What is A Prairie Home Companion?
A Prairie Home Companion (APHC) is a live radio show from Minnesota Public Radio, hosted by Garrison Keillor, every Saturday night, 5-7pm, Minnesota time. It is heard across the USA on public radio stations. (In the early ’80s, it was also broadcast in Australia.) APHC is a variety show, with music (mostly from the folk/country part of the spectrum), sketches (often on behalf of some “sponsor”), messages from the audience and, at its heart, Mr Keillor’s monologue about “The News from Lake Wobegon”. Garrison Keillor (GK) is well known in Scotland for everything except his work on APHC. He made his first splash in the UK when he read Lake Wobegon Days on “Book at Bedtime” on Radio 4. However, the Campaign can exclusively reveal that GK’s first appearance in Britain was on Terry Wogan’s BBC1 chat show — El Tel raved about him and GK read a monologue: it was about lying in bed late at night thinking that aliens had landed. (OK, maybe we shouldn’t have said anything…) GK was at the 1993
