Come and Play
Austin County
AUSTIN COUNTY by Simon Messingham
As Simon was writing these audio comedy scripts, he realised he was becoming far too literary and tasteful. So he wrote ‘Austin County’, a lowbrow, lowest common denominator, lowest everything, reworking of a 19th century romance.
Filthy minded and crass, Austin County has something for
everyone, no matter how lacking in culture.
Warning: this story may contain elements of subtlety.
Sorry about that.
What's it about?
Unfortunately-named Titty Austin-Morris is the middle daughter
of a respectable rural Hampshire family.
Being ‘plain of face’, ‘intelligent’
and without the necessary thousands per year to compensate,
her life is pure misery.
When her father attributes her sharp brain to possession by
the Devil and orders her burned at the stake, Titty runs away to
the wicked streets of Winchester and into the arms of her saviour:
the exotic troubadour ‘Gentleman Lizzie’.
CAST NOTES
Guest heroine, Doctor Helen Grime is a renowned academic and university professor. Unfortunately, this means nothing as she destroys her reputation by starring in Austin County as the unfortunate Titty Austin-Morris – born into the wrong century and assailed by misogyny and madness.
Regulars Liz Downes, Alistair and Simon fill out the roles of the other cruel idiots in the episode, with a welcome return by Megan Bay Dorman as Winslet, the beautiful but stupid eldest Austin-Morris daughter.
