HEARD the one about the old lady whose husband trapped her by her clothes in the mangle to stop her going to town?

Comic actor Wilfred Pickles, host of the hugely popular radio show Have A Go, got the story straight from her own mouth - and so did millions of Light Programme listeners when the travelling broadcast came from Brierfield's St Luke's Hall in 1956.

Ostensibly, the show was a quiz programme, with contestants answering questions for small cash prizes that now seem a pittance. But its real attraction was Wilfred's ability to get folk to talk about themselves - their most embarrassing moment, their outlook on life, recipes for long life and good health and so forth.

And each show always seemed to feature a young lass whom Wilfred would ask, with a cheeky tone added to his Yorkshire accent: "And are you courtin'?"

But at Brierfield 42 years ago it was 83-year-old widow Mrs Mary Jane Rawstron who got the biggest laugh - with her tale of being made a stay-at-home by her husband and the mangle. It was all part of the formula that Wilfred said created a "friendly, down-to-earth programme about ordinary people."

Certainly, it proved immensely popular as Have A Go lasted for 21 years before being dropped in 1967 - during which run East Lancashire also folk took part in shows broadcast from Rawtenstall in 1951, from Great Harwood and Clitheroe in 1954 and Bacup in 1957.

It was at Clitheroe that Wilfred, who died aged in 1978 aged 73, revealed that the grandparents of his wife and stage partner Mabel were married at the town's Parish Church - and then went on honeymoon to Mitton!

But it was from Padiham Town Hall that the once-familiar chorus of the audience opening the show singing its "Have a go, Joe; Come and have a go" signature tune was last beamed on to the airwaves - in December, 1972, for a Christmas Day broadcast, with the show being specially revived as part of the BBC's 50th anniversary celebrations.

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