Foreword to 'The Bona Book of Julian And Sandy'

When we invented Julian and Sandy for Round the Horne in 1964, we'd no idea how popular they would become, or how their fey but knowing camp chat would spread from a limited circle of aficionados in show business to become a national institution, not to say menace.

In the hands of Kenneth Williams (Sandy) and Hugh Paddick (Julian) they grew quickly like a pair of busy lizzies into major comic creations, and no characters in Round the Horne could follow them. After a few abortive attempts to put them in new roles - at one time we had them working for MI5 in the 'Kenneth Horne, Master Spy', spoofs, and a quickly thwarted attempt to write them out altogether, we bowed fairly gracefully to the inevitable, and Julian and Sandy remained top of the Round the Horne bill to the end of its run.

Why were they successful? Well, a lot of the credit must go to Hugh and Kenneth for the skill with which they handled the dialogue, and to Kenneth Horne, whose very ordinariness when chatting to them made the characters somehow safe. They were always optimistic - rather like a pair of precious Mr. Micawbers waiting for something bizarre to turn up - and such innuendo as there was in the dialogue seemed acceptable with the benign Horne, representing the rest of us, there to referee.

We wrote Julian and Sandy with care and, indeed, love, because wayward and outrageous as they often were, you couldn't help loving them. Well, we did, and we hope you will enjoy this recreation of some of their many adventures.