McDougall joined the Corporation in 1948 after serving in the Intelligence Corps and seeing active service in Italy. A year later, at the age of 28, he became the youngest foreign correspondent the BBC had ever appointed when he was posted to the Paris office.
He went on to file an estimated 1200 reports for Radio 4 and World Service from more than 40 countries across four continents, enjoying long-term postings to Vienna, Berlin, Africa, the Far East, Belgrade, Bonn and Brussels.
On reaching 60, he took on the role of editor and presenter of Radio 3's Six Continents, which examined news from the communist world and the Middle East, remaining with the programme for seven years.
Finally retiring from the BBC in 1988 after 40 years, McDougall became a tutor and lecturer at Oxford University, specialising in Russian politics and history.
In fact Ariel is probably way understating the number of reports he filed, the number is nearer 14,000.
Six Continents was introduced in September 1979 as part of a Radio 3 schedule shake-up by incoming controller Ian McIntyre, something of a departure for the mainly music based network. The idea was to provide news analysis of world events based on output from the BBC’s Monitoring Service.
Writing about the programme for the Radio Times in 1979, Mike Phillips recalled that “the Monitoring Service began at the start of the war years as part of the BBC’s war effort and has recently seen its 40th birthday. At Caversham there are over 100 monitors listening to the output of radio stations broadcasting in over 40 languages. The BBC World Service, the Foreign Office and as number of newspapers and commercial agencies use the product of Caversham’s work but so far there’s been no regular service direct to the public”.
Six Continents ran on Radio 3 until 1987 with Angus McDermid sharing presenting duties in later years. This edition comes from Wednesday 16 April 1986. In this edition Ian McDougall examines the Libyan crisis, nuclear testing, the Philippines, India, world terrorism, Ethiopia and Soviet life.
There are no recordings from the foreign radio broadcasts, the extracts here are read by Clifford Norgate, Sean Barrett and Susan Denny. The producer is Adam Raphael who, I assume, is the journalist who at the time was political editor for The Observer.
In the wake of the early 60s satire boom you’d have been hard pressed to find anything on BBC radio that poked fun at the establishment or, Radio Newsreel apart, dissected the week’s news.
The saviour came in the unlikely guise of Nicholas Parsons. In 1964 Parsons and writer Alistair Foot, who’d worked with Nicholas on The Arthur Haynes Show, worked up a format for a show they called Listen to this Space. “We were going to quote from named newspapers, send up the politicians of the day with impersonations”, recalls Nicholas.
The idea got the green light from Roy Rich, Head of Radio Light Entertainment, and was assigned to established BBC producer Bill Worsley. The pilot was co-written with Anthony Marriott with a cast comprising Denise Bryer (aka Mrs Parsons) and Roger Delgado with songs by Libby Morris and music from the Tony Osborne Trio.
The story goes that the pilot was not a resounding success, even the producer thought a full series unlikely. Apparently a tape of the show found its way to Director General Hugh Carleton-Greene who, seeing its potential, gave it the nod.
Listen to this Spacefinally aired on the Home Service on 23 April 1965 with the only cast change being the replacement of Delgado, who was unavailable for the series, for Bob Todd. With Denise providing the female voices, Nicholas was more than adept at covering the male impressions, though he was joined in later series by Peter Goodwright and Barry Cryer, who put in a fine performance mimicking Harold Wilson.
Other cast members in subsequent series were actor David Cumming and former BBC announcer Ronald Fletcher who, being something of an old ham, took part in the comedy proceedings much like he’d done on Breakfast with Braden and would go on to do in Stop the World.
Though now largely forgotten and, of course, like all topical shows never having had a repeat, Listen to this Space proved popular and ran for four series, plus a 1968 follow-up Follow this Space. By all accounts the ‘Establishment’ loved it with Nicholas Parsons receiving invitations to visit the House of Commons from MPs that followed the show. In 1967 the Variety Club honoured him with the Radio Personality of the Year award.
To give you a flavour of what Listen to this Space sounded like here are extracts from second and fourth series together with an introduction by Nicholas taken from BBC Radio 7/4 Extra edition of the Comedy Controller that contained the only known repeat (other than the in-series repeats on the Light Programme/Radio 2) of the show. The combination of gags, impersonations and comic songs is redolent of the later News Huddlines (more of which soon).
And before I leave the sixties there’s another long-forgotten and, more than likely, completely wiped series that took a sideways look at the week’s news: It’s Saturday.Starting in June 1967 this was a Home Service/Radio 4 programme that aired in the Northern region only on Saturday morning between 8.15 and 8.45 (later 8.20 to 8.45 am) whilst the most of the country enjoyed From Our Own Correspondent.
The original host was James Hogg, at the time a Look North presenter and later on Nationwide. By 1969 he’d been succeeded by Bill Grundy, who’d been mainly at Granada TV, though he had done some radio work, on the North Home Service Sport Spotlight and representing the North on Round Britain Quiz for example.
It’s Saturday was noted for its “irreverent attitude to the news and to public figures” and remained a Radio 4 fixture until 1973. However it gained some notoriety in October 1970 during the Tory Party conference in Blackpool when it featured items that angered BBC bosses and led to the ‘resignation’ of Grundy, singer-songwriter Alex Glasgow, freelance producer/announcer Jim Walker and reporter David Bean.
The man in charge of operations in Manchester, Grahame Miller (Head of Programmes, North) was unhappy with an announcement that went “Bill Grundy has just been to Blackpool, where apparently a group of people have taken a week off to hold a conference to condemn absenteeism.” There was also reference to delegates “rolling over like dogs waiting to be tickled” when Sir Alec Douglas-Home spoke. Finally Alex Glasgow sang a satirical song about selling arms to South Africa: “I’m going to sell a little bomb to South Africa. Just a teeny-weeny bomb to South Africa…”
Programme producer Barbara MacDonald was told to “restrict the political content”. Alex Glasgow was unhappy about being “pre-censored” and Bill Grundy was “appalled”. “It’s Saturday was”, he said, “acerbic about both main political parties. To try to treat it in this way is to knock all the life out of an extra-ordinarily lively programme”. It’s unclear why the Corporation chose that moment to administer a rap over the knuckles but at the time the press noted a recent letter in the Daily Telegraph from Tory MP Harold Soref who described the programme as “sneering”, “vitriolic” and a type of “public filth.”
It’s Saturday ran for another three years with various presenters: Stuart Hall, Michael Winstanley, the programmes’ former producer Bob Houlton, newspaper editor Barry Askew and finally Tony Eccles.
Listen to the Space All first broadcast on Friday night on the Home Service (later Radio 4) with a repeat on Sunday on the Light Programme (later Radio 2)
Series 1: 11 episodes 23 April to 2 July 1965 (14 May edition not broadcast though a LP edition was scheduled for 16 May and listed as a repeat) Series 2: 13 episodes 26 November 1965 to 18 February 1966 Series 3: 20 episodes 23 September 1966 to 3 February 1967 Series 4: 13 episodes 22 September 1967 to 15 December 1967
Follow this Space Series 1: 13 episodes 11 October 1968 to 3 January 1969 (Radio 4)
With thanks to Dave Rhodes for alerting me to the existence of It’s Saturday.
Image a world in which you could get “all your music and videos online without ever leaving your home”. I know. It’ll never happen!!
This vast explosion of change in cyberspace and interactivity was on the horizon when BBC Radio 1 presented their Interactive Radio Night in March 1995.Twenty years ago cutting edge was a CD-ROM and the concept on sending an email was still a novelty.
Guiding listeners through the technology are Evening Session presenters Jo Whiley and Steve Lamacq, with help from “space cadet” William Franklyn.
The three-hour show, that went out on Sunday 26 March 1995, is here condensed into a 45-minute slice.
Incidentally the web address of “http://www.bbcnc.org.uk/online/radiointeract/” no longer works.
Alan Dedicoat - aka Deadly for any TOGs reading this - the voice of BBC Radio 2, completes his last news-reading shift this Friday.
His is the voice of the daytime bulletins, delivered with such clarity and assurance. He’s also the first voice you hear when that emergency tape kicks in, an increasingly common experience of late.But after 28 years with the station Alan is, as they inevitably say, ‘hanging up his headphones’. At least as far as Radio 2 is concerned that is. His ‘Voice of the Balls’, Strictly and Children in Needwork continues as before.
Alan joined the station in 1987 from BBC local radio, Birmingham (later WM) and then Devon, as a newsreader and continuity announcer. Back then newsreaders were also expected to take a turn on some of Radio 2’s music shows such as Nightride and The Early Show. As the presenting and continuity work was phased out Alan would become the station’s senior newsreader but continued to provide some of the pre-recorded station links and announcements. In late 2012 a number of long-serving newsreaders left Radio 2 and Alan became the last survivor of the old-school newsreader/announcers.
In this montage you’ll hear Alan reading the news, providing station information, hosting The Early Show, enjoying some banter with Terry Wogan and Paul Walters and confessing all (well not quite) on Simon Mayo Drivetime.
Parky’s career is pretty well-known: cub reporter on the South Yorkshire Times, National Service (Private Parkinson RAPC, army number 23131269), back to Civvy street and reporting for the Barnsley Chronicle, Yorkshire Evening Post, Manchester Guardian, ABC Television (at their Didsbury studios), down to Fleet Street to work on the Daily Express, back north to Granada TV (Scene at 6.30 and Cinema), a brief (unsuccessful) spell with the Beeb on 24 Hours, sports column in the Sunday Times and a daytime show for Thames, Tea Break. And all this was before the start of his eponymously-titled chat show.
As Michael recalled in his autobiography; “Tony Preston was head of variety at the BBC. One day in the spring of 1971 he called and said he wanted to suggest me as the host for a new late-night talk show the BBC was contemplating, Would I be interested?” By then he was thirty-six and “never imagined the show I was about to do would define my working life for the next thirty-six years”.
Meanwhile over on BBC radio Michael was fast becoming ‘Parky the DJ’ on Radio 2. In 1969 he was one of the presenters of Late Night Line-Up and a couple of years later on the rota for the daily magazine show After Seven. There were also stints deputising for Pete Murray on Open House.
