The Archers Rich (piano) and Norman Parker (percussion). Robert Robinson once compared the tune to "the genteel abandon of a lifelong teetotaller who has suddenly taken to drink". On April Fool's Day 2004 both "The Independent" and "The Today Programme" claimed that BBC executives had commissioned composer Brian Eno to record an electronic version of "Barwick Green" as a replacement for the current theme, while comedian Billy Connolly included in his act the joke that the theme was so typically British that it should be the national anthem of the United Kingdom. In 2009, comedian Rainer Hersch conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in
The Old Tune play did not die, however. The Old Tune The Old Tune is a free translation of Robert Pinget’s 1960 play La Manivelle ("The Crank") in which Samuel Beckett transformed Pinget’s Parisians, Toupin and Pommard into Dubliners, Cream and Gorman. Its first radio broadcast was by the BBC on 23 August 1960. Barbara Bray directed Jack MacGowran (Cream) and Patrick Magee (Gorman). For the unspecified old tune played by Gorman on the barrel organ Beckett selected "The Bluebells of Scotland", suggested by the bank of bluebells mentioned near the start of the play. In 1957, Pinget, who at the time was