life, each as flawed as they are brilliant, and stronger together

—— Grazia

Something to get excited about . . . [The] most compelling and readable of novels, which will make you wonder what it's really like to walk in someone else's shoes

—— Glamour UK

Showcases Moyes' ability to portray emotion and female friendship with themes of love, betrayal, family, and hope. It is action packed and will have readers rooting for Nisha and Sam

—— Booklist, Starred Review

Full of fun, unlikely friendships . . . and female empowerment, it's a welcome escape. A funny romp

—— Woman

A love letter to the strength of female friendship and how women can really be there for each other

—— Good Housekeeping

A stirring tale of sisterhood, survival and being seen

—— Red

A heartfelt story of mix-ups, mess-ups and making the most of second chances

—— Platinum

Praise for Jojo Moyes

—— -

Moyes is on dazzling form in this big-hearted story

—— Daily Mirror

Raw, funny, real and sad, this is storytelling at its best

—— Marie Claire

Blisteringly good

—— Sun

This truly beautiful story made us laugh, smile and sob like a baby - you simply have to read it

—— Closer

Entertaining, immersive and moving

—— Sunday Times

Dazzling

—— Sunday Express

Moyes somehow manages to break your heart before restoring your faith in love

—— Sunday Express

A genuinely entertaining book, a really cracking story

—— Stylist

Magnificent

—— Jewish Chronicle

Victory City can, in many ways, be read as an entertaining jaunt through Indian history, though it is history through the kaleidoscopic and sweeping lens of a fairy tale... this brilliantly magical tale.

—— Irish Independent

This sweeping, intricately crafted fairy tale is underscored by very human characters and Rushdie's signature wit.

—— Culture Whisper, *Books to Look Out For 2023*

A grand entertainment, in a tale with many strands, by an ascended master of modern legends.

—— Kirkus Review

Rushdie's magical style unfurls wonders.

—— Washington Post

Rushdie's Victory City is another fabulous novel set in his native India... He's a master who never forgets that the main goal of a storyteller is to entertain rather than educate or pontificate.

—— New York Journal of Books

Rushdie is, above all else...one of the most powerful defenders of story we have... Victory City is a victory for Rushdie - and for every reader who enters its gates.

—— Harper's Bazaar

Rushdie succeeds in creating a kind of incantatory prose that befits the fabulist nature of the story... he can enchant readers like few other writers.

—— Literary Review

This is a man at his full-strength, high-tar best - with his deeply humane worldview, his brilliance at set-pieces and, above all, the thrilling wildness of his imagination on irresistible display.

—— Reader's Digest

With its carousel of shifting politics and history, Victory City is Rushdie's most textured and triumphant wonder tale yet.

—— Hindu

Utterly enchanting.

—— Eastern Eye

Rushdie's return to magic, myth, and India's ancient stories is dazzling. With mercurial prose and vivid renderings, Rushdie never loses us in Victory City's convolutions, but instead builds our trust to travail the many grand events of Pampa's imagined empire.

—— Esquire

A rich, dramatic saga... The many moments of comedy...show Salman Rushdie's storytelling skills and his endearing sense of playfulness... the main feeling the reader gets is of a storyteller enjoying himself.

—— Tablet, *Novel of the Week*

Rushdie is an expert at mixology; he's the DJ Shadow of text with references and allusions to high and low culture from Finnegans Wake to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon... a well-told tale that gets bums on seats.

—— National

There's a magical thread of storytelling running through the veins of each character we meet in this book... a joy to read.

—— UK Press Syndication

A work of great imagination... In Victory City the power of the written word and of the storyteller remain triumphant.

—— NB

Rushdie’s sheer love of fiction is irrepressible.

—— Daily Telegraph, *Books of the Year*

A wonderfully entertaining literary hybrid

—— The Times, *Books of the Year*

Victory City is Salman Rushdie at his imaginative best… sweeping the reader on a journey that feels epic in a mere 320 pages

—— i, *Books of the Year*

From start to finish, the reader or listener can only be impressed by the literary flair of Rushdie's compelling storytelling... Victory City is a joy to listen to.

—— Entertainment Focus
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