Uploaded June 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Another shaggy dog story from the popular 1920s radio raconteur, A. J. Alan, in which a weekend away with a work colleague leads to the discovery of nefarious activities on the Norfolk broads... The story begins at 00:01:30
Narrated/performed by Simon Stanhope, aka Bitesized Audio. If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, there are a few ways you can support me:
* Occasional/one-off support via Buy Me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/bitesizedaudio
* Monthly support on Patreon: patreon.com/bitesizedaudio
* Donate via PayPal: paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=HMMUWZ7URN26A
* Visit my Bandcamp page to hear more of my performances of classic stories, and you can purchase and download high quality audio files to listen offline: bitesizedaudio.bandcamp.com
* Become a Bitesized Audio Classics member on YouTube, from $1 / £1 / €1 per month:
youtube.com/c/BitesizedAudioClassics/join
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:30 Private Water
00:20:35 Credits, thanks and further listening
A. J. Alan was the pseudonym of the multi-talented Leslie Harrison Lambert (1883–1941), an English civil servant and intelligence officer whose readings of his own short stories on the fledgling BBC radio service in the early 1920s were incredibly popular with contemporary audiences. He was born in Nottingham, he went to school at Rugby and initially trained as a surveyor. After working for a few years as a surveyor, he made quite a radical career change: in about 1906 he became a professional magician and was accepted into the Magic Circle.
He also developed an interest in amateur radio in the years before the First World War which proved pivotal to his life and career: on the outbreak of war in August 1914 he volunteered to work at a coastguard station intercepting German wireless communications, and by the end of that year was working for the British Admiralty in Naval Intelligence Room 40, which was later to become part of what is now known as GCHQ. Lambert remained in the Intelligence service for the rest of his career. He still held a senior role at the outbreak of the Second World War, and transferred to Bletchley Park where he worked in Hut 8 (alongside Alan Turing amongst many others). However by this stage his health was declining, and he died in December 1941 at the age of 58.
Shortly after the foundation of the BBC in 1922, Lambert contacted the Corporation offering to read his own short stories as radio broadcasts, and he began doing so in January 1924. He performed those readings under the pseudonym A. J. Alan, and his real identity was kept a closely-guarded secret, although apparently his voice was once recognised by an old school friend.
There are various popular legends about Alan’s broadcasts: that he had his scripts pasted onto cardboard so that the paper wouldn’t make a noise on the microphone, and that he turned up in full evening dress to do the broadcasts, with his own candle in case the lights in the studio went out.
Lambert, or Alan's, stories were distinctive in tone, with a highly conversational, off-the-cuff style which belied the intense preparation which went into every episode. The broadcasts were hugely popular with contemporary audiences and made "A. J. Alan" into a household name. The stories themselves are typically a blend of humour and suspense, often with a twist. The majority of them were subsequently published in contemporary newspaper or periodicals, as well as published in book form ('Good Evening, Everyone!' in 1928 and 'A. J. Alan's Second Book' in 1933).
Sadly, the original radio broadcasts of Alan’s stories aren’t widely available, if they’ve survived at all, but a few were later re-recorded and released on gramophone discs in the 1930s. If you'd like to hear the voice of the man himself, a couple of short clips are available on the 'Stars of the Wireless' website:
rfwilmut.net/wireless/alan.html
A full recording of one of his last stories, 'The Fire Bell' (1937), is available on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=BLI7OqFIM0s
Original recordings © Bitesized Audio 2021–25; this compilation © Bitesized Audio 2025
This recording © Bitesized Audio 2025
Another shaggy dog story from the popular 1920s radio raconteur, A. J. Alan, in which a weekend away with a work colleague leads to the discovery of nefarious activities on the Norfolk broads... The story begins at 00:01:30
Narrated/performed by Simon Stanhope, aka Bitesized Audio. If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, there are a few ways you can support me:
* Occasional/one-off support via Buy Me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/bitesizedaudio
* Monthly support on Patreon: patreon.com/bitesizedaudio
* Donate via PayPal: paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=HMMUWZ7URN26A
* Visit my Bandcamp page to hear more of my performances of classic stories, and you can purchase and download high quality audio files to listen offline: bitesizedaudio.bandcamp.com
* Become a Bitesized Audio Classics member on YouTube, from $1 / £1 / €1 per month:
youtube.com/c/BitesizedAudioClassics/join
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:30 Private Water
00:20:35 Credits, thanks and further listening
A. J. Alan was the pseudonym of the multi-talented Leslie Harrison Lambert (1883–1941), an English civil servant and intelligence officer whose readings of his own short stories on the fledgling BBC radio service in the early 1920s were incredibly popular with contemporary audiences. He was born in Nottingham, he went to school at Rugby and initially trained as a surveyor. After working for a few years as a surveyor, he made quite a radical career change: in about 1906 he became a professional magician and was accepted into the Magic Circle.
He also developed an interest in amateur radio in the years before the First World War which proved pivotal to his life and career: on the outbreak of war in August 1914 he volunteered to work at a coastguard station intercepting German wireless communications, and by the end of that year was working for the British Admiralty in Naval Intelligence Room 40, which was later to become part of what is now known as GCHQ. Lambert remained in the Intelligence service for the rest of his career. He still held a senior role at the outbreak of the Second World War, and transferred to Bletchley Park where he worked in Hut 8 (alongside Alan Turing amongst many others). However by this stage his health was declining, and he died in December 1941 at the age of 58.
Shortly after the foundation of the BBC in 1922, Lambert contacted the Corporation offering to read his own short stories as radio broadcasts, and he began doing so in January 1924. He performed those readings under the pseudonym A. J. Alan, and his real identity was kept a closely-guarded secret, although apparently his voice was once recognised by an old school friend.
There are various popular legends about Alan’s broadcasts: that he had his scripts pasted onto cardboard so that the paper wouldn’t make a noise on the microphone, and that he turned up in full evening dress to do the broadcasts, with his own candle in case the lights in the studio went out.
Lambert, or Alan's, stories were distinctive in tone, with a highly conversational, off-the-cuff style which belied the intense preparation which went into every episode. The broadcasts were hugely popular with contemporary audiences and made "A. J. Alan" into a household name. The stories themselves are typically a blend of humour and suspense, often with a twist. The majority of them were subsequently published in contemporary newspaper or periodicals, as well as published in book form ('Good Evening, Everyone!' in 1928 and 'A. J. Alan's Second Book' in 1933).
Sadly, the original radio broadcasts of Alan’s stories aren’t widely available, if they’ve survived at all, but a few were later re-recorded and released on gramophone discs in the 1930s. If you'd like to hear the voice of the man himself, a couple of short clips are available on the 'Stars of the Wireless' website:
rfwilmut.net/wireless/alan.html
A full recording of one of his last stories, 'The Fire Bell' (1937), is available on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=BLI7OqFIM0s
Original recordings © Bitesized Audio 2021–25; this compilation © Bitesized Audio 2025
This recording © Bitesized Audio 2025