On Radio 4 he was an occasional panellist on Any Questions and teamed up with wife Mary on the talk show Mr and Mrs Parkinson. In late 1985 there was a six-part series titled Michael Parkinson, though you didn’t hear that much of him. Instead it was merely a vehicle for clips from the BBC’s Sound Archives. In this, the first edition from 12 November, you’ll hear Malcolm Muggeridge, Jonathan Miller, Round the Horne, Robb Wilton, Arthur Marshall, Peter Sellers and a classic interview about the delights of living in Tunbridge Wells that you’ll have probably heard before.
When Parkinson himself had appeared on Desert Island Discs in 1972 he’d found it “a profoundly depressing experience.” So when some thirteen year later Radio 4 controller David Hatch asked him to take over the show following the death of its creator Roy Plomley he had “reservations”.
“The problem”, opined Parky, “was Plomley himself. He seemed bored with the show, not the slightest bit interested in the guest’s story, more in favour of a long lunch at the Garrick with a bottle of wine before the interview took place in what seemed like a broom cupboard at Broadcasting House.” Plomley’s widow, Diana Wong, didn’t think much of the appointment, favouring either John Mortimer or Richard Baker, and thought Michael not “civilised enough”.
With his journalistic background the interview part of Desert Island Discs became more probing and enquiring, perhaps a little intrusive at times, but this was to become the template of the show ever since. Michael’s first guest when DID returned to the airwaves in January 1986 was the film director Alan Parker. This is my recording of the full show.
Parky’s tenure on Desert Island Discs lasted until March 1988. Two years he was one of the re-launched LBC Newstalk team, along with his old TV-AM colleague Angela Rippon. His daily mid-morning show ran for a couple of years.
Aside from the cinema and the Great American songbook Micahel’s other passion was sport. Between 1994 and 1997 he presented the weekly Radio 5 Live show Parkinson on Sport.
Parkinson’s Sunday Supplement first aired on 31 March 1996 as part of a number of schedule changes implemented by controller Jim Moir, who’d joined the station the previous November. Moir’s objective was “to gain listeners, especially among the group that every radio station in the country is fighting for – the fortysomethings. My first changes are to signal to them that Radio 2 is on the move on Saturdays and for two hours on Sunday. We want to share our music with a generation that feels a bit dispossessed and give them a radio station that doesn’t just play hits in a repetitive way.” For listeners to the Sunday Supplement this inevitably led to plenty of plays for Sinatra, Jamie Cullum and Diana Krall.
This is a full show from late in the programmes run and was broadcast on Radio 2 on 4 November 2007. Michael’s guests are John Dankworth and Cleo Laine. Helping to review the Sunday papers is Gillian Reynolds and the entertainment guide is provided by Hilary Oliver.
By 2007 Michael had announced his retirement from regular broadcasting, signing off from both the Sunday Supplement and his TV chat show, now over on ITV. Of course he never quite said goodbye. In the interim he’s spent much of the time popping on TV in perfecting his role as an old curmudgeon remarking how TV production at the BBC isn’t what it was and meantime offering daytime viewers of a certain age a free Parker pen. On Radio 2 there have been two series of My Favourite Things.
Happy 70th Birthday to Peter Waters Dingley, better known to the world as Johnnie Walker.
With a radio career spanning nearly half a century – his first broadcast was in May 1966 – I’ve chosen this show from 1995 when he left Radio 1 … for the third time!
Johnnie first said goodbye to Radio 1 in the summer of 1976 when he said farewell to the UK and followed his radio dreams in America. Back with the Beeb in the eighties, on The Stereo Sequence, he left again in 1988 for Branson’s Radio Radio, aka The Super Station.Three years later controller Johnny Beerling invited him back to Radio 1 to resume his Saturday afternoon shows.
But changes were afoot at Radio 1. Johnnie and producer Phil Ward-Large set up their own independent company, Wizard Radio, to secure the Saturday afternoon slot under new controller Matthew Bannister. They were awarded a one-year contract. Come year two there were verbal assurances that Walker was still safe at the station but within weeks he was given his marching orders. According to Walker’s autobiography he maintains he was dropped as Bannister was desperately looking of savings to fund Chris Evans’s move from GLR to the Breakfast Show.
Here is that full show from Saturday 21 October 1995, but missing the concert featuring Hole. So there is, you might say, a hole in this recording! Packed full of guests you’ll hear Nick Cave, Neil and Tim Finn, Emmylou Harris, Chrissie Hynde, Nanci Griffith, and Bruce Springsteen.
The comedy factory that was Week Ending proved to be one of the most enduring programmes in Radio 4’s history and helped launch the careers of hundreds of comedy writers. It first aired forty-five years ago today.
The roll-call of scriptwriters who ventured into the famous writers’ room is formidable and includes Pete Spence, Guy Jenkin, Andy Hamilton, Colin Bostock-Smith, Ian Brown, Richard Quick, Alistair Beaton, John Langdon, James Hendrie, Barry Pilton, Simon Bullivant, David Renwick, Steve Punt, Ian Pattinson, John O’ Farrell, Simon Brett, Rob Newman, David Baddiel, Richard Herring and Stewart Lee to name but twenty!
But how did it all start? BBC television had ridden the wave of topical satirical comedy in the early 60s but by the end of the decade had gone cold on the idea. BBC radio’s Listen to this Space had enjoyed a successful four series run but its star Nicholas Parsons was now controlling proceedings on Just a Minute.
Meanwhile Radio 4 controller Tony Whitby was having to reshape his schedules to accommodate the re-alignment of the station’s output in accordance with the Broadcasting in the Seventies policy and he let it be known that he wanted a ‘light’ Saturday night show. Comedy producer David Hatch came up with the proposal for a review of the previous seven days “featuring comic sketches performed by a band of actors, punctuated with quick-fire gags and devoid of a studio audience”. The programme’s title was What You Missed.
Hatch, working alongside co-producer Simon Brett, pulled together a show that featured members of the BBC’s Drama Rep (1) and a young comedy writer called Peter Spence who’d previously written for Les Dawson, Crackerjackand the Quiz of the Week. Tony Whitby was also drafting in some TV names to front some of his new shows – Richard Baker on Start the Week and Robert Robinson on Stop the Week– so Nationwide’s Michael Barrett was picked to host What You Missed.
By the time the pilot was recorded on 23 January 1970 the programme had been re-titled Week Ending. (2) From the start some of Week Ending’snow familiar elements were in place: the short news gags that would later develop into the pithy ‘newslines’ and the look at next week’s news. (3)
The pilot was a success and the series got the full go-ahead, kicking off at 23.05 on Saturday 4 April 1970. That first show, of which no recordings exist (4), also introduced another element to the format, the Week Ending theme tune known as Smokey Joe, a piece of library music that would bookend the show for the next twelve years.
Although Tony Whitby had foist Michael Barrett onto the producers he wasn’t that happy with his performance, but then neither was Barrett who felt out of place: “I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to do it deadpan and straight or whether I was supposed to turn myself into a comic.” As it happened the production team got the opportunity for a re-think when a General Election was called in May and the programme pulled from the schedules – a fate it would endure until 1987 when it did continue throughout the election campaign.
Week Endingreturned to the airwaves in June 1970 initially with Graeme Garden acting as host. But by 1971 the programme was now talking on its familiar sound and feel with less reliance on the Drama Rep and with David Jason, Bill Wallis and later that year Nigel Rees taking on the multitude of gags, sketches and impersonations. The reliance on actors was very much Week Ending’s modus operandi, in contrast to today’s topical comedy shows.
David Jason has found fame in the 1960s on ITV’s Do Not Adjust You Set but his radio work, mainly in the 1970s, is overlooked. He was a superb mimic and as well as his Week Ending work – he stayed with the show until 1983 – he was a regular on TheImpressionists and starred in four series of The Jason Explanationalongside Sheila Steafel and Jon Glover.
Bill Wallis had come up through the Footlights route – together with Robin Ray and Joe Melia he’d been in the substitute cast of Beyond the Fringe when the original cast toured the States – and had appeared in several TV productions in the 1960s. (5) Bill would be the longest-serving of the Week Ending cast, appearing until 1992, though by then he was doing fewer and fewer shows. “I did become very grumpy” he admitted. He was known for railing against some of the more outré sketch ideas. In October 1990 the programme supposedly took the form of a magazine and a Peter Baynham-penned script called for Wallis to play the staples in the centrefold. “I don’t do staples, I do Gorbachev!” he bellowed off-mic.
Nigel Rees’s appointment was a little more unusual. At the time he was more familiar to radio listeners as a reporter on Today, The World at One and Movie-Go-Roundand he’d previously worked at Granada and ITN. But from his days at Oxford, and more particularly, performing in various Oxford revues he’d met Simon Brett and it was he who invited Nigel to join Week Ending, where he remained until 1976 – just in time for The Burkiss Way and devise Quote … Unquote.
For most of the 1970s and 1980s Week Ending retained a core cast of four. Joining in 1976 was David Tate, another stalwart he remained with the show until 1993. A year later saw the recruitment of the first regular female member, Sheila Steafel, who stayed until 1982. This meant, at the very least, that Nigel Rees or David Tate no longer had to ‘do’ the Queen or Margaret Thatcher.When Sheila left she was replaced by Tracey Ullman. (6) But in 1983 Sally Grace joined the programme, intitally for just two weeks whilst Ullman was in America, but she remained a fixture until the final edition some fifteen years later.
From that period here’s the tenth anniversary show from 4 April 1980. The cast are David Jason, Bill Wallis, David Tate and Sheila Steafel. It starts off with a rather different version of the sig tune.
From a couple of years later this edition aired on 30 April 1982 just a few weeks into the Falklands War. Performing on this occasion are David Tate, Chris Emmett, Sheila Steafel and Jon Glover. My recording comes from the Saturday repeat as, for some reason, two sketches were cut from the original transmission.
There was considerable cross-over with Radio 2’s topical comedy show The News Huddlines (more of which in a future post) amongst the writers but the man providing the impressions on Huddlines, Chris Emmett, also had a 20-year association with Week Ending.There was also some cross-over with ITV’s Spitting Image. Chris worked on some episodes as did other Week Ending voices Jon Glover (1980-98) and Alistair McGowan (1989-93).By the 1990s there were usually three regulars plus one ‘other’, too numerous to list here. The ‘regulars’ though included Toby Longworth (1993-96), Jeffrey Holland (1993-96), Dave Lamb (1994-98) and Sarah Parkinson (1997-98).
