The original magnetic recordings of the show were erased shortly after broadcast, and for several decades it was believed that no recordings of the show had survived, although some were broadcast by the American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS, formerly AFN) in Europe during the late 1970s. Each half-hour episode would usually end with a dramatic cliffhanger, to increase the audience's incentive to tune into the next episode. Michael Standing, then Head of the BBC Variety Department, asked Chilton if he could write a sci-fi programme, and Journey to the Moon (later known as Operation Luna) was the result.

The first series was created in 1953, soon after Riders of the Range (a popular Western, also written by Chilton) ended its six series on the BBC Light Programme. Chilton later wrote three best-selling novels and several comic strip stories based upon the radio series. Originally, four series were produced (the fourth was a remake of the first), which was translated into 17 languages (including Hindi, Turkish and Dutch) and broadcast in countries worldwide (including Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand and The United States). It was the last UK radio programme to attract a bigger evening audience than television.

Journey Into Space is a BBC Radio science fiction programme written by BBC producer Charles Chilton. But this book-complete with Kossoff's unattractive, stereotype-heavy line drawings-is a thoroughly expendable addition to the well-stocked shelves of shtetl humor.The four main cast members of Journey Into Space: The World in Peril Kossoff, a British humorist, is probably very good on stage. If my Sam had lived a little longer he would have shared it with me.'' Or the one about the tailor who, when asked why it took him six weeks to make one pair of trousers while it only took God six days to make the whole world, answers, ''Look first at the world, then look at your trousers,'' Hoary old stuff, a lot of it gently nice, in absolutely no need of Kossoff's framing: the imaginary town of Klaneshtetl and Rabbi Mark and his wife Sophie, the rebittzen, and other characters who don't add anything. I tell the insurance man and suddenly I'm rich. Every few weeks a few coppers for the insurance man. readers really need old Jewish stories as retold by a British Myron Cohen? Well, here it is: Kossoff has raided Nathan Ausubel's venerable collection, Jewish Folklore and Jewish Humor, has plucked out a few nice fat stories and jokes, has padded them a little, and voilâ€¦: ''Forty years, with never a penny to spare. With Leo Rosten and Sam Levenson and so many others, do U.S.

Small Town Is a World by David Kossoff