Ann Rich

It's That Man Again (commonly contracted to ITMA) was a BBC radio comedy programme which ran over twelve series from 1939 to 1949. The shows featured Tommy Handley in the central role, a fast-talking figure, around whom all the other characters orbited. The programmes were written by Ted Kavanagh and produced by Francis Worsley. Handley died during the twelfth series, the remaining programmes of which were immediately cancelled: ITMA could not work without him, and no further series were commissioned. ITMA was a character-driven comedy whose satirical targets included government departments and the ostensibly petty wartime regulations. Parts of the shows were re-written in the hour before the broadcast, to ensure its topicality. The show broke away from the conventions of previous radio comedies, and from the humour of the music halls. The shows used numerous sound effects in a novel manner, which, alongside a wide range of voices and accents, created the programme's atmosphere. The show presented more than seventy regular characters during its twelve seasons, most of them with his or her own catchphrase. Among them were the bibulous Colonel Chinstrap ("I don't mind if I do"), the charlady Mrs Mopp ("Can I do you now, sir?"), the incompetent German agent Funf ("this is Funf speaking"), the courtly odd-job men Cecil and Claude ("After you, Claude—no, after you, Cecil"), the middle-eastern hawker Ali Oop ("I go—I come back"), and the lugubrious Mona Lott ("It's being so cheerful that keeps me going"). To keep the show fresh, old characters were dropped and new ones introduced over the years. ITMA was an important contributor to British morale during the war, with its cheerful take on the day-to-day preoccupations of the public, but its detailed topicality – one of its greatest attractions at the time – has prevented it from wearing well on repeated hearing. The show's lasting legacy is its influence on subsequent BBC comedy. ITMA's innovative structure – a half-hour comedy with musical interludes and a cast of regular characters with popular catchphrases – was successfully continued in comedy shows of the 1950s and 1960s, such as Take It from Here, The Goon Show and Round the Horne.

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