With a voracious appetite for topical sketches and one-liners Week Ending employed an open door policy for writers, the first programme to do so. By 1977 there was a Writers’ Room at 16 Langham Street where every Wednesday budding comedy writers could pitch their ideas alongside the small number of commissioned writers. Added to this absolutely anyone could send in their newslines and experience the thrill of hearing their joke make it to air and their name added to the ever lengthening end credits.
As well as providing a training ground for comedy writers Week Ending also saw its fair share of producers, 49 in all during its full run. Many went on to become recognised names in radio and TV comedy: Paul Mayhew-Archer, Paul Spence, Griff Rhys-Jones, Geoffrey Perkins, Jimmy Mulville, John Lloyd, Bill Dare, Jan Ravens, Harry Thompson, David Tyler, Sarah Smith, Armando Iannucci and so on.
In later years there was something a revolving door policy on producers, much to the ire of the regular performers. Whilst in part this was radio policy to let producers learn the ropes it also reflected the need for the show to remain fresh and also to encourage the use of new talent on air too. Sally Grace recalled that “there was one week when I had three people with L-plates on. They were friends of the producer, who fancied having a go. One was a dentist. Another actually said, ‘Do I speak when the green light some on?’” (7)
To celebrate the programme’s twentieth anniversary producer Jon Magnusson and scriptwriter Bill Matthews compiled the two-part documentary for Radio 4 titled Two Decades of Weekending (sic). Providing the links was Sir David Steel, who had himself been the butt of several jokes on the series, especially during the SDP-Liberal alliance period with David Owen. Part one was first heard on 31 August 1990.
For such a long-running show Week Ending rarely courted controversy but it hit the headlines in 1980 when it lampooned the tabloid newspaper editor Derek Jameson in a Man of the Week skit written by John Langdon. Describing him as “the archetypal East End by made bad”, “a nitty-gritty titivation tout” and a man “who is to journalism what lockjaw is to conversation and who still believes that erudite is a glue.” Jameson sued the BBC for libel. When it came to court four years later the jury found the sketch innocent fun and fair comment and so he lost the case and ended up paying £75,000 in legal costs. Jameson never got over that “character assassination” as he recalls in the second part of Two Decades of Weekending first broadcast on 7 September 1990. (8)
Over the years Week Ending itself was subject to parody, some good humoured mickey-taking and some with a bit more edge. Here are four examples. The first from a 1980 episode of The Burkiss Way has fun with Week Ending’s by now familiar recital of writers in the end credits. Both Andrew Marshall and David Renwick wrote for Week Ending and, of course, Chris Emmett who reads out the names (most of which are genuine) worked on both. Plus there’s Jo Kendall apologising for the “somewhat unwarranted outburst. In future, the closing credits on Week Ending will be kept considerably shorter … by reading out the names of the people who listen to it”.
The second clip is also from a 1980, an episode of Injury Time, one of the programmes that occupied Week Ending’s time slot whilst it took a summer break. You’ll detect that the writer, probably Rory McGrath, may not have been entirely happy with his Week Ending experience. As well as another go at the end credits there are digs at the programme’s well established sketch formula: the Father and Son routine in which the offspring ask increasingly precocious and complicated questions on a news story and the A&B where the listener eavesdrops on two men in a pub (originally Jason and Wallis) picking apart a story and usually ending with the catchphrase “Well, this is it”. Appearing here with McGrath are Jimmy Mulville, Martin Bergman and Robert Bathurst. (9)
The third clip is from a more affectionate look at the programme, and indeed the whole of the network, A Day in the Life of Radio 4. The cast were all Week Ending alumni: Russell Davies (who provided this script), Chris Emmett, Sally Grace and Sheila Steafel. It was broadcast on 3 September 1983, though my recording was made of the 29 December repeat.
And finally Chris Morris couldn’t resist having a pop at the programme in a 1991 episode of On the Hour. In practice the Thank God It’s Satire Day sketch was more than likely written by Stewart Lee and Richard Herring, again former Week Endingcontributors. The nonsensical closing credits are written and performed by Morris.
Regular listeners to Week Ending will remember the theme tunes, Smokey Joe and that classic piece of 80s pop Party Fears Two, both of which feature in the recordings I’ve posted. But there were, in fact, four themes during the programme’s run.
Smokey Joe played by Small-Group Jazz used between April 1970 and April 1982 Party Fears Two by the Associates used between May 1982 and July 1993 Week Ending Signature Tune specially composed by Richard Attree with a newsy feel to it. Used from September 1993 to July 1997 Week Ending Signature Tune composed by Richie Webb and Matt Katz with a more funky news style used from October 1997 to April 1998
Sunday Times 24 September 1989
Somewhat unusually Week Ending also made brief appearances over on Radio 2, popping up on some celebratory comedy/light entertainment shows. Here are a couple of examples. First David Jason, David Tate, Sheila Steafel and Bill Wallis join Roy Hudd on The Light Entertainment Show from October 1982. The second clip comes from a live programme hosted by David Frost in September 1988 to mark 21 years of Radios 1, 2, 3 and 4, The Radio Show, Radio Show. Appearing here are Sally Grace, David Tate and Jon Glover.
By the early 1990s the series was beginning to struggle and there were threats that the plug would be pulled. The high turnover of producers didn’t help and cast veterans Bill Wallis and David Tate had moved on. In 1993 Gareth Edwards was brought in as Executive Producer and the show got something of a re-launch. Edwards tackled the issue of a vast number of writers on small commissions that had led to a lack of commitment and direction in the Writers’ Room. The regular cast members were now Sally Grace, the recognised star of the show, with Jeffrey Holland (Hi-de-Hi’s Spike Dixon) and Toby Longworth.
New network controllers inevitably mean schedule changes and the incoming James Boyle (arriving in late 1996) would cut a swathe through Radio 4’s programmes. By July 1997 Week Endingwas already earmarked as being for the chop and the obituaries were written before the last series started in the October. A number of established programmes were dropped and others re-timed. The supposed replacement for Week Ending was the Sunday night show The Beaton Generation in which “Alistair Beaton hosts a satirical comedy discussion programme”. It ran for 12 weeks. (10)
The final edition, Week Ending Ending, aired on 3 April 1998 with the Saturday repeat going out exactly 28 years after the first broadcast.Here’s that final show complete with a re-appearance of David Hatch and a production credit for Jonathan James-Moore, by then Head of Radio Light Entertainment.
And that is the end of next week’s news. In the next post in this series I recall The News Huddlines.
Week Ending
1132 episodes broadcast over 83 series between 4 April 1970 and 3 April 1998. Plus 147 specials such as Year Ending and compilation shows for the BBC World Service broadcast either annually or monthly under the Two Cheers for … banner.
Additional reading:
Prime Minister, You Wanted to See Me-A History of Week Ending by Ian Graves & Justin Lewis (Kaleidoscope Publishing 2008)
With thanks to Charles Rooke.
Notes: 1:Sean Arnold, Geoffrey Collins, Garard Green and Frederick Treves all featured in the pilot episode. 2: The World at Onepresenter William Hardcastle also appeared in the first episode. 3: This feature, always prefaced “And Now Here is Next’s Week’s News” was eventually dropped in 1991. 4: For the first ten years only 25 complete episodes exist in the BBC Sound Archives. 5: Spot him in a couple of episodes of The Avengers. 6: Alison Steadman also appeared during 1983, yet another News Huddlines crossover. 7: I’ve not been able to establish who Sally is referring to here. 8: The BBC made it up to Derek Jameson by employing him on Radio 2’s Breakfast Show a couple of years after the court case. 9: Injury Time also featured Emma Thompson in the cast though she’s not heard in this clip. 10: Radio 4 listeners didn’t have to wait too long for a topical comedy show as The Now Showlaunched in October 1998.
With the news that Victor Lewis-Smith’s Radio 1 programmes are to get a Radio 4 Extra repeat next month – their first airing since 1990 – I thought it timely to dip my toe into the VLS archive.
Victor Lewis-Smith studied Music at York University and made his first broadcasts for the campus radio and TV station. His professional radio career started at the newly launched BBC Radio York in July 1983 with a Sunday morning programme known as Snooze Button (followed a year later by One- Way Family Favourites).(1)
Whilst still on Radio York in 1984 national radio beckoned and Victor performed a series of comic vignettes alongside Laurie Taylor (for many years billed on-air as “Laurie Taylor, Professor of Sociology at York University”) under the title Modern Manners.These were part of the station’s ill-fated Thursday morning sequence Rollercoaster, the whole being linked by Richard Baker.
Victor Lewis-Smith (pictured top right) was part of the weekend team when Radio York launched in 1983.
The following year Modern Manners transferred to the second series of the Sunday morning magazine show The Colour Supplement. (2) Here are two clips of Modern Manners from 21 July and 11 August 1985.All these years later I still call the Radio Times the “Raddy Otimees”!
By now Victor was also working behind the scenes at Radio 4 as a producer on Midweek. Presenter Libby Purves had to deal with an increasingly oddball set of guests and on one memorable occasion(3), when Libby was on holiday, the replacement was Arthur Mullard, hardly the most eloquent of hosts. This show has now passed into the realms of radio infamy and you can chortle away at clips from that programme on this edition of iPM. Ever the performer Victor Lewis-Smith gets in on the action over the talkback.
Listener reaction to that edition of Midweek was divided: “what a ridiculous programme”, “it was worth the whole licence fee”, “an insult to the listening public”, “sheer genius” and “an insult to one’s intelligence”.
Lewis-Smith worked as a producer on Midweek and then Start the Week in 1985 and 1986 by which time he was appearing on Ned Sherrin’s Loose Ends with his comedy writing partner Paul Sparkes – they’d met at York University. You can hear one of those frenetic sketches on my post about Ned Sherrin.
