On the Margin was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 satirical comedy sketch show written and performed by Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...

 and a regular cast including John Sergeant

John Sergeant (journalist)

John Sergeant is a British television and radio journalist and broadcaster.-Biography:The son of a missionary who was also a distinguished linguist, Sergeant is of Russian Jewish origin on his mother's side. Sergeant's early life meant that he followed his father's work, and was raised in...

, Virginia Stride

Virginia Stride

Virginia Stride is a British actress of stage and screen who first came to public attention on television in the 1960s...

, Madge Hindle

Madge Hindle

Madge Hindle is a British actress, best known for her roles on television series.Madge's big break came when her good friend, British playwright Alan Bennett, asked her to appear in his 1966 BBC comedy series On the Margin.From 1968 to 1973, she played the role of Lily Tattersall on the series...

 and Yvonne Gilan

Yvonne Gilan

Yvonne Gilan is an English actress who is best remembered for her portrayal of Mrs. Peignoir in Fawlty Towers.In 1964 she wrote a short fantasy film, The Peaches, starring Juliet Harmer, with a small cameo role for her son, Adrian as a bespectacled chess player...

. Guest performers included John Fortune

John Fortune

John Fortune is a British satirist, comedian writer and actor, best known for his work with John Bird and Rory Bremner on the TV series Bremner, Bird and Fortune. He was educated at Bristol Cathedral School and King's College, Cambridge, where he was to meet and form a lasting friendship with John...

 and Jonathan Miller

Jonathan Miller

Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE is a British theatre and opera director, author, physician, television presenter, humorist and sculptor. Trained as a physician in the late 1950s, he first came to prominence in the 1960s with his role in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with fellow writers and...

. The show also featured songs and poems by John Betjeman

John Betjeman

Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...

 and Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin

Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is widely regarded as one of the great English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century...

.

Each episode featured a mixture of sketches, some prophesying his later television dramas such as the quasi-soap, Streets Ahead, Life and Times in NW1, (about an upwardly mobile Camden couple) and more unexpectedly, serious poetry and music slots incorporating readings by Michael Hordern

Michael Hordern

Sir Michael Murray Hordern was an English actor, knighted in 1983 for his services to the theatre, which stretched back to before the Second World War.-Personal life:...

 and Prunella Scales

Prunella Scales

Prunella Scales CBE is an English actress, known for her role as Basil Fawlty's long-suffering wife in the British comedy Fawlty Towers and her award-nominated role as Queen Elizabeth II in the British film A Question of Attribution.-Career:Throughout her long career, Scales has usually been cast...

 with archive footage of music-hall stars. This personalised nostalgic element distinguished On the Margin from other contemporty sketch shows, with Bennett's satirical swipes at Britain, integrated with his genuine love of its cultural heritage.

It was directed by Sydney Lotterby

Sydney Lotterby

Sydney Lotterby OBE is a British television producer and director. He started as a cameraman at the BBC and progressed to becoming technical manager...

, produced by Patrick Garland

Patrick Garland

thumb|right|200pxPatrick Garland is a British actor, writer, and director.Garland started Poetry International in 1963 with Ted Hughes and Charles Osborne. He was a director and producer for the BBC's Music and Arts Department , and worked on its Monitor series...

 and was broadcast between 9 November and 14 December 1966 on BBC 2. It was repeated twice in 1967, but the tapes were wiped in the 1970s so the main surviving evidence of the series are the scripts. However, a compilation CD of audio extracts was released in 2009.