Childhood memories will come flooding back with this celebration of the work of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin from Christmas Day 1995.
First a quick review of what else was on offer that day from the pages of the Radio Times.
On 1FM it was Chris Evans at breakfast, live one assumes, followed by Simon Mayo, Danny Baker, Wendy Lloyd and a Radio Tip Top Christmas special. The evening line-up included Peter Cunnah, D-Ream front man, reviewing the year’s dance music and a concert from Wet, Wet, Wet.
As was tradition for many years Roger Royle (he's back again this Christmas Day) was on Radio 2 before Don Maclean’s Good Morning Christmas. Daytime shows included Ken Bruce, Aled Jones and a Disney special. The late night DJ, sitting in for the holidaying Derek and Ellen Jameson, was Martin Kelner.
Radio 3 presenters doing the Christmas shift were Penny Gore, Paul Gambaccini, Piers Burton-Page and Susan Sharpe. Aside from classical music offerings there was a Dave Brubeck concert in celebration of his 75th birthday and Jeremy Nicholas spinning some old 78s in The Shellac Show.
The war in Bosnia had finally come to an end in December 1995 so Radio 5 Live had several shows live from the area with Sheena MacDonald and Liz Barclay. The station also had three different reviews of the year with Robin Lustig presenting Spotlight 95, Bill Hamilton presumably concentrating on the positive news only in Now the Good News and Sybil Ruscoe also in retrospective mood in the daily Ruscoe on Five.
Radio 4 was still providing the kind of music programme that have long since disappeared from its schedules: opening the day was Brian Kay and in the evening the BBC Singers gave us “music in a lighter vein”. From 7 to 8.40 a.m. Russell Davies hosted Morning Cordial and during the dayamongst the repeats were three new series: Walter’s Festive Frolics with John Walters, At Bertram’s Hotel, a Michael Bakewelladaptation of the Agatha Christie novel starring June Whitfield and Trumpton Riots. Comedy came from The Masterson Inheritance, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue and News Quiz of the Yearwith Barry Took in the chair.
Commercial radio listings for Christmas Day 1995
But back to the world of the Graculus, Professor Yaffle, Blue String and magic bean plants in the first programme in a five-part series paying tribute to children’s TV of the 70s (in fact the 60s and 70s), Trumpton Riots. In episode 1, Nogs, Togs and Clangers, Brian Cant remembers the creations of Postgate and Firmin’s Smallfilms outfit: Bagpuss, Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, The Clangers and Pogle’s Wood.
It was Alan Coren that ensured the popularity and longevity of The News Quiz, his wit and humour coming to the fore even when he didn’t know the answer. His day job was as a columnist in numerous publications and, for twenty years, literary editor then editor of Punch.
In this short series from Christmas 1984 writers from Punch such as Hunter Davies, Simon Hoggart and Ray Hattersley examine the humorous side of Christmas. Here Alan Coren looks at some variations on time-honoured party games. This edition of Christmas Punch was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Christmas Day. The producer is Jennie Campbell. Tomorrow: Benny Green.
Elsewhere on BBC radio that day it was rather a low-key affair on Radio 4 with loads of repeats: Stilgoe’s Around, Quote…Unquote, Round the Horne, The Prisoner of Zenda (starring Julian Glover, Nigel Stock and Hannah Gordon), and an adaptation of Saint Joan with Judi Dench and Michael Williams. Amongst the new stuff was a morning comedy slot, The Rest of the Day’s Your Own, with Brian Johnston, Martin Jarvis, Tony Slattery and Alison Steadman.
On Radio 2 you could wake up to Ray Moore and then Good Morning Christmas with Paul McDowell. Terry Wogan had his last seasonal show for a while, he would leave the station, first time round, the following week. There was a throwback to the days of the Light Programme when Jean Metcalfe presented Forces’ Favourites from 1 to 3 p.m. (There had been a Family Favourites revival on Christmas Eve with husband Cliff). Wallowing in nostalgia throughout the day were Nanette Newman, Stubby Kaye and Hubert Gregg. Comedy was supplied by The Grumbleweeds, The News Huddlines and The Impressionists.
Radio 1 opened at 6 a.m. with Keith Chegwin and Maggie Philbin followed by Peter Powell, Simon Bates, Mike Read, Jonathan King, Bruno Brookes, Janice Long and JohnPeel with his Festive 50.
Today Benny Green recalls how professional musicians are suddenly in demand over the festive season, if only to play for the conga line!
This programme was the first in a series titled Christmas Punch and aired on BBC Radio 4 on Christmas Eve 1984.
There’s more from Benny on Radio 2 this coming Christmas as his son Leo presents stories and music from the Golden Age of Hollywood with archive interviews that Benny recorded in the 1970s as part of his research for the documentary series Hooray for Hollywood. Leo Green on Hollywood is a 2-part series on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day.
News today that Radio 4 is to broadcast a short series on chess – a game that perhaps doesn’t easily lend itself to radio. But, as the press release notes, chess made regular appearances on the old Network Three between 1958 and 1964. Sure enough here’s a Radio Times billing from 24 October 1958.
Across the Boardwith Dominic Lawson can be heard from 30 December . There’ll be more about Network Three on my blog in January.
Was there too much Gary Barlow on the radio this month? Well I’m afraid I’m adding some more with this show featuring the Take That boys, in the days when they were boys.
Their longevity cannot be disputed. Indeed as I write this Gary’s album is at number three in the charts and Robbie tops it with Swings Both Ways. You may have also caught him recently on Radio 4’s Mastertapesseries.
When The Take That Christmas Take Away aired on Radio 1 on Christmas Day 1993 the band were at the height of their fame, first time round, and there’s plenty of joshing and good-natured banter. I know this programme is unlikely to appeal to my core readership but for fans of 90s pop here’s a rare chance to hear Take That as DJs for the day, complete with Smashie and Nicey-like impressions.
As for the rest of the Christmas Day on Radio 1 you could hear Neale James from 4 a.m. followed by Lynn Parsons and Simon Mayo. After Take That there was Johnnie Walker and, who’d have believed it, some religious programming with God in the Flesh featuring the Late Late Service and a Whitney Houston gospel special presented by Simon Bates. The day rounded off with Peel’s Festive 50.
On Radio 2 the line-up was Colin Berry, Roger Royle (of course), Don Maclean, Ken Bruce, Michael Aspel, The News Huddlines and Chas and Dave’s Christmas Knees Up. You could also catch Alan Titchmarsh, David Jacobs, David Mellor (!) and Gloria Gaynor.
Radio 3’s main offering was a broadcast of The Barber of Seville live from the Met in New York.
Unlike other Radio 4 Christmas Day schedules that I’ve written about this year, 1993 actually has a day that isn’t packed with repeats. After the 7 a.m. news John Walter’s Xmas Fayre gave listeners two hours of ”mystery time zone guests, some literary consequences and radio’s first ever crossword of the air”, all live apparently. It Was Christmas Day in the Empire recalled those festive radio relays across the nation and from far-flung places around the world that used to go out on Christmas Day in the 40s and 50s. Pick of the Week That Wasn’t had Father Christmas looking back at seasonal broadcasts “that might have been”. Comedy came in the shape of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, News Quiz of the Year, The Discreet Charm of the BBC and The Masterson Inheritance with Comedy Store alumni Paul Merton, Josie Lawrence, Jim Sweeney and Lee Simpson. The dramas were a new production of a Ben Travers farce, Turkey Time, and a repeat of The Taming of the Shrew starring Bob Peck and Cheryl Campbell.
Finally on Radio 5 Cliff Morgan had an early morning seasonal miscellany of music, humour and verse whilst in the evening there was a serving of Cult Radio’s Christmas Extravaganza with Marc Riley and Mark Radcliffe.
DJ departures in the commercial sector can be swift, almost brutal. Listeners to Smooth’s Pat Sharp and Kid Jensen won’t have heard them say goodbye this week. But on Heart East Anglia it was a different story as the duo that have woken up listeners for the last fourteen years, Rob Chandler and Chrissie Jackson, got a full, and at times emotional, send-off.
This is how that final show sounded. (With thanks to David Lloyd).
Rob and Chrissie originally teamed up on Radio Broadland, with Rob on the breakfast show for 27 years in total. Dipping into my Broadland archive (yes I have one thanks to some Broads boating holidays!) here’s Chrissie in the afternoons in 1989 and Rob at breakfast in 1988 and 1989.
And as I’ve dug out the Radio Broadland tapes here are some more clips from 1988 and 1989. The DJs I can identify are Dave Brown, Paul Thompson, Mike Stewart.
In my late teens you may have found me browsing the record racks of Sydney Scarborough in Hull not just for the latest pop offerings, but flicking through the Frank Sinatra back catalogue. The reason for my loitering in the Easy Listening section? It was down to the musical education I received every Saturday morning from David Jacobs and my introduction to the world of the American songbook and the voices of Ella Fitzgerald, Vic Damone, Keely Smith, Tony Bennett and co.
Yes, I did follow the latest trends in pop music, and develop a love for jazz and big band – with thanks to Alan Dell, Benny Green and Humphrey Lyttelton - but over the years it was the tunes that David called “our kind of music” that stayed with me. So it was a very sad moment in August when he presented his last show, illness now robbing his voice of the tone and fluency that had set him apart from many other broadcasters.
Reading the obituaries for David you might think that his career was bookended by Juke Box Jury and The David Jacobs Collection. In researching this post I’ve been amazed by the sheer volume and variety of shows that David has been involved with, both radio and TV. As far as I can tell from 1948 to 2013 there wasn’t a single year he wasn’t on the radio and from the late 1950s and through sixties he remained a constant on the nation’s TV screens. Sadly, of course, little remains of his radio and TV work from the early years as most shows were live – only two editions of Juke Box Jurysurvive for instance. I can’t, of course, include every programme that David worked on – guest appearances on Hello Cheeky or the infamous Fred Emney Picks a Pop and so on - but I trust that this post includes all the significant ones in what was a remarkable career.
David was born in Streatham Hill, South London on 19 May 1926. He had a good ear for voices and at an early age would entertain his family with impressions of film stars, radio performers and local characters such as the milkman. The performing bug led to local talent shows and amateur dramatics. Early jobs included working at a pawnbrokers, a gents outfitters, a warehouse and a tobacco company. He joined the Home Guard as an officer cadet before plumping for the Navy in the summer of 1944.
His Navy service was all shore-based with training at HMS Royal Arthur in Skegness (at Butlins holiday camp), moving to HMS Ganges in Ipswich and then HMS Valkyrie (a row of boarding houses) on the Isle of Man.