Amongst the Sherrin acolytes on Loose Ends was Radio 1 producer John Walters and it was John who promoted the idea of Victor putting together a show for Radio 1. That show, airing in May 1988, featured a character first heard in some of the Loose Ends sketches, a spoof DJ named Steve ‘More Music’ Nage, complete with a nasal mid-Atlantic twang, a kind of proto-Mike Smash type. It was a mickey take on the sound of the station that was now employing him – his shows would consistently lampoon the BBC – complete with jingles and faux dedications. Here's a clip from that show:
Victor Lewis-Smith would appear on Radio 1 over two years. The first show in his own name went out late on Boxing Day night in 1989 under the title Victor Lewis-Smith’s Christmas Message, though it contained nothing seasonal.My tape machine was running that evening and here’s the recording. Note at the end a continuing obsession with mention of TV’s Mr Derek Batey.
His fast-paced approach, slick tape-editing, multi-layered sound, funny voices and musical pastiche contained elements of Jack Jackson and Kenny Everett’s styles – his acknowledged influences. But his comedy, and certainly that on Radio 1, was increasingly dripping with vitriol, insults and sarcasm. At the same time one detects a genuine love of radio and the parodies of old style radio shows, films and newsreels show a nostalgic undertone that would also manifest itself in the TV editions of Buygones.
Listening back to the programmes you can appreciate their technical brilliance with Lewis-Smith providing all the voices, but at the end of half-an-hour it is also quite draining. You feel like you’ve been bludgeoned with a giant comedy hammer.
Two series and two specials followed on Radio 1. It’s the first ten-part 1990 series that’s getting the Radio 4 Extra repeat starting at 22.30 on Friday 8 May 2015. One wonders if they’ve edited out the warnings that preceded and followed each programme. Where Radio 1 listeners really possessed of such delicate sensibilities? “The following programme contains material which some people may find offensive. If you consider yourself likely to be offended then perhaps you’d like to retune to another frequency for the next thirty minutes. You may like to telephone your views about the programme, call 9274364 prefix 01 if you live outside London. Your comments will be passed onto the Controller of Radio 1. Extracts may also be used in future programmes”. I’m still not sure if this was intended to be taken seriously.
Recalling these shows former station controller Johnny Beerling wrote: “It was quite brilliant but there was hardly a single BBC rule which Victor did not seek to break in delivering new and challenging comedy. He would always deliver his finished programme at the last possible moment so there was little time for the poor Radio 1 producer responsible for it to do much editing”.
One rule that Lewis-Smith broke was to obtain permission from the participants to use the recordings of his hoax phone calls. These calls were a staple of the shows, witness the one in the first programme to Harrods complaining of his dissatisfaction with a vacuum cleaner purchased for supposed “specialist” use to “suck the dust off sausages”.
Ahead of the Radio 4 Extra repeats here’s taster of that first show:
I’ve not heard if there are plans to repeat the second series. At the time of its first broadcast a number of edits had to be made (4) and one programme features a skit on the now-verboten subject of Jim’ll Fix It.
Dedicated to the memory of Mrs Tribley.
(1) One-Way Family Favourites replaced Snooze Buttonin the Spring of 1984, again on a Sunday morning. A typical Radio Times billing read “a sideways Sunday lunchtime entertainment from the heart of Yorkshire. This week Victor links up with Katie Boyle in the lost City of Atlantis”. (2) The first series of The Colour Supplement in 1984 was presented by either Sarah Kennedy or Fern Britton with roving reporter Nigel Farrell.The second series in 1985 was presented by Margo MacDonald. (3) The edition broadcast on 21 May 1986 (4) Some of the removed hoax calls made it onto the album Nuisance Calls. “Hear the tapes the BBC never dared transmit”.
Programmes for BBC Radio 1:
Steve ‘More Music’ Nage 30 May 1988(1 hour) Victor Lewis-Smith’s Chrsitmas Message 26 December 1989
Victor Lewis-Smith
Series 1: 10 shows 31 March 1990 to 2 June 1990 Bank Holiday Special: 27 August 1990 Series 2: 4 shows 4 July 1992 to 25 July 1992 Christmas Special: 26 December 1992
Election debates. Leadership interviews. Question Time Special. Party Election Broadcasts. It won't have escaped your notice that (in the UK) there's a General Election happening next week.
The political spectrum is much more fragmented these days and the parties are undoubtedly planning for coalition deals and agreements - even if they publicly deny this.
Cast your mind back to the mid-80s, at the height of Thatcherite Britain, and it was still a two-party system. But thoughts of a possible coalition government were on the minds of the Liberals and the (now defunct) Social Democrats who had formed the SDP-Liberal Alliance.
These four interviews feature the main party leaders (for the majority of the decade). Three come from a series of conversations with Michael Charlton, best known for Panorama, that were broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at a time when the station still carried current affairs amongst the classical music and drama (see Six Continents).
From 10 December 1985 this is Labour leader Neil Kinnock:
From 3 December 1985 this is Liberal Party leader David Steel:
From 26 November 1985 this is SDP leader David Owen:
And finally from an edition of The World this Weekend on 31 May 1987 is PM Margaret Thatcher talking to Gordon Clough.
I was always fascinated by the frequency charts that used to appear in London Calling, codifying and condensing all the shortwave and medium wave listening – VHF in Berlin, of course – to the BBC World Service. You can almost imagine someone having to draft them out on a sheet of graph paper. This one dates from July 1977.
Well even today, surprisingly, they still produce them. With just a little searching I found this page for West & Central Africa. It now looks like they work it all out on a spreadsheet.
"It's twelve noon in London, 7 am in Philadelphia and around the world it's time for Live Aid. Sixteen hours of live music in aid of famine relief in Africa".
Richard Skinner's opening announcement thirty years ago today launched the start of an unforgettable day for the "global jukebox" that was Live Aid. In this edited version of a Radio 1 documentary those involved in performing at the concert and those working behind the scenes on the mammoth broadcast operation recall that day, Saturday 13 July 1984.
Live Aid-One Year On: One Day That Shook the World is introduced by Simon Bates and features the voices of Bob Geldof, Stuart Grundy, Dave Atkey, John Keeble, Elvis Costello, Sting, Howard Jones, Michael Appleton, Chris Lycett and Elton John. It was produced by Roger Lewis and aired on Saturday 13 July 1986.
Tagged on the end of the recording are some of the Live Aid jingles produced by JAM Creative Productions.
It won't have escaped your notice that the BBC's OfficialChart Show has shifted from its traditional Sunday slot to Friday afternoon. Whilst it's easy to get all misty-eyed about listening to (and in all probability recording) the Top 40 on a Sunday, most of those doing so are unlikely to still be listening to Radio 1 and would struggle to name the current number one.
Greg James delivered an exemplary performance on Friday's new chart. Minimum chat and maximum music. With a running time almost half that of the old Sunday show there's only time to play the Top 25 but at least it cut back on the extraneous stuff that had crept into the show in recent years. Note how Greg welcomes in the "new era" with the full date, ideal for archive clipping, and refers to "the exciting new sound", a lovely touch I thought. This is "proper radio history."
That mention of "the exciting new sound" was probably on Greg's mind after speaking to Tony Blackburn earlier in the day on BBC Radio Berkshire.
The chart show had been a Sunday afternoon fixture since 7 January 1962 when Alan Freeman's Pick of the Pops moved from Saturday nights. Two DJs stand out as imbuing the programme with energy and excitement: Bruno Brookes and Mark Goodier. Both have made appearances on BBC local radio in the last few days.
John Foster, a self-confessed radio anorak, put together a montage of clips and played some classic JAM jingles as part of his chat with Bruno Brookes on BBC Radio Tees last Friday:
Meanwhile Mark Goodier, the man who's got the best music, spoke to Stephanie Hirst on her new BBC Radio Manchester show Nothing But the 90s:
And the current number one: David Zowie's House Every Weekend. Other chart shows are available ... on a Sunday!
The BBC Light Programme, launched 70 years ago today, so often gets a bad press. I've lost count of the number of times I've read or heard someone say that the station offered little in the way that was new and entertaining. Admittedly the view is often expressed by those that fondly remember the 60s pirates stations. And there's no denying that the BBC both wilfully and by dint of MU agreements and lack of needletime was spinning very few pop records. And when you heard programmes like this you can understand why:
In 1964 an editorial in the Sunday Express offered the opinion that Radio Caroline was providing millions of people with "lively and gay music" and asked why can't the BBC "turn over the Light Programme to just this kind of entertainment instead of the pompous, pretentious pap it so often purveys?"
Does the much-maligned Light Programme deserve this slating? After all the most most-listened to shows on BBC radio in 1964 where all on the Light: Two-Way Family Favourites, (1) Housewives' Choice, Children's Favourites, Saturday Club and Easy Beat. This is also the sound of the station:
The BBC Light Programme first went on air on Sunday 29 July 1945 as part of a promised "first step towards a return to normal broadcasting". For the Home Service there was a return to the pre-war regional service (2) whilst the Light succeeded, at least for British listeners, the General Forces Programme and also the Allied Expeditionary Forces Programme. Indeed, as you'll hear in the programme below, the Light Programme borrowed from the AEFP its Orange and Lemons interval signal.
During the planning stages, which had started back in 1943, the idea of a 'popular' station had been mooted to compete with "sponsored programmes from our neighbours", i.e. Radio Luxembourg. Whilst BBC bosses wanted the same kind of programme mix that listeners enjoyed on the Forces network there was an insistence that the new stations should be "firmly British in character" and that there should be "an effective resistance to the Americanisation of our entertainment".
The Radio Timespromised that the service would have programmes that were new but there would also be "old favourites reintroduced in a new form." Some of those wartime programmes that continued on the Light Programme included ITMA, Music While You Work and Variety Bandbox. Comedy series badged under the Merry-Go-Round title split off to become Waterlogged Spa, Stand Easy and the much-loved Much Binding in the Marsh.
