A coachman's tall tales: The street humour of Kuwentong Kutsero and radio broadcasting in twentieth-century Manila.

This is the first article-length study of Kuwentong Kutsero (A Coachman's Tales), an immensely popular radio comedy in mid-twentieth century Philippines. This sitcom had two iterations: the first aired a few years prior to the outbreak of the Second World War in the country, while the second dominated the airwaves in the postwar years and enjoyed even greater success than its predecessor despite major changes in the script. The programme was so influential that the phrase kuwentong kutsero entered the Tagalog lexicon as an idiom to mean tall tales. Such a level of success was ironic considering that in the postwar decades the cochero as an actual occupation was on its way to obsolescence. This article argues that the reformatted programme was able to improve on the breakthroughs of the original because of the changes in the language used, the type of humour employed, and the topics tackled—factors that could only be understood if analysed alongside the historical experience of actual rig drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]