A chance meeting with a young girl called Kay Emerson, who turned out to be a junior programme engineer on the BBC show Navy Mixture, led to David’s first radio appearance. The producer Charles Maxwell was not exactly overwhelmed by his range of impressions but nonetheless asked him to work it up into an act which, in the event, turned out to be imitations of Howard Marshall, Stuart Hibberd, Vic Oliver, Jack Benny and Rochester, Winston Churchill and –“in a crescendo of frenzied quacking” – Donald Duck. Sadly no recording of the show survives.
Coming off stage he was introduced to naval lieutenant-commander Kim Peacock (later to play Paul Temple) who told him that a career as an impersonator might be limited but had he thought of becoming an announcer in the services broadcasting unit. Within a couple of weeks he found himself at ORBS, the Overseas Recorded Broadcasting Service, in Drury Lane. There he met Jon Pertwee – they would become life-long pals – George Melachrino, George Mitchell, Sidney Torch and Eric Robinson, names that would become familiar in post-war broadcasting. David’s first announcing duties were for Services Music Hall.
In May 1946 David was posted to a new station being set up in Ceylon, Radio SEAC (South Eastern Asia Command). It had immense coverage and could be heard in India, East Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Indo-China, Japan and even the west coast of the States.
David was the station’s senior announcer but had no experience of live broadcasting. His instruction came from Captain McDonald Hobley - later one of the BBC’s team of in-vision announcers – and he was finally let loose with his first live announcement: “This is Radio-Seac, Ceylon, broadcasting on 6.075 megacycles per second in the 49 metre band.”
Also at Radio-SEAC were Desmond Carrington, who like David would have, and continues to have, a long radio career, future BBC radio producer Charles Chilton and Alexander Moyes, who would join the BBC’s Overseas Service announcing team. David continued to have links with Radio Ceylon, as SEAC became after hostilities ended, until the mid-50s, providing batches of scripts for a weekly record feature.
Posted home in January 1947 - a somewhat enforced return following an unfortunate dalliance with a married woman - David had been due to return to the Army Broadcasting Service when he was invited to join the BBC’s Overseas Service who were short of announcers. Working alongside Jack de Manio, Jean Metcalfe and Mary Malcolm the strait-laced corporation didn’t seem to be the place for someone who, by his own admission, was an uncontrollable giggler. In his autobiography David recalls how his job was cut short following a Home News bulletin:
At that moment one of the sub-editors came over with what was evidently an urgent piece of lately-arrived news. He slipped it into my hand and I glanced down at it. It was simply a photograph of a remarkably unclad young woman. And it was so unexpected and incongruous that I began to laugh. And having once begun to laugh, I couldn’t stop. I managed to take a deep breath and stay straight-faced long enough to get out ‘That is the end of the news’. It had finished five minutes too soon.
After just nine months on the staff David went freelance, and his career flourished. Poetry producer John Arlott asked him to narrate Book of Verse, sharing the duties with John Whitty. Book of Verse was a weekly programme that went out on the Eastern Service, and later also on the Light Programme. Meanwhile he was also busy on English by Radioand Radio Newsreel.
By the late 40s/early 50s David had established himself as both an actor and a disc jockey. For the independent producer Harry Alan Towers there was the marathon 150 episode serial The Scarlet Pimpernel, playing Lord Tony Dewhurst to Marius Goring’s Sir Percy Blakeney. This series was syndicated in North America and on Radio Luxembourg. For the BBC, written and produced by his old Radio SEAC colleague Charles Chilton, was Journey into Space (1953-58). Famously Jacobs played all the roles not taken by the four principal characters: a total of twenty-five. He recalled that on at least one occasion “I found myself having a conversation with myself.”
As ‘DJ the DJ’ he joined the roster of presenters on Housewives’ Choice, getting his first booking for the fortnight beginning 25 January 1949. He left nothing to chance and after a week wrote himself lots of letters from various imaginary people telling him how good he was. He needn’t have bothered: “the BBC, scrupulously refraining from poking its nose into other people’s business, politely forwarded all the letters to me – unopened”. Nonetheless he continued to present the show at intervals until 1966.
Meanwhile David was also doing commercial voiceovers and recording shows in London for transmission on Radio Luxembourg, most running at just 30 minutes each. Some of his 1950s shows were sponsored by Bournvita and during the 60s he fronted some EMI-sponsored shows produced by Ken Evans, who would later produce his Radio 2 shows in the 1980s. (Ken died just last month). Shows on 208 included Roxy Time, Woodbine Quiz Time, Lucky Couple (an early version of Mr and Mrs), Record Roulette, Pops Past Midnight, David Jacobs’ Startime, David Jacobs Plays the Pops and, not unnaturally, The David Jacobs Show. He worked on and off for Radio Luxembourg until 1968, when such recorded shows were faded out.
The Amazing Adventures of Commander Highprice (1947 BBC TV)
A programme starring Jon Pertwee and David’s first TV appearance. Little Women (1950-51 BBC TV) Playing the part of Laurie Jazz Club (1940s Light Programme) Both the BBC’s biography of David and Gillian Reynolds writing in the Daily Telegraph list Jazz Club. I can’t be certain when he presented the programme as it tended to have a different compere each week. Puffney Post Office (1950 Light Programme) Comedy series with Jon Pertwee and Eric Barker She Shall Have Music (1954 Home Service) Providing the announcements for this show featuring Gracie Cole and her All Girl Orchestra Purely for Pleasure (1954 Home Service) On the Brighter Side (1950s Home Service) David’s first show with producer Derek Chinnery Grande Gingold (1955 Home Service) A series starring Hermione Gingold Saturday Show (1954-55 Home Service) Featuring Cyril Stapleton and the BBC Show Band, Alfred Marks and Rikki Fulton. Produced by Johnnie Stewart, later of Top of the Pops. The Man About Town (1955 Home Service) Star vehicle for Jack Buchanan with Vanessa Lee, Pat Coombs and Hubert Gregg Curiouser and Curiouser (c.1957) Reading humorous verse along with Peter Sellers My Patricia (c. 1957) Radio show with Pat Kirkwood and Hubert Gregg. When Hubert died in 2004 it was David that presented the tribute version of Thanks for the Memory. Movietone News(1955-56) David had previously voiced newsreels for the BBC and had stood in for Leslie Mitchell at Movietone. When Leslie joined ITV full-time in 1955 he suggested David for the job. Dateline London (1950s BBC) Programmes for the North American Service of the BBC in which David interviewed big name US stars visiting the UK. Top Town Tournament (1959-60 BBC TV) A Barney Colehan produced show in which towns round the UK competed in a talent contest to find the best variety acts, a kind of early It’s a Knockout and Britain’s Got Talent hybrid. The series ran from 1954 to 1960 but David Jacobs is only credited in later series.
Here's David with a Movietone News report in December 1955. You can listen (and see) more on the British Movietone website.
An honorary mention must go to the one-off (and deservedly so) 1955 BBC show Music, Music, Music in which the panel had to identify tunes tapped out with a pencil, played backwards, speeded up or other disguised. At Jacobs recalls, “it might have kept a couple of schoolboys amused for part of a wet afternoon but it had no general appeal at all.”
Focus on Hocus (1955 ITV)
David presented this short-lived series featuring the magic tricks of David Berglas The Vera Lynn Show (1956 ITV) Make Up Your Mind! (1956-8 Granada TV) “Competitors with an eye for value have a chance to show their skill by saying which is worth more-an object or a certain sum of money. There are prizes for viewers as well as for studio challengers” Tell the Truth (1957-58 ATV) With regular panel John Skeaping, Jacqueline Curtis, Roberta Leigh and Bill Owen.
Although we think of David as mainly a BBC man he became one of the early star names on the fledgling commercial television channels in the late 1950s. He got this break thanks to an offer to compere Focus on Hocus from producer Tig Roe who’d worked with David on the Scarlet Pimpernel radio series.
David was chairman of Make Up Your Mind!, a kind of early The Price is Right with valuations provided by Arthur Maddocks. Tell the Truth was the more successful show, coming as it did from the Goodson-Todman stable, and enjoyed a UK revival in the 1980s. When David left the show the next host was McDonald Hobley (1958), his old Radio SEAC colleague, and then Shaw Taylor (1959-61)
Juke Box Jury (1959-1967 BBC TV)
The Wednesday Magazine (1959-62 BBC TV) A daytime show aimed at the housewife – it had previously been billed as Mainly for Women and though having a female production team was fronted by John Whitty. Top of the Pops (1964-66 BBC1) David was one of the quartet of hosts of when the show started in January 1964 with Pete Murray, Alan Freeman and Jimmy Savile.
It was Juke Box Jury that made David Jacobs a household name and the show became a Saturday teatime fixture throughout the 1960s. When the show was first muted the idea was that David would be on the panel but he pointed out that he had considerably more experience as a chairman so he ended up in the hot seat. In fact three of four years earlier he’d already suggested to the BBC a similar show under the title Hit or Miss but they demurred. But Hit or Miss stuck in one way or another as it’s the title of John Barry’s theme for the programme.
David puts the early success of Juke Box Jury not down to the opportunity for the TV audience to hear the latest pop records or hear the opinions of the panel but to his mock feud with panellist Pete Murray. This had started on the radio when David was on Saturday night’s Pick of the Pops and plugged Pete’s Sunday night show, Pete’s Party.
The introductory music faded down: I began to introduce the panel; and when I came to Pete Murray I said ‘And now it is my pleasure-or, at least, my duty- to introduce Pete Murray.’ Pete, keeping his face perfectly straight, looked at the camera and said: ’Oh, I’ve nothing against David Jacobs. I think the world needs men like him: in fact, there’s a very good job going for him in the gentlemen’s lavatory in Leicester Square Underground Station.’ I raised my eyebrows and replied: ‘Thanks – mention my name and you’ll get a good seat.’
To my consternation and embarrassment, hundreds of letters began to come in, protesting at Pete’s ‘ill-mannered and completely unprovoked attack’ on me. Thanks to all this undeserved criticism of poor Pete Juke Box Jury was kept on long enough to settle down and become one of television’s most unexpected and apparently unshakeable successes.
Earlier this year David spoke to Shaun Tilley for Top of the Pops Playback about his time presenting the Pops between 1964 and 1966.