During the Light Programme's early years a number of programmes came on stream that would become stalwarts of post-war radio: Family Favourites (7.10.45), Housewives' Choice (4.3.46 see note 3), Have a Go (16.9.46 see note 4), Woman's Hour (7.10.46), Dick Barton-Special Agent (7.10.46), Sports Report (3.1.48), Mrs Dale's Diary (5.1.48), Jack Jackson's Record Round-Up (10.1.48), Take It From Here (12.4.48), Top of the Form (1.5.48), Ray's a Laugh(4.4.49), The Billy Cotton Band Show(1.5.49), Listen with Mother(16.1.50), Life with the Lyons(5.11.50), The Archers (1.1.51) and Friday Night is Music Night (25.9.53)
Other long-running or fondly-remembered series included Journey Into Space (first heard on 21.9.53), Children's Favourites (23.1.54), Hancock's Half-Hour (2.11.54), Make Way for Music (13.5.55), Pick of the Pops (4.10.55), Movie-Go-Round (16.9.56), Semprini Serenade (29.9.57), Music Box (23.4.58), Saturday Club (4.10.58), Roundabout(13.10.58), Go Man Go (23.12.58), The Navy Lark (29.5.59), Round the Horne (7.3.65), and I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again (4.10.65 see note 5).
Some of these programmes are recalled in this fiftieth anniversary tribute to the Light Programme presented by Chris Stuart. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 on 30 July 1995. Edits have been made for some copyrighted music.
This is how the BBC Year Book for 1946 described the new Light Programme service:
Some months before the end of the war the Director-General promised that within ninety days of the end of hostilities in the West, the BBC would provide its listeners in the United Kingdom with two full-scale alternative programmes ; and that regional programme services, necessarily interrupted for security reasons, should also return. VE-day came on 8 May, and the programme
and technical staff at once began to make good the promise, even while a week of special victory programmes was being broadcast. On 29 July the new programmes were launched ; the `Home'
service with its regional variations, and the new alternative `Light' programme.
THE LIGHT PROGRAMME- `Designed to appeal not so much to a certain class of listener -but to all listeners when they are in certain moods'
The Light Programme, latest -comer to the air, sets out to give British listeners a continuous service of information and entertainment, contrasting now with the various Home Services and in
future with the Home Services and the third programme that is to begin in 1946. It is broadcast nationally on long wave, backed up by medium -wave transmission in urban areas, where long -wave
reception may be subject to interference. The long wavelength is the famous 1500 metres used for the National Programme before the war, and devoted to the European Service from 16 November,
1941, to 28 July, 1945 ; now back at the service of listeners at home. The medium wavelength, 261 metres, is also that used for the subsidiary National stations before the war.
As a second programme for listeners in the United Kingdom, the Light Programme succeeds the General Forces Programme, which itself succeeded the original Forces Programme that catered for
the BEF from the days of the Maginot Line. Incidentally, the General Forces Programme continues on short waves for British troops outside North -west Europe.
Both these predecessors were addressed to specialized audiences, and the civilian listener at home knew that in listening to them he was virtually eavesdropping (which, by the way, is a popular
pastime with British listeners, as was evident with the European Service and the AEF Programme). Unlike them, the Light Programme is meant for civilians, and they have the right to expect
it to give them what they want.
The title `Light' Programme does not mean that everything broadcast in it must necessarily be frothy or frivolous. It does mean that the overall content of the daily or weekly programme contains
a higher proportion of sheer entertainment than either the Home Service or the third programme. More Variety shows, dance bands, brass bands theatre organs, popular orchestras, sport ; more `easy listening' in general, designed to appeal not so much to a certain class of listener but to all listeners when they are in certain moods. This does not exclude a proportion of more serious items -religious services of a rather different kind from the broadcast service that has become traditional, talks, fine music played by great orchestras (but not formal `symphony concerts'), plays, dramatic features on subjects with wide appeal. But these items will always form a minor element in the programme as a whole.
In two respects the Light Programme forsakes its special character in order to take its place in the BBC's general plan. It carries news broadcasts, at times which alternate with those of the Home
Service, and these news broadcasts do not differ in style from the Home Service news, although they are read by different voices. Also it carries an hour a day of Forces educational broadcasts planned in consultation with the Service education authorities. These are included in the Light Programme because its long -wave transmission brings them within the reach of the greatest possible number of Service listeners. Among these are the British occupation forces in Germany, and it is worth mentioning that there has from the first been close co- operation between the Light. Programme and the British Forces Network in Germany, run by Army Welfare. The BFN relays a large proportion of the Light Programme and in return contributes regularly to it. A notable example of this co- operation is the two-way 'Family Favourites' series, in which a tune requested by a civilian listener for a relative in the occupation forces is followed by a tune requested by a Service man in Germany for a relative at home, the whole programme being broadcast both in the Light Programme and by
the BFN.
1 - Family Favourites topped 18 million listeners, the biggest audience of any regular radio or BBC TV programme. (Source: BBC Handbook 1964)
2- The regions were London, Midland, North, West, Scotland and Wales with Northern Ireland having to share one of the North regions wavelengths (285.7m) due to a shortage of available wavelengths.
3- Although the regular series of Housewives' Choice started in March 1946 the BBC Genome site lists two earlier weeks: w/c 26 November 1945 with Roy Rich and then w/c 1 January 1946 with Franklin Engelmann.
4- In fact Have a Go had started on the Northern Region of the Home Service some 6 months earlier on 4 March 1946 but was quickly transferred to the Light Programme where it ran until 1967. Of course the other programme transferring from the Regions, and still broadcast today, was The Archers from the Midlands. Another popular show was Welsh Rarebit, from Wales (naturally), that had started life as a magazine programme in 1940 but became a 60-minute variety show from 6 April 1949.
5- The first 3-part series in 1964 had aired on the Home Service but the second and all subsequent series were broadcast on the Light Programme and then Radio 2.
One the early successes on the BBC Light Programme, launched 70 years ago this week, was the travelling quiz show Have a Go!
The programme's popularity (1) was wholly due to the rapport that presenter Wilfred Pickles had with contestants young and old as he inevitably asked "What was yer most embarrassin' moment, loov?" Over time the chat with members of the public took precedence over the quiz element, though they were always encouraged and cajoled to win the full prize pot of "Thirty-seven and six!".
Wilfred Pickles had been born in Halifax in 1904 and from an early age was fascinated by showbusiness and went on to join a local amateur dramatic society, the Halifax Thespians. On one occasion, by which time his family had moved over the Pennines to Southport, Wilfred went across to visit them and ran into theatrical producer Arthur Belt. Would Wilfred care to read-through a part in his production of The Jeffersons he enquired? The part was playing opposite the young actress Mabel Mysercough. Wilfred and Mabel would marry in 1930 and would later work together on Have a Go!"How much money on the table, Mabel?".
In 1931 Wilfred successfully auditioned as an actor for the BBC's Northern region service in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester. He would appear on programmes such as Children's Hour, Songs That Father Sang, King Pins of Comedy and Billy Welcome. Controversially in 1941 he also joined the rota of Home Service newsreaders where his non-BBC accent shocked some listeners. At the end of the day's broadcasting he'd sign off with: "Goodnight everybody, and to all you Northerners wherever you are - good neet".
The idea to use Pickles on the wartime bulletins came not from within the BBC but from the Ministry of Information. They felt that the "southerner" was having too much say over the airwaves for the northern listeners' liking. More intriguingly they also cited security reasons as his accent "might not so easily be copied by the Germans." To accommodate this the BBC moved Wilfred down to London and Bruce Belfrage up to Manchester and almost doubled his salary from £480 to £800. Apparently after his first bulletin there was a short interlude and announcer Franklin Engelmann cued in the record On Ilkey Moor Baht'At. In the event the news-reading experiment failed not only because of the listener complaints but, by Wilfred's own admission, the news bulletins were written "by a southerner for a southerner to read, which could make a lot of difference in the actual choice or order of words". (2)
Have a Go! was the brainchild of Philip Robinson, a Programme Assistant based in Leeds, in response to a request from the North Regional Programme Director, John Salt, for ideas for a "quiz programme with audience participation". The titles of Quiz Bang (3) and then Have a Go, Joe were rejected in favour of Have a Go!, though the name "Joe" didn't disappear entirely. There was an opening and closing bit of community singing for the audience to heartily join in with: "That's the show, Joe, tha's been and 'ad a go; Now tha can tell thi friends as well, Tha's been on't Radio". As you can tell, to quote Russell Davies, the show was a "festival of ee bah gummery". (4)
The series was initially broadcast to listeners to the Northern Home Service. The first trial recording of Have a Go! was made in Bradford on 11 February 1946 and the first actual broadcast in nearby Bingley five days later. According to Asa Briggs "the sense of popular participation was immediate and warm. Very quickly the original idea of a light-hearted quiz had been extended, for Pickles knew how to bring out the personality of each contestant and to reveal the human stories". (5)
The programme was a hit and "have a go" and "ow do - ow are yer?" started to become as popular as the catchphrase-laden ITMA. Within six months Have a Go! was moved to a national slot on the Light Programme with the first show, on 16 September 1946, coming from Bridlington.
In the early editions the producer was Philip Robinson but by 1947 he was replaced by Barney Colehan (6) giving rise to another catchphrase: "Give 'im the money, Barney". Musical accompaniment was initially provided by Jack Jordan but the following year Violet Carson joined the programme. Violet, a fine soprano as well as a pianist, had previously worked with Wilfred on many editions of Children's Hour and would, of course, go on to play the hair-netted harridan Ena Sharples in Coronation Street. By 1953 the programme was broadcast live rather than pre-recorded and production moved to London under the guidance of Stephen Williams with Harry Hudson at the piano. This was also the year that Mrs Pickles was roped in as "Mabel at the Table".
And here is a recording of that first live edition as broadcast on the Light Programme on 17 November 1953 coming from the town of Ramsbottom:
Have a Go!trundled on around the country - apparently they never re-visited a location - until the final edition on 10 January 1967. By now the quiz element had totally gone and Wilfred would ask Mabel to pass over some unspecified pot of money to the best anecdote from some (usually) elderly resident of the town.
On the radio at least, Wilfred Pickles' easy-going, man of the people style meant he seemed destined to travel the highways and byways meeting the folk of Britain in series such as Pleasant Journey (1950) , Can I Come In?(1952-3) and Afternoon Out (1956-61). On BBC TV there was Ask Pickles(1954-56) in which he asks "for the things you'd like to see on your television screen", it was a kind of Wilf'll Fix It.
