of concrete as well as brick. The highlight of the show was the live construction over two days of a Sir-Frederick-Gibberd-designed BISF house, under the watchful 24-hour eyes of the media. The Ministry of Works then held a public exhibition of five types of prefab at the Tate Gallery in London, in 1944: Two timber-framed designs, the Tarran and the Uni-Seco One steel-framed with asbestos panels, the Arcon One aluminium prefab, made from surplus aircraft materials, the AIROH This proved so popular that the Tate held two follow-up exhibitions in 1945. In April 1945, in a public relations exercise, an Arcon was completed and handed over to its new occupants by 22 men in under eight hours, and in May an AIROH was erected on a bombed site in London's Oxford Street in just four hours. While the cost of the prefabs was met directly by the Ministry of Works, the sites and utility infrastructure costs were the responsibility of the local authority. The 1944 Act had envisaged problems in obtaining access to sites quickly and hence slowing the programme, and so gave councils the authority to claim sites where two or more prefabs could be constructed. Councils were also given power over the site once identified, even before purchase was completed. The programme delivered quick housing, with properties going up at the rate in some authorities of 1.75 units per site per day, and the 100,000th house completed in January 1947 in Clapham, South London. However, the cost of the programme at £150 million met with opposition at many levels, both politically and economically. In August 1945 the Portal was abandoned for lack of steel, while the Uni-Seco was effectively stopped from production from the middle of 1946 through lack of supply of wood. It was stated that both the Arcon and AIROH were above budget; the British prefabs in both manufacture and construction costs combined turned out to be more costly than traditionally built brick houses, while the American sourced units were cheaper. The population allocated prefabs were also concerned that prefabs were a permanent over a temporary solution, with the postwar radio comedy Stand Easy! with Charlie Chester creating popular skit-chants on the subject, including: As the economy began to recover, the cost of the unwanted post-war excess production reduced and hence costs of manufacture rose sharply. When the Chancellor allowed the pound to float freely against