Roundabout (1958-59 Light Programme)
David was the Tuesday host of this new daily show, in what we would now call a drivetime slot. Looking after the other days of the week were Peter King, Alan Dell, Ken Sykora and Richard Murdoch. The programme ran until 1970 though David only appeared for the first couple of years or so. Pick of the Pops (1956-61 Light Programme) David succeeded Franklin Engelmann and Alan Dell to become the third host of POTP. Nearly 40 years later he’d take over from Alan Dell again on Sounds Easy. The DJ Show (1961 Light Programme) A Monday night show in which he “spins The Top of the Pops” Late Night Saturday (1963 Light Programme) Twelve O’Clock Spin (1964 Light Programme) The DJ Show (1964 Light Programme) On Sunday afternoons with “news and views of current records” Follow That Man (1964 Light Programme) Jacobs plays Rex Anthony, a BBC producer “caught up in a curious and violent train of events”. Each week a different set of writers take up the story. Those producing the scripts were Edward J.Mason, Eddie Maguire, John P. Wynn, Lawrie Wyman, Philip Levine, Ted Willis, Bob Monkhouse & Denis Goodwin, Gale Pedrick and Frank Muir & Denis Norden. Midday Spin (1965 Light Programme) Music Through Midnight (1966/67 Light Programme) Eurovision Song Contest (1960, 1962-66 BBC TV) David provided the television commentary. His involvement in Eurovision actually goes back to 1957 when he hosted Festival of Popular British Songs, a series of heats to decide that year’s UK entry (All sung by Patricia Bredin). Hot Ice (1963 BBC TV) This series had started in 1961 with Alan Weeks introducing. The competition catered for “ice-skating enthusiasts and for lovers of pop records.” Seven days before each show the competing teams were supplied with records, chosen by a listening panel, to which they had to rehearse a routine. The Cool Spot (1964 BBC1) Similar to Hot Ice it was filmed at the Ice Stadium in Nottingham and as well as the skating there was music from the likes of The Yardbirds (in the first programme on 7 July), Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen, Shane Fenton and the Fentones and Lulu and the Luvers. Hot Line (1965 BBC1) A live Saturday night show in which “viewers have the opportunity to discuss any subject they like with any member of the panel via the Hot Line telephone”.
As a lad David whiled away many an hour at the Streatham Ice Rink. His brother Dudley became a professional skater and his best chum Freddie Tomlins went on to win World and European silver medals in figure skating. Perhaps then, it’s not surprising that David was chosen to host Hot Ice and The Cool Spot, though there’s no evidence that he went on the ice for these shows. However, he did for a December 1955 edition of Television Ice-Time (from a time when television seemed obsessed with shows on ice).He’d suggested that he should jump a row of barrels during the programme. The BBC insured him for £10,000 which helped to boost publicity for the stunt. “The inevitable happened,” he recalled, “at rehearsals I soared over the barrels like a bird; on the broadcast I clipped the last one and went scudding across the ice like a tipsy penguin. Fortunately the result was only breathlessness and bruises.”
Was Hot Line Britain’s first phone-in? I’m not sure but such broadcasts were rare at the time. Only running for three weeks in May 1965 the Radio Times proclaimed that “David Jacobs presides over a team of personalities who will answer questions on the telephone put to them by members of the public”. The first programme gave viewers a chance to quiz Peter Ustinov, Randolph Churchill, Italian painter Pietro Annigoni and fashion house director Ginette Spannier. However, this was the mid-60s so the public couldn’t just phone in on the night as “the jamming of the Shepherd’s Bush telephone exchange could interfere with essential services.” Instead they had to write into Television Centre giving their details and the question they wanted to pose. Hot Line wasn’t exactly live; BBC engineers had to introduce a tape delay in case of any choice language from a caller.
David Jacobs' Words and Music (1966 Rediffusion TV) Series looking at trends in music. Guests included Georgia Brown, Dennis Lotis and Millicent Martin.
The David Jacobs Show (1968 Tyne-Tees)
A Wednesday night show in which David meets ”show business personalities, politicians, and members of the public who have a point of view to put.” Broadcast in some ITV regions April-July 1968. The Wednesday Show (1968 BBC1) A live early evening show with guests and music. Each week there was a song from folk singer Deena Webster. Broadcast from July to December. It’s Sunday Night (1969 LWT) A late-night chat show for which the executive producer was LWT’s Head of Variety Tito Burns. Tito had been a warrant officer in the RAF and had guested on one of David’s SEAC shows as an accordionist. The programme ran in most ITV regions from June to September 1969. The David Jacobs Show(1967-68 Radio 1 & Radio 2) Surprisingly David was a Sunday night fixture on the new pop station when it launched in 1967 although the accent was more on the “tuneful end”, playing LPs and featuring music, in the first show from the BBC Radio Orchestra and the Mike Sammes Singers. He also talked to ‘People of Choice’, the first being Julie Andrews. Any Questions? and Any Answers? (1967-1984 Radio 2 then Radio 4)
For someone so closely associated with popular music Jacobs was, perhaps, not the natural choice for the role of chairman on Any Questions? Since the programme’s inception in 1948 Freddie Grisewood had been in charge of proceedings but by the winter of 1967 he was unwell and his doctor had ordered rest for a week or two, in the event he didn’t return to the show apart from a one-off to celebrate his 80th birthday. Five different chairmen were given a try-out, one of whom was David Jacobs. Producer Michael Bowen, writing in 1981, recalled the circumstances that led to his appointment:
The first thought that David might be the next chairman of Any Questions? came from Bobbie my wife. She heard him doing Desert Island Discsin which he revealed his love of horses, and to Bobbie that is always a prime, indeed an essential, attribute to anyone seeking high office. She was very impressed by the whole broadcast and told me about it. I put the idea forward that we should invite David to be one of the chairmen during the interregnum and Robin Scott, for one, was enthusiastic.
That Desert Island Discsappearance had, in fact, been some three years earlier, but it makes a delightful story. David became the permanent chairman from April 1968 and remained with the programme until July 1984. He was masterful at dealing with some occasionally rowdy audiences, notably the 1976 Enoch Powell incident and this interjection in 1980.
After Seven (1971-73 Radio 2)
David hosted the Tuesday evening edition of this hour-long show. Other nights were, at least initially, covered by Michael Parkinson, Alan Freeman, Ray Moore and Michael Aspel. After Sevenran from 4 October 1971 to June 1973. Christmas Morning later David Jacobs’ Christmas Crackers(1972-77 Radio 4) Every Christmas Day morning for six years David provided the links for a miscellany of seasonal comedy clips and music. Writers included Barry Pilton, Pete Spence and David Rider. There were also other holiday shows in a similar vein such as Spring Into Summer (May Bank Holidays 1976-78), Fall Into Summer, The August Jacobs and so on. The Summer Show on August Bank Holiday in 1977 featured sketches written by Alastair Beaton performed by Bernard Cribbins, Sheila Steafel and Royce Mills. From Christmas 1978 the shows were replaced by Christmas Briers with Richard Briers. Melodies for You (1974-84 Radio 2) David was the third presenter of this long-running show playing light classical music. David Jacobs with Star Sounds(1978-90 Radio 2) Starting on 11 December 1978 this was a two-hour Saturday morning show featuring the kind of music that would later make The David Jacobs Collection. The Star Sounds title was eventually dropped and the show cut down to an hour when Sounds of the Sixtieswas introduced. David Jacobs (1985-91 Radio 2) Weekday show from 1 to 2 p.m. running from 7 January 1985 to 20 December 1991.
Here’s the man himself coming in for some light-hearted criticism on Radio 4’s Feedback in 1983.
Those Radio 2 weekend shows of the late 70s/early 80s (Star Sounds and Melodies for You) were recalled by former Radio 2 presenter and newsreader Charles Nove, writing shortly after David’s retirement:
When I joined Radio 2, David was presenting two shows every weekend. On a Saturday morning, he’d be offering a mix of Sinatra, Torme, Sammy Davis et al, while the Sunday show would be the classical repertoire. As David put it, in a turn of phrase that may in part be lost on today’s CD and MP3 generation,“I’ll turn myself over and play you music from my other side.” Or, as the late, great Ray Moore would have it: “On Saturday David will play you songs from his front side, and then on Sunday he’ll turn over and show you his……..”. David took this weekly ribbing in good part.
The lunchtime shows that ran between 1985 and 1991 were, in fact, the first time in his career that David had presented a regular daily programme (indeed for five years he was on six days a week!). They came at a time when the network music policy was more melodic and less pop-orientated, ideal for David but sounding a little out of place elsewhere in the schedule.
In 1972 David was part of the Capital Radio bid for an ILR licence. Programme proposals show that he was penciled in for a Sunday lunchtime show: “The period between ten and two o’clock will be in the hands of David Jacobs and apart from providing an appreciable music content will take advantage of Mr Jacobs’ talent and experience as a programme moderator. One o’clock Sunday lunchtime is traditionally the time for the family to be together and David Jacobs will direct the show towards them in a spirit which includes those listeners who are unable to enjoy the company of their own families.”
David didn’t make it on air at Capital. Instead Sunday lunchtimes would eventually feature that other old smoothie Gerald Harper with his Sunday Affair.
What’s My Line (1973/4 BBC2)
The first revival of the early television hit with David in the chair Where Are They Now? (1979 BBC1) A four-part series in August 1979 in which David meets “people who made headlines in the past.” Guests were Ruby Murray, Captain Carlsen, Buster Crabbe, Wing Cmdr Robert Stanford Tuck, Billy Hayes, Humphrey Lestocq, Ethel Whittaker, Reita Faria, Sir Alec Rose and Gerald Campion. Come Dancing (1984-86 BBC1) In fact it was a return visit to the show as David had been one of the presenters in the late 50s. Primetime (1989-92 BBC1) A daytime magazine show aimed at the “more mature viewer”.
The idea for Primetime arose from a letter that Sue Lawley read out on See for Yourself that argued that while youth had Janet Street-Porter to look after their TV interests, older viewers received scant attention and suggested that David Jacobs present such a programme.
Both David and his Radio 2 producer Anthony Cherry saw this programme and set about creating Primetime, broadcast on Wednesday afternoons on BBC1. On-screen alongside David wereco-producer Miriam O’Callaghan and assistant producer Sheila McClennon. The guest on the very first edition was none other than Vera Lynn, neatly linking back to those 1955 shows on ITV.
This series of clips are taken from some of David’s Radio 2 shows: Star Sounds from 1980, the start of a 1986 daily show live onboard HMS Ark Royal, Sounds Easy, a Robert Farnon concert, Easy Does It from October 1997 and The David Jacobs Collection from September 2007.