Alongside all this the acting continued. His stage successes included The Gay Dog with Pickles as greyhound owner Jim Gay, a role he'd revisit on TV, radio and in the 1954 film version. There was also a long run at Blackpool in Hobson's Choice, again a play he'd star in on BBC TV and radio. For the Home Service he appeared in Arnold Bennett's plays The Cardand The Regent. Later there were roles in films such as Billy Liar and The Family Way and a starring role as ageing widower Walter Bingley with Irene Handel as Ada Cresswell in Thames TV's For the Love of Ada.
For many radio and TV appearances it's noticeable the number of times that both Wilfred and Mabel appear. This arose through very tragic circumstances with the death of their seven-year-old son David, after contracting infantile paralysis. Later they would ask the BBC to let them broadcast programmes on Christmas Day from various Children's Hospitals. In addition, Wilfred insisted that he and Mabel, who'd also lost one child in pregnancy, to appear as often as possible together on air and on tour. Such was the level of their national popularity that in 1955 the BBC Light Programme accorded them a special programme to celebrate their silver wedding.
Wilfred Pickles died aged 73 on 27 March 1978, Mabel passed away aged 82 on 28 March 1989.
1 - The BBC Year Book for 1948 quotes that the audience for Have a Go! topped 15 million. By 1958 it was still garnering 4.5 million.
2 - Quoted in Those Vintage Years of Radio by John Snagge and Michael Barsley (Pitman 1972).
3 - Quiz Bang had been its original title in the USA
4 - Let's Get Quizzical - Part 2 broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra on 9 April 2011.
5- The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom - Volume IV by Asa Briggs (OUP 1979)
6- Robinson became Head of Outside Broadcasts for the Northern region.
"The time in Britain is twelve noon, in Germany it's one o'clock, but home and away it's time for Two-Way Family Favourites".
If ever a sentence can take you back to a time and a place it's that opening programme introduction which for over 30 years is firmly embedded in the memory of Sunday lunchtimes, a family meal of roast beef and Yorkshires with the wireless tuned to the BBC Light Programme.
The idea for a regular record request show came about during World War Two when the then head of presentation for the BBC's General Overseas, Tom Chalmers (later the second Controller of the Light Programme) received a postcard from three Army sergeants serving in the Western desert challenging the Corporation to provide a more "cheerful" programme. They wrote:
Dear BBC, Just a line from three of the M.E.F. After almost drinking ourselves to death to get profits for the purpose of buying a wireless, we find to our dismay that your programmes as broadcast in the African Service hardly warranted our efforts. We appreciate all that you are doing for us lads out here, but we honestly think your programmes could be a little more cheerful - so come on, BBC, let's hear from you! We remain your devoted listeners who suffer in silence. Can you take it? We lay odds that you can't.
Thus, in 1941, Forces Favourites was born. The presenters all worked as continuity announcers for the service: Marjorie Anderson, Joan Griffiths, Barbara McFadyean and Jean Metcalfe.
It was Jean who would become the most famous of those voices and during the 40s, 50s and early 60s she became indelibly associated with the most listened to programme on the radio, Family Favourites.
Jean started her career with the BBC as a typist in August 1940 in the General Office at Broadcasting House. By her own admission she was not the world's best typist so when a call from the Empire Service announcers came in that they needed help with their fan mail she moved across to that service working for the likes of Franklin Engelmann, Robert Beatty and Duncan Carse. In May 1941 she was given her first opportunity to appear on-air by reading a poem in the series Books and People. The following year Jean was offered the chance to audition as a continuity announcer. Apparently they were looking for more female announcers as "the higher pitch of their voices suited shortwave reception". (1)
On the General Overseas Service Jean worked alongside Margaret Hubble and the aforementioned Joan Griffiths and Barbara McFadyean - all four would also be associated, post-war, with Woman's Hour. Part of the announcing duties included Forces Favourites which then ran several times a week and had as its signature tune When You Wish Upon a Star. Unbeknownst to the announcers some of the requests from the war zones included some service slang that went over the heads of the presenting team. One day Tom Chalmers called them into his office and passed them a letter from a submarine engineer that read "me and my mates can no longer bear to hear your refined ladies saying such obscene things over the air" and enclosed a glossary translating some of the words into layman's language.
From 24 November 1943 Forces Favourites was also broadcast on the Forces Programme giving British listeners the chance to hear the show. For the duration of the war the show continued on both the General Overseas Service and at home on the Forces Programme and then the General Forces Programme (from February 1944) as an almost daily show (it wasn't heard on Mondays).
Following the launch of the Light Programme on 29 July 1945 Forces Favourites remained on air three times a week - always in the evening - until the final edition aired on 15 April 1946. Though that was the last that UK listeners heard of the show it wasn't the end for Forces Favourites; it continued on the General Overseas Service until at least the mid 1950s. I can't be certain when it finally ended but it was still on air in December 1953 according to an old edition of London Calling that I acquired just recently. Going out twice a week at 11.30 for thirty minutes at a time, one of the presenters was Kay Sharman (pictured above).
Meanwhile the idea for a request show linking Britain and Germany was assessed by Tom Chalmers, now having moved on to become the assistant head for the Light Programme. He put the idea to John McMillan over at the British Forces Network in Hamburg. Apparently John had "good contacts with the Royal Corps of Signals in the city and discovered that there was a direct telephone circuit from Hamburg to an exchange housed in an underground railway tunnel in Goodge Street. At the time it was being used for military traffic between London and the continent. John decided to see whether he could get through to the BBC and was delighted when he was connected to Langham 4468 and was soon talking to Tom Chalmers. They discussed the possibilities of a two-way request programme and Tom, using his contacts, found that it was now possible to get lines of sufficient broadcast quality through to Hamburg". (2)
Family Favourites launched on the Light Programme at 10.15 am on Sunday 7 October 1945. (3) Though not listed in the Radio Times the presenters were Marjorie Anderson in London and Sgt Alan Clarke (4) in Hamburg. From the start the signature of With a Song in My Heart was in place, the version by André Kostelanetz - other version appeared over the years.
The theme tune was the idea of Trevor Hill, later a renowned BBC producer, but at the time working for the General Overseas Service on Radio Newsreel. He was tasked with re-packaging editions of the programme for relay to stations in North America. They wanted to preface the usual Imperial Echoessig tune with another short theme and opening announcement (from Canadian announcer Byng Whittaker - see note 5). On a 12-inch Columbia record by André Kostelanetz he found a recording of Melodies from Victor Herbert, the opening fanfare of which was used for the programme. On the flip side of that record was With a Song in My Heart. (6)
The first record played on Family Favourites was Lilli Marlene played by Geraldo and his Orchestra. Lilli Marlene provided the link back to the armed forces as it was both the song of the Eight Army and the signature tune of the first British Forces Experimental Radio Service that had opened in Algiers in January 1944. (7)
BBC boss Tom Chalmers was keen to ensure that Family Favourites played plenty of record requests. He believed that on the old Forces Favourites programme the presenters had become to feel they were more important than the show and its content. In November 1945 he issued this rather kill-joy directive reminding presenters that "we must be very strict with this programme or it will become unmanageable. No anniversary requests. Nothing resembling a message e.g. play a tune 'with love from Joan', so is 'because it reminds me of happy hours with the Amateur Operatic Society'. No fiancées or girlfriends may be included. Families only. No names of schools or pubs may be mentioned because of indirect advertising. No noisy advanced jazz, e.g. Stan Kenton, is allowed on Sundays. Cut out the banter. This programme is not a vehicle for personality presentation". (8) Despite this the programme endured for 35 years and a handful of the hosts became household names!
One of the first presenters at the London was Margaret Hubble, whose voice had closed down the Allied Expeditionary Forces Programme on the eve of the launch of the Light Programme. She recalls that "the result of asking listeners to write in with their own requests was sackloads of letters and postcards, which the Post Room were totally unable to handle. They had never received so much correspondence before. This mess ended up in our office at the back of the fourth floor, which overlooked the empty space at the fore end of Broadcasting House". (9)
Meanwhile in the studios of BFN Hamburg a number of broadcasters took turns on Family Favourites duty, they included Brian Whittle. Roy Bradford, John Jacobs (brother of David), Hedley Chambers, Don Douglas, Bob Boyle (later on the Light and Radio 2 under the name Robin Boyle) and Derek Jones (who in the 1970s was the presenter of Radio 4's Sounds Natural).
But perhaps the best known presenting pair was Jean Metcalfe and Cliff Michelmore, even though their period on-air was fairly brief - about a year or so. Whilst Jean was working for the BBC in London, Cliff was doing his bit for king and country in the RAF and following the end of the Second World War, by his own admission "drifted into the job" with the British Forces Network based at the Musikhalle in Hamburg. Like many broadcasters on the BFN at that time - Raymond Baxter, Brian Matthew and Jimmy Kingsbury for example - it was a case of mucking in with whatever was required: news reporting, sports commentaries, dramatic productions and, of course, record programmes. So it was no surprise when Cliff was asked at short notice to sit in on Family Favourites when Derek Jones was suddenly taken off to hospital. Cliff and Jean hit it off immediately. "Our patterns of speech fell into place like a well-made jigsaw and we seemed to have the same feeling for varying pace and length of announcements", recalled Jean. "We quickly became friends, though in voice only."
Before they went on-air each Sunday Cliff and Jean would make use of the free line between London and Hamburg. Officially it was open 10 minutes before transmission to enable the presenters to make any last minute alterations to the running order but "soon we were using every bit of that time for more personal, day-to-day, conversation". Although they continued to exchange letters and gifts - delivered by visiting BFN staff - they never met until Cliff decided to leave the RAF and take his luck as a freelance broadcaster in the UK. Back in London on leave he'd managed to make an appointment with John McMillan (who was now with the BBC as Deputy Head of the Light Programme), but more importantly to get the chance to finally meet Jean. Fortunately she was on duty that day in "Light Con" and inbetween programmes he popped into the studio. "You must be Jean", he said, to which she replied "You must be Cliff".
Cliff continued to work on Family Favourites until the end of 1949 but they were careful not to mention anything about their relationship on-air. Their engagement was finally announced in January 1950 by which time Cliff finally left Germany and the BFN. Apparently the last record on their final show together was I'll Be Seeing You. They married in March.
