"Steady, Barker"

What most Britons wanted from radio when the cold closed in, they had: a jolly, cozy blanket of comedy, a good piece of it provided by a red-hot young (35) comic named Eric Barker.

In only six months on the air, "Heart Throb" Barker's Merry-Go-Round had built an audience of 20 million (fully as large as that of Tommy Handley, long Britain's No. 1 radio funnyman). There were two good reasons for Heart Throb's success: 1) he had won a wide following among British servicemen as a wartime overseas entertainer; 2) Britons love their own variety of corn, and Barker gives it to them thickly buttered with Briticisms. Last week's program, like all the others, reported the high & low life of a spavined spa called Sinking-in-the-Ooze. The chief inhabitants:

P:Flying Officer Kyte, a feet-off-the-ground burlesque of Britain's wartime flyboys, complete with Samsonian mustaches and a rich flow of RAFfish lingo ("Bang on, wacko, wizard show, I care for that, HA, HA!"). Characteristic Kyte joke: "Whale of a party, sir. I went as radar ... a picture of Queen Anne and a placard pinned to my trousers." Barker: "What did it say?" Kyte: "Dead on the beam! HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!"

P:Lord Waterlogged, a broad-as-Bevin parody of a Laborite, who "flips arahnd" laboring his "haitches" and belaboring the landed gentry: "The juke knocks 'is tea back and puts the saucer dahn, and 'e says, 'Sid,' 'e says, 'I'd like ter give this spa of yours the flippin' once over!' 'e says. Then ... she says, ''Ear! 'Ear!' she says. She's very fond of all this, this old-fashioned clobber, you know. . . ."

But the leading spirit of Sinking-in-the-Ooze is the Heart Throb himself, a small-voiced, nervous bloke with a laugh as scratchy and uncertain as a wrong key at a lock. Barker's scenes with his designing secretary (played by his wife, Pearl) often carry off the show. "There," says Pearl, "two eyes looking at you so tenderly, two soft arms offering you something you can't possibly resist." Barker: "Camembert!" Pearl: "No, Love!" Barker (with a quivery laugh): "Steady, Barker."

At "Steady, Barker," half of Britain rears back and roars. The catch line is Barker's trademark--and his contribution to the language. During the war small British ships used the words as a warning against U-boats. And in the thousand irritations of civilian life in postwar Britain, the foolish phrase has proved a good-natured godsend.

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