David Jacobs (1992 Melody Radio)
Easy Does It (1993-1998 Radio 2) Taking over this Saturday night show from Bill Rennells on 2 January 1993 the show featured music on record and sessions from the BBC Big Band. Ended 11 April 1998. Sounds Easy (1994-96 Radio 2) David sits in for Alan Dell on this Sunday afternoon show when he is unwell and eventually becomes the permanent host when Alan died in 1995. The David Jacobs Collection (1996-2013 Radio 2) There were two separate series of The David Jacobs Collection. The first, from 10 to 11 p.m. on Sunday nights from 6 October 1996 to 12 October 1997, and then the return of the much-loved show from 11 p.m. to midnight starting on 12 April 1998. Frank Sinatra-Voice of the Century (1998 Radio 2) Narrating a 13-part series He’s Playing Our Song-The Music of Marvin Hamlisch (2002 Radio 2) Narrating a six-part series
Following the end of the daily show in December 1991, David made only occasional appearances on BBC radio in 1992. These included a concert with the BBC Concert Orchestra in May (on the occasion of their 40th anniversary), a 75th birthday concert for the arranger and composer Robert Farnon (David went on to present other concerts featuring Farnon’s music and introduced a tribute programme on his death in 2005) and a Boxing Day special.
There was also a return to commercial radio in June and July when David presented weekend shows on London’s Melody Radio. His show producer at Melody, Gary Whitford recalls how he would “start on air at six in the morning and David would usually arrive by seven. During the first hour – while on air- I would pull David’s music and get a cup of tea and some custard creams ready for his arrival. David used the second studio/come production suite to broadcast from and after I read the news at eight I’d fade up the second studio and David would take over.” Gary told me that “David was a lovely man and a true professional. He was old school, an original pioneer.” But he wasn’t one to suffer fools gladly “and some less respectful people found that out quite quickly.”
Meanwhile back the Beeb, it was back to regular shows from January 1993 with Easy Does It and in 1994 sitting in for an ailing Alan Dell on Sounds Easy. But it was the culmination of all those years in the business and meeting all those star names and performers that came together in The David Jacobs Collection: “Hello there. Stay with me from now until midnight so that we can share that which many call Our Kind of Music. All of which comes from within the David Jacobs collection.” Cue I Love You Samantha by the Pete Moore Orchestra.
In the last year it became apparent that David was unwell and he missed a number of shows. In July 2013 it was announced that David would step down citing treatment for liver cancer and Parkinson’s disease. His last collection aired on 4 August, by now he was too ill to make it into the studio and his links were recorded at his home by producer Alan Boyd. Less than a month later David passed away.
Tributes to David’s broadcasting longevity, his consummate professionalism, his charm, his sense of humour and his musical knowledge followed both his retirement and his death. After his last broadcast Janice Long’s post-midnight show was filled with tweets and emails from listeners saying how much they’d miss those Sunday night dates with Mr Jacobs. It was noticeable how many broadcasters paid heartfelt tributes when he died. Here are Ken Bruce, Jeremy Vine, Tony Blackburn, Head of Programmes at Radio 2 Lewis Carney, Alex Lester (talking to John Foster on BBC Tees) and a close to tears Desmond Carrington.
It had been hoped that David would have been well enough to record a Christmas show for Radio 2. As this didn’t come to pass, by way of a substitute, enjoy this Christmas show that was broadcast on Saturday 23 December 1989 (with thanks to Paul Langford for providing this copy).
David Jacobs 1926-2013
Thanks to Paul Langford, Gary Whitford, Paul Easton and Charles Nove.
Every morning between 1978 and 2006 Radio 4 would usher in the new day with Fritz Spiegel’s Radio 4 UK Theme. Every day that is except Christmas Day when for many years listeners were treated to seasonal mix of carols played by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. This is my recording of Welcome to Christmas, though I suspect an opening bar or two are missing.
Paddy O’Byrne was a “giant of South African radio”, one of the best-known and much-loved broadcasters in the country over four decades. Not bad for a lad from Dublin who only went to South Africa when he was posted there by his insurance company employer.
When I first wrote about Paddy for my post on Radio 2 newsreaders I only knew a little about his time in South Africa. Earlier this month I was contacted by Jean Collen who told me that Paddy had just passed away and this news set me off to uncover more about the man once described as “the best known Irishman in South Africa”.
Paddy was born in Killiney in County Dublin in 1929 and educated at St Mary’s College, Castleknock College, where he won prizes in English and was active in the performing arts, and University College Dublin. He, somewhat reluctantly, followed his father – Supreme Court Judge John O’Byrne - into law, being called to the bar in 1952. But his main love was the world of entertainment and he gave up law after a couple of years and left for London, joining the George Mitchell Singers (he was considered to have a “first rate bass” voice).
On tour in Llandudno he met his wife-to-be, Dublin-born singer and dancer Victoria Fitzpatrick, his beloved “Old Vic”. They married in 1956 and Paddy obtained a steady job working for an insurance company. Within a couple of years they had posted him to South Africa. But like the law, insurance wasn’t really for him either and in 1961 he took part in the Voice of South Africa competition organised by the South Africa Broadcasting Corporation, which he won. Part of the first prize was to read a serial on the English service of the SABC. Thus his course was set for a career in broadcasting.
Paddy’s work for SABC was extremely varied on both the English language public service and the commercial Springbok Radio as an announcer, newsreader, presenter and quiz-master. For a while he played Mark Saxon in the adventure serial No Place to Hide. Other shows for which he was remembered are Sunday at Home, Twenty One, Quiz Kids and Deadline Thursday Night.
Springbok Radio Revisited posted this short tribute to Paddy:
In the early 1970s Paddy returned to the UK (for reasons I’m unable to establish) and in 1974 was employed by Capital Radio as one of the presenters of Night Flight and as the voice of Capital Jobspot. Those overnight shows proved far from satisfying as a lack of needletime meant the playlist consisted wholly of library music. By 1976 he was now at BBC Radio 2 as an announcer and newsreader. This role also gave him presenting opportunities on shows such as Music from the Movies, the Northern Radio Orchestra shows, Marching and Waltzing, You and the Night and the Music and, between March 1979 and January 1980, Saturday’s Early Show.
From my own collection of recordings here’s Paddy on Capital and Radio 2:
In 1980 Paddy was back in South Africa for a second time, initially helping to launch Channel 702 (now known as Talk Radio 702) and then returning to SABC with his daily Top of the Morning with Paddy O’Byrne. It was known that during the latter years of his imprisonment Nelson Mandela was a regular listener to Paddy’s shows. The O’Byrne’s got to meet him at a Gala Banquet and subsequently Mandela’s daughter Zindzi became a family friend. There was a sad irony that Paddy and Nelson Mandela both died within a day of each other.
In 1995 Paddy mentored a young broadcaster, Vuyo Mbuli, and for a while they co-hosted an afternoon show on the renamed English service, SAfm. Mbuli (pictured left with Paddy) went on to become a household name in South Africa but tragically collapsed and died shortly after his 46th birthday in May of this year.
By 1996 Paddy had retired from SABC but continued to broadcast on the community station 1485 Radio Today, at the request of station chairman and former Springbok Radio presenter Peter Lotis, as well as Radio Veritas in Johannesburg and Fine Music Radio in Cape Town.
The O’Byrne family returned to Ireland, to Mullingar in County Westmeath, in 2001. For a while Paddy was still doing the occasional show on the classical station Lyric FM and some recorded shows for Fine Music Radio back in South Africa. In 2010 he was inducted into the MTN Radio Awards Hall of Fame with the citation on the website reading: “Another giant of South African Radio, and an accomplished newsreader and presenter. After a long stint at the SABC, he was also one of the founding voices of 702 before settling in Ireland”.
In January of this year Paddy’s wife died and he made a brief return to South Africa for a memorial service in honour of the “Old Vic”. During the visit he made a couple of guest appearances on the radio, on 1485 Radio Today and on Classic FM’s People of Note, reminiscing with Richard Cock. Here’s an edited version of that conversation.
Not long after his wife’s death Paddy was diagnosed with lung cancer. Though the treatment was successful he died of heart failure on 4 December. His death was widely reported in the media in both South Africa and Ireland. His friend and former writer and co-star on No Place to Hide, Adrian Steed remembered him as “a wonderful man in very many ways. The measure of the man was his humanity, his generosity, and his warmth to the many friends he made via radio”.
Paddy O’Byrne 1929-2013
Thanks to Jean Collen. The 702 Launch Audio comes from Primedia Broadcasting and People of Notefrom Capital FM 102.7
One news event of 2013 that polarised opinion was the death of Baroness Thatcher in April. I’ve no intention of stepping into that political minefield. However, for students of political history I’m offering this interview with Margaret Thatcher from November 1980, just 18 months into her premiership.
The interview, conducted by Michael Charlton, is from the BBC Radio 4 series Analysis and was broadcast on 26 November 1980.
Fifty years ago today viewers to BBC TV saw the first edition of Top of the Pops. You’ll see or hear nothing on the usually anniversary-consciousBeeb to commemorate this;the brand has become more than a little tarnished in the last couple of years. Selected repeats start up again on BBC Four, we’re into 1979 now, but the regular series was killed off in 2006, though it limps on with the Christmas/New Year specials.
Back in May 1983 Top of the Pops celebrated its 1000th edition and BBC Radio 1 joined in with a simultaneous broadcast and a history of the show introduced by Richard Skinner.
Firstly here’s what went out on Radio 1 only for the 10 minutes before TOTP and then half an hour afterwards.
And here’s that night’s edition of the show complete with an introductory chat between Richard Skinner and David Jacobs that also aired on BBC1.
Both recordings are exactly as I committed them to tape that day and include the voices of presenters who are now ‘persona non grata’. I have made no further digital edits.
Programmes commemorating forty years of UK commercial radio continued over the holiday period. At the time of writing you can still catch Paul Rowley’s excellent documentary for BBC Local Radio stations, The Other Side of the Dial.
Listeners to Clyde 2 last Tuesday evening, those not partying hard for Hogmanay, will have heard Jim Symon and Tom Ferrie, one of the Clyde original old boys, chewing the fat and recalling 40 Years of Radio Clyde. They dusted off a few archive recordings too with the voices of Billy Connolly, Sheila Duffy, Richard Park, Tiger Tim, Romeo, Mike Riddoch, Billy Sloan, Frank Skerrett, Tony Currie and Jimmy Mack plus news and sports highlights.