Jean remained the main London presenter of Family Favourites for the next 14 years (10) whilst at the same time working during the week on Woman's Hour. What made Jean a star and gave the programme its vast audience was, according to Simon Elmes "her ability to make ordinary record requests sound special, to connect with ordinary people and empathise with their situation without ever sounding mawkish". (11)
Over in Hamburg, and then Cologne from 1954 when the BFN, later the British Forces Broadcsting Service, moved their HQ, they needed a new partner for Jean. For the first three years this was Christopher Howland (12), followed by Dennis Scuse, who at the time was the station director. (13) In 1957 Bill Crozier took over the hot seat and stayed with the show for seven years. (14)
Bill Crozier had started with the British Forces Network in 1948 as a staff pianist before becoming an announcer and presenter. By the time he took over on Two-Way Family Favourites, as it was now billed, he was also hosting the daily BFN request show the 1800 Club. By the time that Bill and Jean presented their final show together in 1964 the programme has regularly getting 20 million listeners, the highest audience for any radio show, and receiving around 1,000 requests a week in London and 800 in Germany.
Jean Metcalfe cut back on her radio commitments from April 1964 and was able to alternate for six months at a time on Two-Way Family Favourites firstly with Judith Chalmers and later Muriel Young and Maggie Clews. Every week there was still the link-up with Germany with presenter Ian Fenner having taken over from Bill Crozier and then Jim Luxton in 1967. But the show's horizons expanded to become Three-Way, Four-Way or even Five-Waywhen they joined other BFBS outposts in Malta, Cyrus, Aden, Singapore, Tripoli and Gibraltar.
With the launch of Radios 1 and 2 in 1967 the programme took on a new shape from 1 October with Michael Aspel now being the main host, an extra 30 minutes to take it up to a 2-hour show plus a Commonwealth-wide audience with contributions from ABC in Australia, NZBC in New Zealand, Radio Hong Kong and C.B.C. in Canada. There was also a new feature with requests from a different area of Britain. Producer Lonny Mather, writing in the Radio Times promised that "we have not forgotten, though, that locally around the British Isles people from all walks of life may be away from home and feeling cut-off from their friends". For the first show they went up to Scotland and joined Stuart Henry, the following week Tom Coyne in the Midlands, Derek Jones in the South West and so on. This idea quickly fell by the wayside and was dropped by the end of the year.
The introduction of Worldwide Family Favourites meant some rather controversial changes were made on the BFBS Germany version of the show. Not wishing to broadcast a two-hour programme in which they featured in every other week the acting head, David Lamb, dropped it in favour of their own request show Sounds Like Sunday that would include the half-hour link to Germany whenever that occurred. Dick Norton and then Sandi Jones presented Sounds Like Sunday and over time the links to other stations were restored.
This is the era of Family Favourites that I first remember. Like every other household in Britain it was the musical accompaniment to our Sunday lunch, the wireless on the sideboard tuned into Radio 2 on VHF. Apparently some of the most popular requests around this time were: I'll Be Home by Pat Boone, Doris Day's Secret Love, Home Lovin' Man by Andy Williams, Every Time We Say Goodbyeby Ella Fitzgerald and The Green Green Grass of Home by Tom Jones. (15)
Regular voices heard from around the world included Graham Webb and later Rod McNeil in Sydney, Bill Paul in Tornoto, Marama Martin and later Ian Thompson in Auckland and over in Hong Kong for many years was June Armstrong-Wright. Broadcasters with the BFBS who would go on to work for the BBC included John Hedges, Peter Donaldson and Don Durbridge. When troops started to be deployed in Northern Ireland the programme added a link-up with BBC Belfast from 1971 and saw the return of Michael Baguley who'd hosted the Cologne leg back in 1953.
From 8 April 1973 Sandi Jones became the next presenter, having previously appeared on the programme as part of the BFBS Cologne team. Sandi continued until 1976 when from 2 May Jean Challis took over as the final presenter. Jean had also been on before, both from BFBS Cyprus in the mid-60s and standing in for Sandi in 1975.
The final stand alone edition of Family Favourites aired on Radio 2 on 13 January 1980. The BBC had previously denied that the show was to be axed and indeed it became part of Pete Murray's Sunday Show from the following Sunday. Family Favourites stayed with Pete until May 1981, thereafter it became a daily and eventually a weekly part of Ed Stewart's weekday afternoon show before disappearing in 1984 (16) by which time the link-ups were confined to Australia with Bob Hudson (17) and Ian Thompson in New Zealand. Radio 2 has since revived the title on a handful of occasions with past presenters Jean Metcalfe, Cliff Michelmore, Sandi Jones and Michael Aspel all taking part. Last year online station Solid Gold GEM AM briefly had a Sunday offering of Family Favourites with former Radio 2 and BFBS broadcaster Patrick Lunt.
Few recordings of Family Favourites exist from its Light Programme and Radio 2 heyday. From my own archive I'm publishing two of those revival shows. The first I've posted before was heard on 30 July 1995 as part of Radio 2's celebrations of the Light Programme years. The hosts are Sandi Jones in London and Glen Mansell in Germany.
This recording is a the last full edition of the show heard on 30 September 2007 as part of the station's 40th anniversary. Returning to the chair was Michael Aspel.
1 - This and other quotes from Cliff Michelmore and Jean Metcalfe are taken from Two-Way Story(Futura 1986)
2 - This is the British Forces Network: The Story of Forces Broadcasting in Germany by Alan Grace (Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd 1996)
3 - Whilst this is the date of the first joint BBC/BFN show, according to the BBC Genome website the first programme with this title was broadcast on the evening of 1 August 1945.
4 - In 1947 Alan Clarke joined the BBC and would host the programme from the London end that year. He'd been a commentator for the BFN and would be one of the Corporation's football commentators until his death in 1969
5 - That opening announcement went: "Whilst Britain awaits another dawn, we bring you news from the Battle Fronts of the world in - Radio Newsreel!"
6 - See Over the Airwaves : My Life in Broadcasting by Trevor Hill (The Book Guild, 2005)
7 - The opening announcement for BFES Algiers had been made by Major Philip Slessor, later a well-known BBC announcer. When it was pointed out that Lilli Marlene was also used by the Germans it was dropped in favour of Rule Britannia.
8 - Quoted in Two-Way Story op.cit.
9 - Quoted in Action Stations by Colin Reid (Robson Books, 1987)
10 - Other looking after the UK side of the show included Sandy Grandison, Rhona Marsh, Patricia Hughes (now best remembered for her long stint as continuity announcer on Radio 3), Kay Sharman and Carole Carr.
11 - Hello Again: Nine Decades of radio voices by Simon Elmes (Random House 2012)
12- After working for the BFN Christopher Howland remained in Germany as a broadcaster, singer and actor until his death in 2013.
13 - Dennis Scuse would go on to join the BBC in the late 50s mainly working in TV and later heading up BBC Enterprises. He died in 1998.
14 - Others deputising for Bill Crozier were John Mead, Michael Baguley, Alistair McDougall, Gerald Sinstadt, Paul Hollingdale, Derek Hale and Ian Fenner.
15 - This is the British Forces Network: The Story of Forces Broadcasting in Germany op.cit.
16 - The last billed edition is on Tuesday 10 January 1984. Ed Stewart's afternoon show ended the following week.
17 - Ed Stewart describes Bob Hudson as "so slow and laid back in his presentation style that I thought he was going to fall off his chair. Quoted in Ed Stewart: Out of the Stewpot (John Blake Publishing 2005). Readers should take heed that the details about Family Favourites on pp.190-1 in this book don't bear up to scrutiny.
Whenever TV producers want to evoke an image of cosy 1950s British domesticity they will invariably reach for the music track In Party Mood. More than half a century after it was first used Jack Strachey's piece still has the ability to immediately strike the right nostalgic note.
In Party Mood was the theme to the Light Programme's daily request show designed to accompany the morning chores after the menfolk had gone off to work - this was the 1940s after all - Housewives' Choice.
The idea for Housewives' Choice actually came from Sweden - the reference books make no mention of its title or its longevity - following a visit to the country by the Light's Programme Controller Norman Collins. It launched on 4 March 1946 (1) and lasted until the close of the station some twenty-one years later.
Musical requests ranged from the traditional - Greensleves and the Eton Boating Song - to the popular - Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree With Anyone Else But Me by the Andrews Sisters and Charles Trenet's La Mer. In 1956 the favourite artists were Perry Como, Ruby Murray, Percy Faith, Pat Boone and Doris Day. The programme's production office groaned under the weight of 3,000 postcard requests a week. At its height over eight million listeners tuned in.
The programme's first compère was the actor and broadcaster Robert MacDermot. Others who proved popular in the early days were Bryan Michie and Godfrey Winn. Presenters were generally booked for a two-week stint; many returned again and again over the years. Some were not re-booked. There were also appearances from BBC staff announcers. You'll notice - in the list at the foot of this post - that of the 250+ names the majority are men. During the week it seems, in contrast to Sunday's Family Favourites, women were not allowed to play record requests.
Of the four women who did present Housewives' Choice, three were on the BBC staff and had broadcast during the war. They all featured on the programme in the late 1940s and all were also associated at one time or another with Woman's Hour: Barbara McFadyean, Jeanne Heal and Joan Griifiths. The other woman presenter was Vera Lynn, who made a couple of one-off appearances in 1956 and 1962 and then did a fortnight in 1963.
One of the best-known and most-loved of the regular hosts was George Elrick (pictured above), the former big band drummer and singer who would later combine his radio work alongside managing Mantovani and his orchestra. In his autobiography (2) he recalls that it was veteran DJ Christopher Stone that put his name forward to Anna Instone, the indomitable Head of Gramophone records whose domain included Housewives' Choice. (3)
When the programme first started the presenters were expected to help choose the records from the submitted requests (4) and turn up to the studio early for a complete run through, all scripted of course. But George Elrick enjoyed a little latitude to deviate from the script and one morning "after the last record had been played and I knew I was off the air, I removed my headphones, leaned back in my chair and began to la-di-da the signature tune which I could hear faintly from the room where they played the records. Unfortunately my engineer thought I was still talking and, unbeknown to me, hastily switched me back on". Concerned that he might get a ticking off from the BBC he was surprised to hear programme organiser Pat Osborne tell him: "Wonderful touch, old boy. Do it again tomorrow." In the following show he added the words "See you all again tomorrow morning..." and that sign-off became a programme institution.
