Editing Radio Active (radio series) (section)

===Characters===

Most of the original characters on the show are named after pieces of sound equipment, including:

* rising star '''Mike Flex''' (Perkins),
* aged fading star '''Mike Channel''' (Deayton),
* "children's favourite" '''"Uncle" Mike Stand''' (Stevens)
* the food-obsessed '''Anna Daptor''' (Atkinson-Wood)

Also on the station's staff are:
* the incomprehensible and accident-prone '''Nigel Pry''' (Pope)
* the incompetent hospital-radio trained '''Martin Brown''' (Stevens)
* the carefully enunciated [[gag name]]d "oh-so-daring" '''Mike Hunt''' (Deayton), whose daredevil stunts invariably turned out not to be as spectacular as he claimed
* brusque station owner '''Sir Norman Tonsil''' (Deayton), the name perhaps alluding to [[Norman Tebbit]]
* Norwegian correspondent '''Oivind Vinstra''' (Perkins), whose command of [[English language|English]] was virtually limited to the phrase "and on with the music"
* Head of Religious Affairs '''The Right Reverend Reverend Wright''' (Deayton), who had a [[mail-order bride]]

Other recurring characters include:
* unsympathetic [[agony aunt]] '''Anna Rabies''' (known as "Joanna Jaundice" in series one, and "Claire Rabies" in series three) (Atkinson-Wood), the names perhaps alluding to [[Anna Raeburn]] and [[Claire Rayner]]
* singing doctor '''Philip Percygo''' (Pope)
* '''Luscivia''', who ran the Radio Active gift shop (Atkinson-Wood)

The second series sees the characters become more defined, with Mike Channel revealed as the station's longest-serving presenter and resentful of the more popular younger hosts, especially Mike Flex, whom Channel frequently complained had taken "his" mid-morning show. At the same time, Nigel Pry gains the idiosyncratic speech patterns and propensity to injury that became his defining traits, and Mike Stand is effectively reinvented as a completely new character, changing from an old-school rock DJ in the first series, to a giggling, infantile children's presenter. Although he would come to be regarded as a main character, Martin Brown is not introduced until series 4, and was originally intended as a one-off character (he is so incompetent that during his first show, the station's other presenters are revealed to be listening in another studio and laying bets on how long it will take for Sir Norman to fire him – which duly happens at the end of the episode) but was so well-received that a brief appearance by the character was added to the final episode of the series, before he was brought back as a regular in the fifth series.