This is the man who signed off from one radio show with: “I'm fed up with this idiotic game; as for the score, if you've been listening you won't need it; if you haven't, you won't want it. I'm going home."And of one contestant on TV responded with “I’m tired of looking at you.” Yet he was one of the biggest personalities of 1950s Britain, and undoubtedly the first big star of the post-war television service.
‘Irascible’ is the oft-used description for Gilbert Harding’s character.A former colleague, Leonard Miall, went on to say he was “arrogant and rude. He bullied people shamelessly. As like as not he would be the worse for alcohol, and he was prone to lose his temper. Yet he had great personal charm and a very well-stocked mind”.Despite his fame, and it was widespread, much like Kenneth Williams and the Carry Onfilms a decade later, he seemingly despised the medium he appeared on, yet thrived on it too.
John Snagge, for many years the ‘Voice of the BBC’, took the view that Gilbert was “a Regency period character, throughout, and his rudeness was studied: not merely vulgar abuse. At one time he was talking to my father, and a man came up and patted him on the shoulder. Gilbert turned, and didn’t say anything like ‘Go away, I’m busy’ or ‘Why the hell d’you interrupt?’ He just looked at the man and said ‘What emporium of so-called education does that tie come from?’”
Harding joined the BBC in the early days of the war. Aged 32 he’d already had a number of teaching jobs in England, France and Canada, a brief spell as a policeman, been a stringer for The Times whilst on a teaching assignment in Cyprus and had was studying for his final law examinations when war broke out.
Now with the newly formed BBC Monitoring Service - Harding spoke French, German, Greek and Turkish -he was based at Broadcasting House on the team compiling the Daily Digest of Foreign Broadcasts. When the team was evacuated out to Woods Norton, near Evesham, Harding worked on the Cabinet Report analysis for the War Cabinet and would sometimes be telephoned directly by Churchill who once asked for “that man with the succinct mind.”
In 1942 Harding moved to the Outside Broadcasts Department, where he shared an office with Raymond Glendenning. Here he made The Microphone Wants to Know, a series of radio features about wartime life on the home front broadcast on the Home Service, plus Meet John Londoner, with “on-the-street” interviews and Behind the Battlefront, both of which were syndicated to North American stations.
Within a couple of years Harding applied for a new post in Toronto as the Assistant to the BBC’s Canadian Representative. Here he would choose suitable Canadians for Commonwealth radio hook-ups and did PR work for the Corporation, for which he was perhaps not the ideal choice – “this Englishman who thinks that because half the world is painted red, he owns it”.
Back in the UK by 1947 he went freelance and soon slotted into roles that would define his career, as chairman or panellist on quizzes and game shows. There was the successor to Transatlantic Quiz, in which Alistair Cooke in New York and Lionel Hale in London had posed the questions. For lack of dollars the BBC abandoned the programme and devised Round Britain Quiz (first broadcast 2 November 1947), still with Lionel Hale in London but with Gilbert taking on the role of peripatetic quizmaster in the regions.In 1948 he chaired the revived Brains Trust and a couple of years later took over from Stewart MacPherson as chair on what was to be another long-running show, Twenty Questions.
Both radio and television were stuffed full of panel games at this time and in 1950 Gilbert joined We Beg to Differ. This set women against men in a “lively discussion on subjects upon which the sexes may disagree”. The chairman was Roy ‘Desert Island Discs’ Plomley and regular panellists included the husband and wife acting team of Kay Hammond and John Clements followed a year later by another married couple, Bernard Braden and Barbara Kelly.
But it was the early TV success of What’s My Line that made Gilbert a household name, the Sunday evening broadcasts drawing in millions of viewers. Whilst those at home could play along with the panel and guess the mystery occupation it was Harding that became the main draw. Miall recalls: “They were waiting to see how soon Gilbert Harding’s temper would explode, as it nearly always did, especially if a person he was interrogating employed a coy circumlocution or misused the English language. He was a verbal sadist. He used to refer to himself as a ‘tele-phony’”,
He secured support at the highest level of the Corporation. On one occasion the D-G Sir Ian Jacob batted back a complaint as follows:
"Mr Harding is somewhat of an eccentric and there are times when his attitude and bearing go beyond what is proper even in a light entertainment programme; but his characteristics are well-known, and on balance it seems to me better to have someone who, though he may occasionally annoy and irritate, can also stimulate, rather than fall back on a flat level of boring propriety".
His fame during the decade led to his face being plastered on many an advert to endorse a range of products, “from Kraft Salad Cream to Basildon Bond writing paper”.Apparently he became so associated with Macleans Double-Action Indigestion Tablets that customers would pop into Boots and ask for “those Gilbert Harding Tablets”.
Harding appeared in a number of films, often playing himself, such as the Ealing’s anti-TV satire Meet Mr Lucifer. Other radio work included record request shows Housewives’ Choice and Purely for Pleasure, a series of interviews imaginatively titled The Harding Interviews and guest appearances on three editions of Educating Archie, all on the Light Programme. His other TV work included the Huw Wheldon-produced Harding Finds Out, an unsuccessful series in which he dealt with complaints submitted by viewers, I Know What I Like and Who Said That?
Most of Harding’s work has not survived; indeed most of it was live anyway, so if he is remembered at all it is through the close-up lens of his Face to Face interview with John Freeman in 1960. Famously Harding was reduced to tears, though the reasons surrounding this incident are often mis-reported. Freeman had intended to hint at Harding’s homosexuality. He knew that Harding had not served in the armed forces during the war and knowing that overtly homosexual men were not normally called-up, Freeman took an indirect approach by asking if he’d ever seen anyone die. Unfortunately Freeman had overlooked that Gilbert’s mother had died the week before, much to his evident distress on camera.
Just a little under two months after the Face to Face programme Harding was leaving Broadcasting House after recording two editions of Round Britain Quiz when he dropped dead from a heart attack. Oddly even his dying moments are variously reported; The Times stating that that “only his chauffeur was with him” but elsewhere it is said he was waiting for a taxi or that he collapsed into the arms of BBC producer and old friend from Cambridge, Christopher Saltmarshe. No matter what the circumstances of his death the memory of Gilbert Harding, much like the hundreds of programmes he appeared on, just drifted off into the ether. His face and his voice are so evocative of the decade that it is perhaps timely that he died before the Sixties started to swing, what would he have made of it one wonders?
This weekend BBC Radio 4 Extra remembers the life and career of Gilbert Harding when Simon Fanshawe presents The Rudest Man in Britain. There are excerpts from Round Britain Quiz, What’s My Line and Brains Trust, a complete edition of Twenty Questions, the Face to Faceinterview and Stephen Wyatt’s 2005 Afternoon Theatre play Dr Brighton and Mr Harding.
Gilbert Charles Harding 1907-1960
References:
Inside the BBC by Leonard Miall (1994) Those Vintage Years of Radio by John Snagge & Michael Barsley (1972) Armchair Nation by Joe Moran (2013)
As a sidebar to the Gilbert Harding post I noticed that the Radio Times billings for What’s My Line and Twenty Questionswould always include the credit: “by arrangement with Maurice Winnick”. But who was Maurice Winnick?
During the 1930s Winnick was a saxophonist and violinist who had formed his own band and began broadcasting with his Piccadilly Hotel Band, modelling his sound on that of Guy Lombardo. Playing with his later Dorchester Hotel Band was Ted Heath and both Don Lusher, Robert Farnon and Norrie Paramor were, at one time or another, employed by Winnick. Featured vocalists included Al Bowlly, Sam Costa, Harry Bentley, Judy Shirley, Vera Lynn, Hughie Diamond and Ronnie Odell. The Maurice Winnick Orchestra continued to broadcast regularly on the Light Programme until 1950.
After the war Winnick eventually disbanded his own orchestra and became an impresario and a leading packager of programmes for radio and television, buying the UK rights for US produced series. The phrase “by arrangement with Maurice Winnick” was heard on BBC radio programmes such as Ignorance is Bliss (first aired in 1946), based on the US series It Pays to be Ignorant, Twenty Questions (1947) and The Name’s the Same (1953), also based on an American original format. For BBC television there was What’s My Line (1951) - a radio version was also produced, for Radio Luxembourg, between 1952 and 1955.
In 1954 Winnick was part of the Kemsley-Winnick consortium bidding for the newly advertised commercial television contract for weekends in the Midlands and the North; an alliance with Sunday Times owner Lord Kemsley and Isaac Wolfson of Great Universal Stores, with John McMillan, formerly Chief Assistant on the Light Programme, as General Manager. Winnick’s involvement came about from an introduction by Kemsley’s stepdaughter Ghislaine Alexander, who had been a panellist on What’s My Line.
The individuals concerned in the bid didn’t get on with each other and eventually Wolfson left and then Kemsley pulled the plug by withdrawing his financial support. The ITA went on to award the licence to the Associated British Picture Corporation (broadcasting as ABC Television). However, Winnick did make it to commercial television in a way, as he produced one of their many early game shows Two for the Money (1956-7), again based on a US format.
Maurice Winnick died, after a long illness, in 1962 aged 60.
Remember Christmas mornings? Creeping downstairs to see what Father Christmas had brought you. You were sure to get at least one annual. Imagine your surprise, or perhaps disappointment, when you unwrapped your Tony Blackburn Pop Special.
Actually to be fair, it wasn’t all about Tony, the seventy-odd pages were mainly filled with photos and trivia about the latest pop sensations. This third annual, yes there were three printed between 1968 and 1970, I discovered in a second-hand bookshop in Haworth last month, eschewing anything Bronte related you’ll notice.
Tony seemingly not understanding the concept of a chair.
Our Tony was still in the ascendant, having just being voted Britain’s Number 1 DJ by readers of Reveille. The secret of his success, we are told, is “down to his breezy nature, his corny jokes, his refusal to flap … and his real dedication to his job. It’s true enough that his job is actually Tony’s life. It’s work and relaxation at the same time!
Breakfast Show regulars Gerald and Arnold.
We all remember Arnold (woof! woof!) but who remembers Gerald? On the face of it a reject from theTelegoons.
Cilla Black and P.P. Arnold. Other "birds" were Sandie Shaw and Sylvia McNeill (who?)
Meanwhile in the world early 70s pop there’s a feature titled Birdcall. Tony writes “There’s nothing to beat a girl, as the caveman said when he couldn’t find his club … but seriously here are some gorgeous faces that never fail to set the old Blackburn knee-caps quivering”.
