BUZZ Hawkins sounds slightly incredulous when he considers the success of his comic creations The Bradshaws.

“This year is the 35th year on air and on the road, it’s absolutely amazing,” he said.

It’s even more amazing when you learn how the Bradshaws - a slightly dysfunctional, very Northern family featuring son Billy, dad Alf and mum Audrey - came about.

“At the time I came up with the idea I was employed by Piccadilly Radio in Manchester as a needle time musician,” said Buzz.

“At the time there was an agreement that only so many needle time records, those from the major labels, could be played in a 24 hour period so stations would fill in the rest of the time by playing K Tel records of Billy Joe Onions singing Bobby Davro’s Greatest Hits. It wasn’t dead good to be honest!”

An alternative to this was employed musicians to come in a perform their own songs live in the studio.

“At Piccadilly they employed half a dozen of us come on at 10 at night and work til five in the morning. The presenter would run the show and we’d do have a dozen spots each in a music room.”

Other needle time musicians as they were known were Howard Jones who later became a pop star in the Eighties and Tony Baker who did all the music for the cult TV comedy series Phoenix Nights.

“I was keeping pretty decent company really,” said Buzz.

The late night slots gave the musicians to experiment.

“We soon found out that the management didn’t listen through the night, so it was a bit anarchic to be honest,” he laughed. “We were getting away with all sorts of things.

“Then one night, I’d pretty mush run through my whole repertoire of songs so I went into the record library and wrote a daft story which was in rhyme and meter.

“I’d heard Stanley Holloway’s monologue Albert and the Lion on the radio the day before and I just thought it would be fun to do something like that but with different characters. The only problem was that I didn’t have any voices to go with the characters.

“So I just sat in the record library practicing - I found Alf and Billy reasonably quickly but it took me a while to come up with a voice for Audrey.”

The night time show as presented by Gary Davies, who went on to become a DJ on Radio One, and the reaction to Buzz’s comedy monologue was phenomenal - the Bradshaws were born!

“The phones went mad that night, none of us could believe it,” he said.”

Thirty five years on and The Bradshaws have gained cult status. They have had their own TV shows, their own animated series and, of course, a virtually permanent home on the radio.

Buzz also regularly takes his comic creations out on tour and next week he will be heading to Burnley Mechanics.

Given that this cast of eccentrics has effectively taken over his life, has Buzz ever come to resent the gang of misfits?

“Now, hand on heart I can say it’s been a great journey,” he said. “But early on I really did get a bit resentful for a little while because it was the characters that people were booking or wanted to see and hear not me but I soon got over that. I now take great pleasure in the fact that it’s been a great door opener.

“I’m also film producer and director, a playwright and novelist and it’s allowed that to do that with my life

“If had to go and deliver pop bottles like I used to just to keep the money coming in I couldn’t have done the creative stuff.”

Buzz Hawkins, Burnley Mechanics, Thursday, May 31. details from 01282 664400 or www.burnley mechanics.co.uk