Any of you who have access to BBC Radio 4, over the internet/digital TV or whatever, might be interested in this. A new series is starting this week about American husband and wife double acts. They're covering several - George and Gracie is one of the first so far as I know - but Desi and Lucy are up in a few weeks. I think it's Tuesday afternoons, GMT, but I'll check up on that and let you know. Nice promo shot of Desi and Lucy. Not one I've seen before, though you lot probably have!

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Looks like the Desi and Lucy edition of this is going to be going out at 11.30 BST (10.30 GMT) on Tuesday 29th April. Judging by earlier additions it'll be quite good, with a lot of clips, and interviews. You can listen at BBC Radio 4 Online (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4) if you're of a mind to do so.

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Ooh look, my own little thread!

This turned out to be a pretty good documentary (still downloadable, for the time being, at Radio 4: Listen Again (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml)). One or two things I didn't know, though I'm sure most of you lot probably did! One thing that really amused me was the talk about the controversy of doing a series of 'pregnancy shows'. Rumour had it that they had a rabbi and a priest on set to check the scripts and make sure that they weren't going to offend anyone! There was a wonderful quote about the 'biggest mistake a TV company has ever made', when they agreed to give Desi the whole rights to the show, as compensation for the pay cut he and Lucy took, to make the show live in front of the audience. They really must have been kicking themselves over that one when it turned out to be the biggest show ever! I really like how that turned out, given how horrible the studios all were to Desi at first.

And they didn't half make his early life sound exciting! I knew all about the revolution and the escape and all, obviously, but the way they had it - the sixteen year old Des saving his mother from the blazing ruins of their house, fleeing to Miami and catching rats for food... a movie of 'Young Desi', anyone?!

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Yes, good move taking a thousand dollar pay cut to own the shows, but then he sold them to CBS for 4 and a half million to buy a studio later sold for 17 million, BUT, if he had held on to those rights and the shows, he would have made well over 100 million, so maybe HE was kicking himself after that.

Doubt it. Just glad to get out of the rat race by all accounts.

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Keeping the shows would have meant getting rich beyond his dreams, and he wouldn't have had to do much, people would come to him to get them, but buying a studio, now that caused his demise physically.

Yeah, so they say. Over-work didn't do a lot for Lucy, either! Some people don't know when to quit I guess.

By the seventies I think Desi had recovered a lot of his bounce, so to speak, so abandoning Desilu was certainly right for him. Keeping the rights to the shows? Yes well, bad idea, certainly, but we're saying that with a degree of hindsight. he certainly couldn't have known then about people wanting to buy copies of the show to keep and play at home, or that people would still be talking about it fifty years later!

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