There are features on the Stones, the Hollies, the Tremeloes, Marmalade and new groups such as Pickettywitch and The Jackson Five. Ah, the memories! On page 74 here’s the new look The Love Affair and the Manfred Mann splinter group, Chapter Three.
I wouldn’t normally plug anything with Piers Morgan in but it’s worth pointing out that Tony Blackburn is his sixth victim in the current series of Piers Morgan’s Life Storiesthat airs on ITV1 a week on Friday, that’s 7 February at 9 p.m.
In the first part of Trumpton Riots Brian Cant remembered the worlds of Noggin the Nog, Jones the Steam and the Soup Dragon. Due to popular demand, well two requests, here’s the rest of this five-part series first heard on BBC Radio 4 at Christmas 1993.
In Today is Saturday Caron Keating recalls the chaos that was Saturday morning TV on TISWAS.There are reminiscences from Chris Tarrant, Lenny Henry, Sally James and Bob Carolgees. The identity of the Phantom Flan Flinger is not revealedbut there is a chance to sing-a-long with The Bucket of Water Song and a unique rendition of Bright Eyes.
Through the Arched Window revisits Play School. Maggie Philbin hears from former presenters Brian Cant, Johnny Ball, Julie Stevens, Chloe Ashcroft and Fred Harris. We find out about the theft of Big Ted, why there was a reserve Hamble and why we rarely went through the arched window.
Programme four asks Val or Sue, John or Tommy? as Sally James she goes back to the days of Blue Peter and Magpie. There are contributions from Peter Purves, John Noakes, Biddy Baxter, Tommy Boyd, Mick Robertson and Susan Stranks. The history of Magpie is somewhat misrepresented, totally overlooking the first presenters Tony Bastable and Pete Brady and there’s no mention of Douglas Rae who joined in August 1971.
In the final programme Fred Harris visits the world of Pugwash, Windy and Barney McGrew. Fred talks to voice of Bill and Ben and Pugwash Peter Hawkins, Mr Benn creator David McKee, animator of Captain Pugwash John Ryan, Michael Cole who came up with Fingerbobs and creator of Trumpton and Camberwick Green Gordon Murray. Hear about the real Festing Road, why Rick Jones was Yoffy and the sad fate of the Trumpton puppets.
Marking the hour, every hour like, ahem, clockwork. The Greenwich Time Signal aka The Pips. Those little tones are ninety years old today. Happy bleeping birthday!
The proposal for a time signal came from one Frank Hope-Jones in a radio talk in April 1923. Reith and the Astronomer Royal, Frank Dyson, agreed on the idea of broadcasting Greenwich Standard Time with a chronometer at the Royal Observatory tripping a switch at five seconds to the hour to create those iconic pips – using a 1kHz oscillator, for the technically minded. The time signal was first broadcast at 9.30 p.m. on 5 February 1924.
Time signal broadcasts in 1928
Note that half-past the hour time signal, these days we normally associate them with marking the top of the hour. In fact the signal is generated at quarter past and quarter to the hour also, although this is rarely (ever?) broadcast. They often provided a neat programme junction, such as the 7.30 p.m. pips you’d hear when Radio 2’s VHF signal was returned to the station after having being ‘borrowed’ by Radio 1 on a Saturday afternoons in the 70s and 80s.
From the start there were always six pips, but the last one was extended from 1/10th of a second to 1/2 a second on 31 December 1971; the result of an international agreement to adopt “leap seconds” which required a seventh pip now and again. As the BBC Handbook helpfully used to say: “all that needs to be remembered is that the exact start of the hour is marked by the start of the final long pip.”
Custody of the pips is handed over from the Greenwich Royal Observatory to the BBC on 5 February 1990. Pictured are Dr John Pilkington (left) of the RGO and Duncan Thomas, Director of Resources (Radio) for the BBC.
In February 1990 responsibility for generating the pips was taken over by the BBC, the equipment stored in the bowels of Broadcasting House. They’ve not been without incident: they started to come adrift by a few seconds in 2008 and in 2011 they packed in all together. Computer problems were blamed.
So here’s my ‘pips soundscape’ to commemorate those ninety years of time-keeping. You’ll hear the voices of Mr Hope-Jones, Peter Jones, Sandi Toksvig, Barry Cryer, Terry Wogan, Jan Ravens, Eddie Mair and Keith Skues. The music includes Handel’s Clock Symphony, Delia Derbyshire’s Time To Go, David Lowe’s themes for BBC News and part of Damon Albarn’s Radio Reunited.
You can follow the Greenwich Time Signal on Twitter @BBC_GTS where you’ll find it sulking in the basement and berating the continuity announcers.
There’s a fascinating and over-looked aspect to the history of the BBC regarding the long-forgotten service Network Three. Meeting square-on the Corporation’s mission to “educate” it showed how executives battled to come to terms with commercial competition and the question of just how populist should the public service broadcaster become. It also provided a legacy of educational programmes that endured, in one guise or another, for the next four decades.
Network Three was a mid-50s creation, an adjunct to the existing Third Programme, created some 11 years after the station was launched.When the Third Programme was at its planning stage in 1946 the terms of reference stated that it was designed “to be of artistic and cultural importance. The audience envisaged is one already aware of artistic experience and will include persons of taste, of intelligence, and of education; it is, therefore, selective not casual, and both attentive and critical”.
What listeners got, in the evenings only as programmes didn’t start until 6 p.m., was a mix of music (classical and opera) for 52% of the time, drama (15%), talks (20%) and 13% devoted to features and poetry readings. It made a point of not having fixed schedule points, of offering programmes that appealed to minority audiences and of repeating plays and features “at least three times”. And listeners were expected to listen, to give their undivided attention. The point was made in the first programme, a comedy with Stephen Potter and Joyce Grenfell, called How to Listen.
The Third Programme divided opinion between a fiercely loyal audience and those who saw it as expensive, overly highbrow and appealing to too small a listenership, not helped by poor radio reception on its initial 203.5 metre wavelength.
The arrival of commercial television in 1955 adversely hit the BBC’s television and radio audiences and by 1957 the Corporation’s TV share was down to 28%. At Broadcasting House there was talk of making economies to help support the TV service, economies that included suggestions of merging the existing networks at certain times and reducing the evening schedule on one of the services.
An internal memo to the then Director-General Sir Ian Jacob on the Future of Sound Broadcasting advocated that output should be less “heavily weighted in favour of the highly-educated and serious minded… and redirected to giving a much fairer representation to the great majority of people whose tastes are simpler and less intellectual”. For the Third Programme this meant a reduction in hours and the threat, one that didn’t transpire, of merging administration with the other networks. In fact it was noted that the loss of listeners to television was more marked for the Light Programme and that the Third’s audience had remained loyal.
Announcing the changes in April 1957 Jacob told a press conference that the Third would be trimmed back to three hours a night and that a new service, Network Three, would occupy its wavelengths every night between 6 and 8 p.m. providing “many of the spoken word programmes that will be displaced from the Home and Light”.
The plans didn’t go down well in some quarters. In a letter to The Times signed by a number of composers, authors and actors “deep concern” was expressed at the proposals. It went on to say:
The advent of Independent Television has created competition in light entertainment; in an enlightened democracy it is now the special duty of a public corporation enjoying a monopoly under a Royal Charter to maintain a full and independent service of high quality in the field where this competition does not obtain. Such a service must not be sacrificed to the projected intensified effort to hold the majority audience.
This is an issue which closely affects the interests of the listening public and the nation as a whole, and it vitally concerns the spiritual, cultural, and intellectual life of the community.
The BBC’s response was to assert that three hours each evening was enough to “provide a first class Third Programme”.This assertion did little to dissuade a growing number of listeners who, fronted by former radio producer and, at the time, Cambridge don Peter Laslett, formed the ‘Third Programme Defence Society’ – possibly the first such anti-BBC protest group.The Society had some powerful allies: Ralph Vaughan Williams, Michael Tippett, Laurence Olivier and T.S. Elliot who accused the Corporation of pandering to “the more moronic elements in our society”.
Already, prior to launch, the press had dubbed Network Three “the fretwork network” due to the preponderance of hobbies and craft programmes it promised.In mid-September Rooney Pelletier, Controller of Programme Planning (Sound) told the press that “we do not expect people to be interested in all the wide variety of subjects which will be dealt with; but we do expect that people will make dates for listening to the items dealing with their own special interests." He outlined the programme schedule:
Mondays
6.15 The Younger Generation - a magazine covering music, literature, art. architecture, design, films, and the theatre. 6.45 For Collectors - a weekly talk by experts for amateur collectors (pictures. furniture, pottery etc) 7.00 Parents and Children - a weekly miscellany. 7.30-7.45 Starting Spanish - a weekly series on elementary Spanish.
Tuesdays
6.45 Time at Home - a monthly rota of programmes dealing with amateur dramatics, bridge and a programme for animal lovers, amateur handyman, and food and wine. 7.15-7.45 The Archaeologist, Talking about Films, and Naturalists' Notebook - monthly features.
Wednesdays
6.15 The Younger Generation. 6.45 Christian Outlook - a weekly magazine of church news and views. 7.15-7.45 Anglo-Saxon England - a broadcast survey of life before the Conquest. Later on at this time J. B. Priestley will discuss The Dramatist's Craft; there will be a series on Problems of New Nations and programmes titled Everyone's Atomic Physics.
Thursdays
6.30 Jazz Session 7.00 Time out of Doors - a monthly rota of programmes dealing with angling, pigeon-fancying, cycling, walking, golf, riding and jumping 7.30-7.45 The French on the French - French "brains trust" recorded in Paris for people who already know some French but need help in listening to French conversation.
Fridays
6.45 Science Survey - latest developments in the world of science. 7.00 In Your Garden - weekly programme for the more experienced gardener. 7.30-7.45 Motoring Magazine
Saturdays
6.30 The World of Books -interviews with writers, library lists, readings from and special reviews of new books. 7.00-7.45 Record Review - new records, particularly long-playing, of serious music.
The Radio Times for the week commencing 29 September 1957 heralded “the new pattern of sound broadcasting”. Director of Sound Broadcasting, Lindsay Wellington, explained how the Home Service would lose some variety shows and carry more serious music and that the Light Programme was to be “more consistent in providing the lighter fare that is wanted by so many”.The Third Programme’s hours would be shortened and Network Three introduced.
