My Music (radio programme)

Description

My Music followed the pattern of My Word!, with two teams of two competing in music-based challenges. The quiz element was subordinate to entertainment. In later years, each episode ended with a round where each contestant sang a song, regardless of vocal ability. Initially this tested whether contestants knew the songs, but later the songs were always ones they were certain to know. Toward the end, Denis Norden chose his own songs, often bizarre ones, many written by music hall songwriters R. P. Weston and Bert Lee. The teams changed over time: from 1967 to 1973, Ian Wallace and Denis Norden faced David Franklin and Frank Muir; in 1973, Owen Brannigan replaced Franklin; from 1974 to 1994, John Amis replaced Brannigan, and these four also contested the television version. Steve Race hosted the entire run, setting challenges and providing piano accompaniment (except in the first five series, when Graham Dalley played mellotron). Neither Race nor Wallace missed any of the over 520 episodes. Dalley composed the signature tune; his original mellotron version was used from 1967 to 1975. A new arrangement with trumpets, bass guitar, electric guitar, conga drums, and cabasa debuted in 1976, replaced in 1983 by a piano and harpsichord arrangement by Steve Race. Producers included Tony Shryane and Pete Atkin. In the United States, the show was syndicated on the WFMT Fine Arts Network until 1 October 2013, when BBC ended US distribution.