Wellington elaborated on the reasons for the re-jig citing the changing tastes and habits of the audience identified from the BBC’s Audience Research. “Although perhaps the most obvious, television has not been the only factor affecting the radio audience; there have been many other changes in social habits going on since the war that have combined to change both people’s attitude to radio and the use they make of it”. Stressing the balancing act that they needed to perform he emphasised that the BBC was in any way lowering standards and not “fighting for a mass audience”. Recognising the competition from television he concluded that “we shall not count it a failure if people choose television rather than radio, any more than if they choose one of our sound programmes rather than another. We should only feel that we had failed if we did not give the public the service on sound radio which they want from us and which they are entitled to expect”.
In the same issue an unsigned article expounded further on the new network:
Network Three is a challenge issued by Sound Broadcasting – a challenge to all those who are sufficiently keen about their private interests to be prepared to turn a knob and find the programme that caters for them.
I want to know a butcher paints.
A baker rhymes for his pursuit, Candlestick-maker much acquaints, His soul with song, or haply mute, Blows out his brains upon the flute!
In Network Three we have taken a larger view than Browning did in his poem Shop about the possible interests of the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker. And we have good reason for this. For years past the Home Service and the Light Programme have regularly stepped aside from their main task of broadcasting to the general listener and addressed themselves to minorities who are enthusiastically devoted to some form of self-expression.
Sound Broadcasting is acquiring a new look. This period of improving our service to every kind of listener has made it possible to offer on Network Three a larger variety of broadcasts designed for minorities. They may number millions. Because of the very nature of their interest or because it is only beginning to be popular, they may still be, as they would no doubt like to think themselves, a limited elite. For examples, gardeners grow like blackberries, but the number of climbers in Great Britain is still relatively small, though their increasing total inches its way up the statistical Everest each year. For both gardeners and climbers, as for other ‘interested bodies’ large and small, there will be something worth listening to on Network Three.
Six evenings a week, on the Third Programme wavelength before the Third Programme is on the air, the jazz-fancier, or the pigeon-fancier, the man or woman who wants to learn, say, Spanish from scratch, the fisherman or cyclist or collector of L.P. records (perhaps the same person), the bridge player or the naturalist, the more sophisticated film-goer, the ardent motorist or the enthusiast for amateur dramatics will be able to find a programme, broadcast either weekly or monthly, with their special interests in mind. There will be regular periods, too, which will reflect the wide interest and many problems of parents and of the younger generation.
Network Three’s first evening on Monday 30 September offered the following schedule:
6.15 – 6.45 The Younger Generation: What’s Your Pleasure? A music magazine introduced by Tristram Cary. (This programme was dropped after a year).
6.45-7.00 For Collectors. Basil Taylor questions art dealer Sidney Sabin about buying “modest-priced pictures”. 7.00-7.30 Parents and Children. This edition included Memoirs of a Month-Old Fatherby Donald Milner and a discussion entitled Boy Meets Girl about “the relation between the sexes”. Presented by Robin Holmes. 7.30-8.00 Starting Spanish in which “Basil and Dorothy learn how to ask for rooms in Spain and how to avoid some of the more obvious mistakes of pronunciation”. The roles of Basil and Dorothy were played by Basil Jones and one Vanessa Redgrave. The teachers, George and Miguel, were Roger (“The Master”) Delgado and Angel Luna. The Radio Times printed a weekly set of vocabulary to accompany the series.
There was then a 15 minute closedown before the Third Programme started for the evening.
Billing for a Chess programme 17 February 1959
All this looks, and probably sounded, rather worthy and not a little dull but it did introduce the notion of groups of study programmes that would endure on Radio 3 until the 1970s and Radio 4 into the 1990s. Network Three did, however, feature three long-running programmes that far outlived the network. The Friday night “motoring magazine” turned out to be Motoringand the Motoristgetting a national outing after transferring from the Midland’s Home Service where it had started in 1953. Bill Hartley continued to be associated with the programme until 1970 and the programme itself ended in 1977.
Record Review survives to this today on Radio 3 as CD Review. The first presenter and producer was John Lade who’d previously been on-air with the Home Service’s Music Magazine. Lade recalled the show’s origins:
When Network Three was planned, Anna Instone, Head of Gramophone Programmes, without my knowing, suggested a weekly review of new records and asked me if I would like to produce it and also introduce it (this saved money). I agreed and to begin with I was warned not to be too highbrow, in order to catch as wide a range of listeners as possible for Network Three. This is why we were announced as ‘a programme for all record enthusiasts’.
Although at the time there were for fewer versions to compare, we had to take into account the rapidly increasing LP marker, calling for new studio equipment to add to the 78 rpm decks, and a little later came the important development of stereo.
In the first Record Review on Saturday 5 October 1957 Trevor Harvey spoke on Building a Library (an aspect of the programme that still endures), and Martin Lubbock and Martin Cooper reviewed the new releases.John Lade stayed with the programme until 1981.
And finally there was In Touch that first aired on Network Three on Sunday 8 October 1961 - by now the station had extended its hours to include Sunday afternoons.Billed as “a monthly magazine with up-to-date news of people, problems and pleasures of special interest to blind listeners”, it was introduced for the first 20 years by David Scott Blackhall. The show transferred to the Home Service in 1964 and remains a Radio 4 fixture under the stewardship of Peter White.
Within a year of Network Three’s launch BBC chiefs had their doubts about its audience figures and the bad press it was receiving. There were also discussions about offering a daytime serious music service not least spurred on by the desire to ensure that the spare airtime was not available to commercial radio with an internal report concluding that “the unused time on the Third Network was a standing invitation for a take-over bid by commercial operators and …it was essential to close the door.”
Not that the Third Programme’s daytime frequencies were entirely silent. From the summer of 1957 they’d been used to carry ball-by-ball commentary on Test Match Special and from April 1961 the start of a Saturday afternoon Sports Service, initially a summer only broadcast but all-year round from April 1964. Alternate Saturday mornings also gave listeners to chance to line up their radio and TV speakers to hear the new Stereophony, more of which in a future post.
Some of the programmes, especially those offering to teach a foreign language, marked as “a Listen and Learn Series”, would have accompanying notes in that week’s Radio Times: blocks of Russian script for those listening to the Russian by Interview series for example.But soon specially produced pamphlets were offered – “an essential adjunct to the lessons” available through your newsagent or “direct by sending a crossed postal order for 4s to BBC Publications”. By the early 60s pronunciations discs could also be ordered for those wanting to practice French, German, Italian and Russian (all available in 1962). BBC Publications was, of course, already providing learning materials for schools (pupils’ pamphlets having been published since 1927) but there was a marked increase in what was produced to support the growing adult learning market.
Here’s what was available in 1966:
By 1962 Network Three was offering a music programmes at the weekend, if only for an hour or two, and For Schools during the week.Finally in November 1963 the title Network Three was quietly dropped in favour of Third Network with the old hobbies shows being bracketed together as Study Session.
To continue the history of the Third Network it’s necessary to deviate slightly and look at the music programming. It took until August 1964 for the BBC to finally introduce a full daytime music selection – an “almost continuous service of good music” - if only on a Sunday, and that was after much negotiation with the Musicians Union over needletime. Listener Jocelyn Oliver was at least satisfied, her letter to the Radio Times reads “I hasten to write to thank the BBC very, very much for the opening session of the new Music Programme in the Third Network. It has provided me with one of those days you remember long afterwards as rather special, and I dare hope many more are to follow.”
From 12 December 1964 the Third Network, by now the umbrella title for all the Third Programme’s daytime output, offered a daily Music Programme from 8 a.m. Saturday’s menu included Record Reviewand Jazz Record Requests, the first host being Humphrey Lyttelton, before the Sports Session kicked-off at 12.30 p.m. On Sunday the Music Programme included What’s New, Your Concert Choice and, shunted over from the Home Service, the long-running Music Magazine edited by husband and wife team Anna Instone and Julian Herbage together with another radio evergreen Antony Hopkins with Talking About Music. Weekday broadcasting was between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. with a closedown until the start of the Study Session at 6.30 p.m. and the Third Programme proper at 7.30 p.m.Among the musical delights were some now familiar titles: the old Home Service programme This Week’s Composer (still running on Radio 3 as Composer of the Week), Your Midweek Choice and Midday Prom.
The Music Programme’s weekday hours were extended to start at 7 a.m. and end at 6.30 p.m. from Monday 22 March 1965 to provide, in the words of programme planner John Manduell, “a comprehensive daily service to satisfy and delight all who enjoy music”. As for the Third Network it continued until September 1967 when the whole service became Radio 3, though the elements of Music, Study, Sports Service and Third Programme were retained until the next big shake-up in March 1970.
Study on 3 programmes in June 1968
What of Network Three’s legacy? Well the grouping of blocks of “educational” programmes that eventually formed the Study Sessionsurvived into the early 90s. Indeed when Study Session became Study on 3 in 1969 and then Lifelines in late 1975 they were all broadcast in the same 6.30 to 7.30 p.m. slot just as they had nearly 20 years earlier. Lifelines was themed each weeknight, so we had Home and Family on Monday, Work and Trainingon Tuesday followed by Language and Communication, The Wider Worldand finally Leisure and Recreation.
It’s interesting to see how, in the early 1970s, listeners would have to switch between VHF and medium wave during the day depending on whether or not they wanted to hear the educational programmes. Added to the mix were the new Open University courses from January 1971 on both Radio 3 and Radio 4, whilst Radio 4 also had Study on 4 with repeats of some Study on 3 programmes. This complicated programme planning and necessitated the use of a separate Continuity studio.
This is a typical week from March 1975:
Saturday
Open University 6.20-8.00 a.m. on Radio 3 VHF before the network opened for the day Open University 9.05-12 noon and 2.00-5.00 p.m. on Radio 4 VHF
Sunday
Open University 7.00-8.00 a.m. on Radio 3 VHF Study on 4 2.30-4.00 p.m. on Radio 4 VHF whilst Afternoon Theatre is on MW
Weekdays
Open University 5.45-7.30 p.m. on Radio 3 VHF Homeward Bound music sequence 5.45-6.30 p.m. on Radio 3 MW Study on 3 6.30-7.30 p.m. on Radio 3 MW
Some of the output, such as the language courses, were multimedia affairs with associated BBC TV programmes, books, records and cassettes – remember Ensemble or Kontakte? Perhaps you also recall the quarterly 4-page Look Listen Learn pullouts in the Radio Times.
By October 1978 the study programmes had all shifted from Radio 3 to Radio 4 and the evening OU programmes followed a year later- the end of a dedicated education strand on the Third Programme/Radio 3. Meanwhile Study on 4 morphed into Options, at weekends only, from June 1985 and the whole lot – further education, schools and OU – was shunted across to the new network, Radio 5, with its ragbag mix of news, sport, education and music. By the time Radio 5 became Radio 5 Live in 1994 the remaining OU and further education programmes moved back to Radio 4, on long wave only every Sunday night. With the transition to CD-ROMs and online learning, as well as overnight on BBC2’s Learning Zone, the final radio foreign language courses aired on Radio 4, under the Languages Extra title, in February 1998 and the final OU programmes in September 1999.
For the Record A little more detail about some of the programmes mentioned above.
Study on 3
The Study Session continued when Radio 3 started in September 1967 but became known as Study on 3 from Monday 30 September 1969. Study on 3 became Lifelines– the hour “devoted to useful, informative and instructional series” -from Monday 29 September 1975. Ahead of the wavelength changes the final Lifelines was on Friday 29 September 1978.
Study on 4
Study on 4 traces its genesis back to Saturday morning Study Session broadcasts on the Home Service from 3 October 1964 between 10.30 a.m. to 12 noon. The batch of programmes on offer were Talking Italian, Introduction to Russianand Spanish for Beginners. That week’s Radio Times highlighted the reasons for the extra broadcasts:
“Listeners to language programmes are some of the BBC’s most regular and helpful correspondents. It is owing largely to their prodding that radio lessons have been steadily increased in length, and booklets in size. Students seems now to be satisfied with the lessons themselves, but many of them still find the hour before 7.30 in the evening an awkward time. It is hoped that the service starting this morning on the Home Service will meet their objections.All today’s courses concentrate on the spoken language and aim at giving the listener the confidence to use what he has learnt in everyday situations; to help him further, conversations from the Spanish and Italian programmeswill also be available on disc”.
The title of the Saturday morning sequence was changed to Study on 4 from 5 October 1968 and remained in use until 1985. From October 1978, in anticipation of the wavelength changes in November, adult education programmes moved from Radio 3 MW to Radio 4 VHF under the Study on 4 banner. The hours were extended from one-and-a-half hours to four hours on Sunday afternoons with some weekday repeats between 11 and 11.30 p.m.
Study on 4 was re-branded Options from 29 June 1985 by which time it aired for a couple of hours on both Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Optionsitself ended when Radio 5 launched in August 1990.
Open University
The first Open University programme on BBC Radio 3 VHF is variously reported as being Science-Introduction to the Foundation Course on Thursday 7 January 1971 or Arts Foundation Course 1 on Monday 11 January 1971. My research suggests the former is correct.
The final set of programmes was broadcast on Radio 4 LW on Sunday 19 September 1999, though of course the OU continues to make co-productions for BBC radio such as the long-running Thinking Aloud and The Bottom Line.
Languages Extra
When adult education and Open University programmes moved from Radio 5 to Radio 4 LW in March 1994 they aired for two hours on Sunday evenings. Eventually the umbrella title Languages Extra was adopted and the final set of programmes (all repeats) was broadcast on Sunday 1 February 1998:
Get By in Portugal with Susan Marling
Suenos 2 with Robert Elms Voyage dans les Archives with Chantal Cuer Italianissimo with Mark Curry
OU programmes continued in the same slot for a further 18 months (see above).
Record Review
Record Review started on 5 October 1957. John Lade’s last programme was the 1,000th edition on 24 October 1981. It became part of Saturday Review from 16 January 1988 and re-launched as CD Review with Andrew McGregor on 12 September 1998.
Talking About Music
Talking About Musicran between 26 September 1964 and 2 May 1989. Heard variously on the Home Service, Music Programme, Radio 3 and latterly Radio 4.
Music Magazine
Music Magazine started on the Home Service on Sunday 20 May 1944. The final edition aired on Radio 3 on Saturday 24 March 1973.
This Week’s Composer
This Week’s Composer launched on the Home Service on 2 August 1943. Its title changed to Composer of the Week on 18 January 1988.
Do you have any copies of Study Session or Open University programmes. If so, please contact me.
Regular readers of this blog will know of my fascination in the architecture of radio: all those component parts such as jingles, theme tunes, news bulletins, travel news and so on. I pay as much interest to the bits in between the programmes as the programmes themselves. It seems I’m not the only one. In this guest post David Mitchell (no not that one) tells of his life-long obsession that started fifty years ago:
15 March 1964 was an important day in my life as it was the start of a (ridiculous?) obsession with radio announcers. This joined my other obsessions: cricket, railways and buses. Numbers and shapes of the innings scores started my lifelong love of cricket. I did an entire County Championship with HOWZAT dice. Train numbers again fascinated me although, living in Canterbury, I had to put up with the numbers on the end of boring electric multiple units. My interest in buses was even odder. I kept a note of the three main adverts on each bus in the beautifully painted East Kent fleet. In case you are worried about the strangeness of my interests, I spent a great deal of time in the open air, cycling or playing cricket.
Enough of telling you how odd I was! Sometime in 1963/4, the BBC decided to revert to wartime practices and the newsreaders and announcers stopped being anonymous. There was an article in the Radio Times with a few pictures of staff which took my interest. (Memories of so long ago can obviously be flawed and this article has not been discovered so I wonder if it was in one of the newspapers - Sunday Telegraph?) So I decided to keep a record. To begin with, this was simply the Home Service. There was only one radio in the house - one of those old valve ones which took an age to warm up. Our family breakfast was always accompanied by the Home Service. I shall state my memories as facts but will happily be corrected. Before the start each day, we would hear an extract from Handel's Water Music. Then the announcer would welcome us, irritatingly not always giving his/her name. This was followed by the Farm Bulletin, normally read by the duty newsreader. On an odd occasion, I was caught out by someone reading this who, I assumed, was the newsreader, only to discover someone else on the 7o'clock. Perhaps it was recorded the night before although that seems highly unlikely. After Thought for the Day came the Weather Forecastregion by region read by the duty continuity announcer; then Programme News. (None of these appalling trails we have to put up with nowadays). Then came the News, followed in my area by the South East news which was read by the continuity announcer in London. so that was a chance to pick up a new name or someone I did not recognise. After that, the Today programme and a repeated pattern.
Because of my obsession with numbers, I gave all the announcers numbers as well. So my records are all numerical.
1 Peter Barker 2 John Roberts 3 Robin Holmes 4 Alvar Lidell 5 Frank Phillips 6 John Spurling 7 Alexander Moyes 8 Sean Kelly 9 Michael de Morgan 10 Bruce Wyndham 11 John Nicoll 12 John Hobday 13 Ronald Fletcher 14 John Webster 15 Douglas Smith 16 Angela Buckland 17 Roy Williamson 18 Sandy Grandison 19 Bryan Martin 20 David Brown 21 John Dunn 22 Andrew Gemmill 23 Roy Williams 24 Tim Gudgin 25 David Broomfieldetc
Number 1 on the list, Peter Barker.
On 15 March 1964, the newsreader was Peter Barker and the continuity announcer John Roberts, so in my book was put 1 & 2. I obviously then thought of a few other names and allocated numbers as on Monday 16 March 1964 we have 5 & 20.
Tuesday 17 Match 1964 9 & 8 Wednesday 18 March 1964 15 & 1 Thursday 19 March 1964 2 & 17 Friday 21 March 1964 4 & 18 Saturday 21 March 1964 5 & 7
I looked for patterns. For example, Alvar Lidell was on most Friday mornings as a newsreader; Frank Phillips usually on a Monday and Saturday morning, quite often as the continuity announcer on a Monday morning with Ronald Fletcher as the newsreader. Robin Holmes was the regular Tuesday a.m. newsreader. Roy Williams was the normal Sunday morning continuity announcer. I shall always associate him with Lostwithiel as Sunday mornings had a ring of bells at the start of the day and he would come in telling us where the bells were from, but there was a lot of variety which made it interesting to me.
Bruce Wyndham, for example, although mostly based on the Light Programme, had about a month each year from 1964 to 1967 when he did newsreader duties on the Home Service. Tim Gudgin's appearances were very rare but he read the news twice in the week commencing 5 April 1964.
I suppose the event of most interest in 1964, apart from my being given a transistor radio for my birthday!, was the retirement of Frank Phillips with his last appearance on 24 October 1964 reading the news on the Saturday morning. In fact, by no means was this his last appearance as he popped up from time to time. Whether by design or coincidence, he was on duty overnight Saturday 23 January to Sunday 24 January 1965 and, as a result, announced the death of Sir Winston Churchill to the nation. In the following week, Thursday 28 January 1965, the duty announcer David Brown was clearly not in a fit state to read anything when he came on air at 0630. He was speedily replaced on continuity by the newsreader of the day Ronald Fletcher who was in turn replaced by Andrew Timothy - the only time he appeared in the morning in my records. I remember being excited to find out who was going to be the Christmas newsreader in 1964, assuming it would be the regular Friday man Alvar Lidell. But no, it was Peter Latham - his first early morning newsreading shift with John Hobday as the announcer.
So I have pages and pages of numbers all the way from 1964 to 1977 and 1985 to 2006, these include the other main BBC Radio channels.
Who were my favourite announcers?Alexander Moyes - who once went on giving us Programme News long after the pips had gone. In recent years, undoubtedly the late Rory Morrison.
Little short of an earthquake will wake me at night, I have no trouble getting off to sleep. So imagine the shock when, six years ago today, I was indeed woken by an earthquake. We were living in Beverley at the time, the epicentre was Market Rasen some 32 miles away as the crow flies.
Like many others I’m sure, I turned on my BBC local station to hear what they were saying. On Radio Humberside Steve Redgrave had extended his show rather than hand over to 5 Live. Here’s a little of what I heard.
I was not the only one tuning into Radio Humberside. John Osbourne, author of Radio Head, who grew up near Market Rasen and whose parents still live in the area did the same thing. He wrote:
I could have listened to updates on Five Live or talkSPORT, or switched on rolling news coverage on television, or even gone to bed and forgotten about it all, but I chose to listen to Radio Humberside because I wanted to hear how the quake was affecting people close to home: Grimsby, Scunthorpe and Goole.
‘If you know of anyone on your street who is alone and might be scared, please do the neighbourly thing-knock on their door, make sure they’re okay. Check that your own family are okay,’ Redgrave tells us. I decide not to phone my mum and dad though. Sleeping through an earthquake only to be woken by a phone call is the kind of irony that happens regularly in our home.
This extract from Radio Head is read by Lee Ingleby.
Last year BBC Radio Lincolnshire’s William Wright recalled the events of that night and spoke to local resident and broadcaster Tom Edwards.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