In 1965 the BBC recorded an average daily audience for Housewives' Choice of 8.5 million, by far the largest weekday radio listenership. The following year this had dropped to 6.5 million - the impact of the pirate radio stations perhaps? But its days were numbered as in September 1967 the Light Programme came to an end, and with it Housewives' Choice. Final presenting duties were taken up by David Hamilton, his first and last appearance on the show.
Although the title disappeared on 29 September 1967 the programme format did not. The following week a 90-minute daily record requests show was back in the schedules of Radio 1 under the guise of Family Choice. (5) Like its predecessor it has hosted by figures from the entertainment world and disc jockeys. Family Choice ran until 26 September 1969, replaced the following week by Pete Murray's Open House on both Radio 1 and Radio 2.
Very little exists in the way of recordings of Housewives' Choice. The BBC kept just a few minutes of a 1964 edition with Kenneth Horne. Online you can find 40 minutes of a 1950s programme with Bob Danvers-Walker. And that's the sum total of 21 years of broadcasting.
In 1989 Russell Davies celebrated the programme in When Housewives Had the Choice - though the Radio Times billings suggest recordings from the original programmes were available - and in 1990 George Elrick was back at the helm for a one-off May Bank holiday special. I only recorded the first fifteen minutes of the show so I've no idea how he signed off this particular edition.
In 1995 to celebrate fifty years since the launch of the Light Programme there was another one-off programme, this time with Roy Hudd looking after proceedings. Roy hadn't presented Housewives' Choice first time round, but he had been on Family Choice. This is my recording of that complete show.
1- Although the regular series of Housewives' Choice started in March 1946 the BBC Genome site lists two earlier weeks: w/c 26 November 1945 with Roy Rich and then w/c 1 January 1946 with Franklin Engelmann. The programme was broadcast from 9.10 to 10 am, but later started at 9 am and finally 8.30 am.
2 - Housewives' Choice: The George Elrick Story by George Elrick (Mainstream Publishing 1991)
3 - George's first appearance was on 9 December 1946. Between 1946 and 1967 he hosted the show about 240 times.
4 - Richard Murdoch, who was a regular DJ on the Light Programme alongside his comedy work, remembers that in the early days "we could take home the postcards and compile our own programmes. One could have filled a whole hour of requests for Gracie Fields singing Bless this House." As quoted in the foreword to The Golden Age of Radio by Denis Gifford (Batsford, 1985)
5 - On occasions in the 1950s and 1960s Housewives' Choice had been billed as Family Choice, usually on Bank Holidays. Radio 1's Family Choice was also simulcast on Radio 2.
Housewives' Choice Presenters
This is a list of all the presenters in order of their first appearance:
Robert MacDermot, Geoffrey Sumner, Bryan Michie, Roy Rich, John Webster, Sandy Grandison, Alvar Lidell, Franklin Engelmann, Neal Arden, Joesph Lewis, George Elrick, Hector Stewart, Christopher Stone, Spike Hughes, Dennis Vance, Barbara MacFadyean, Gordon Crier, Jonah Barrington, Bob Danvers-Walker, Jack Jackson, Sam Heppner, Roger Snowdon, Alan Adair, Robin Richmond, Paul Adam, Roger Falk, Stanley Maxted, David Jacobs, Jeanne Heal, Joan Griffiths, Georgie Henschel, Harold Warrender, John Watt, Jerry Desmonde, Bernard McNab, Stephen Grenfell, Cliff Michelmore, Godfrey Winn, Alex McCrindle, Wilfred Thomas, Harry Parry, Edmundo Ros, Ernest Dudley, Michael Miles, Bentley Collingwood Hilliam, Bill Gates, Sam Pollock, Eamonn Andrews, John Ellison, Teddy Johnson, Lou Preager, Gilbert Harding, John Masters, Tom Masson, Maurice Denham, Richard Attenborough, Billy Cotton, Gordon Gow, Joesph Linnane, Steve Race, Peter Brough, Felix Deebank, Kim Peacock, Fred Yule, Bruce Belfrage, Roy Bradford, Donald Peers, Alastair Dunnett, Victor Silvester, Peter Noble, Peter Bathurst, Duncan Carse, Bill Phillips, George Moon, Barry Delmaine, Benny Lee, Peter Haigh, Leonard Henry, James Norbury, Felix King, Elton Hayes, Alan Gibson, Chappie D'Amato, Lionel Gamlin, Peter Sinclair, Paul Martin, Robert Irwin, Donald Bisset, Reginald Dixon, Hamilton Kennedy, Jack Train, Harold Berens, Woolf Phillips, Roger Delgado, Gordon Bradley, Peter Lloyd, Arthur Bush, Mark White, James Urquhart, Rex Palmer, Frank Weir, Norman Hackforth, Ralph Reader, Jack Melford, Max Robertson, Edward Barnes, Sam Costa, Leslie Heritage, David Nixon, Peter West, Dennis Noble, Hubert Gregg, Geroge Melachrino, Howard Lockhart, Jimmy Hanley, Nat Temple, Alan Dixon, Dennis Castle, Huphrey Lestocq, Richard Murdoch, Noel Iliffe, Eric Phillips, Derek Prentice, John Merrett, Frederick Allen, Len Marten, Hugh McDermott, John Burnaby, Denis Moonan, Clarence Wright, Keith Fordyce, Gary Miller, Douglas Blackwell, Donald Stewart, Ian Stewart, Frank Duncan, Bruce Trent, Kenneth Best, Jimmy Young, Thomas Woodrooffe, Alan Dell, Leslie Parker, Jimmy Vivian, Kenneth Wolstenholme, Desmond Llewelyn, David Enders, Frank Chacksfield, Donald Gray, Peter Jones, Archie McCulloch, Maurice O'Callghan, Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, Ken Sykora, Pete Murray, Don Lang, Wilfred Pickles, Cardew Robinson, Max Jaffa, Cyril Fletcher, Russ Conway, Bryan Johnson, Brian Rix, Ian Wallace, Ted Moult, Hughie Green, Cyril Stapleton, Alan Freeman, McDonald Hobley, Charlie Chester, Alex MacIntosh, Malcolm Mitchell, Ted Ray, Desmond Carrington, Brian Matthew, John Slater, John Anthony, Frankie Vaughan , Harry Secombe, Vera Lynn, Andy Stewart, Tommy Steele, Alan Keith, Jon Pertwee, Eric Robinson, David Hughes, Kenneth McKeller, Arthur Haynes, Rex Alston, Ted King, Tim Brinton, Kenneth Horne, Rupert Davies, Bob Monkhouse, Ken Dodd, Tim Gudgin, Hattie Jacques, Eric Sykes, Don Moss, Geoffrey Wheeler, Stratford Johns , Lance Percival, Gay Byrne, Norman Vaughan, David Gell, Jack DeManio, Roger Moffat, Johnny Morris, Bruce Forsyth, Val Doonican, Raymond Baxter, Ivor Emmanuel, Alun Williams, Brian Johnston, Richard Briers, Roy Castle, Inia TeWiata, Jimmy Henney, Bill Simpson, Edric Connor, Bill Crozier, Denny Piercy, Kenneth Cope, Terence Edmond, Bob Holness, Leslie Crowther, Martin Locke, George Martin, Joe Henderson, John Benson, Peter Goodwright, Terry Scott, Geroge Chisholm, Arthur Murphy, Bernard Miles, Joe Brown, Cy Grant, Doug Arthur, Dave Allen, Percy Edwards, Paddy Feeny, Barry Alldis, Jimmy Thompson, Rolf Harris, Edmund Hockridge, Max Bygraves, Jim Dale, Freddie Frinton, James Ellis, Terry Wogan, Corbet Woodall, Ian Carmichael, Simon Dee and David Hamilton
If families had their favourites played on Sunday and housewives got their choice on weekdays then on Saturday mornings it was Children's Favourites. In this the fifth of nine posts recalling the years of the BBC Light Programme I remember the time when kids requested the Swedish Rhapsody and Sparky's Magic Piano.
Even if you don't know remember Children's Favourites you'll know that delightfully cheerful theme tune, Puffing Billy. But the forerunner of the show started just over a year earlier as Children's Choice and it used the Housewives' Choice theme In Party Mood until Puffing Billywas shunted in a year or so later.
Children's Choicestarted off as a Christmas Day 1952 request programme on the Light Programme. The host was the singer Donald Peers. Throughout 1953 it effectively ran as a Saturday morning extension of Housewives' Choice; whoever was presenting during the week covered the junior edition too. Early record favourites were The Runaway Train by Vernon Dalhart, Nellie the Elephant by Mandy Miller and Charles Penrose with The Laughing Policemen - all still instantly recognisable to Stewpot's listeners some twenty years later.
The programme had a rebrand on 2 January 1954 to become Children's Favourites. In charge of proceedings was Derek McCulloch (pictured above), better known from his Children's Hour programmes in the 1930s and 40s as Uncle Mac. McCulloch had retired from the BBC in 1950 but became the somewhat testy compèreof the request show, his familiar Children's Hour sign-off of "Goodnight children...everywhere" transformed into the opening words "Hullo children...everywhere".
Uncle Mac's last edition was on 5 December 1964. By then even Children's Hour had been axed and the BBC wanted some younger blood on Children's Favourites. Perhaps this was in response to the growing competition from the pirates, even if the requests still came in for Max Bygraves singing You're A Pink Toothbrush, I'm A Blue Toothbrush.
Though McCulloch presented the lion's share of the programmes in the first eight years you could also write in to Archie Andrews and Peter Brough, Max Bygarves, Rex Palmer (Uncle Rex), John Ellison, Spike Milligan, Christopher Trace and Jim Dale. Between 1964 and 1967 you'd have heard Paddy Feeny, Michael Aspel and Leslie Crowther. And it was Crowther who took the show to Radio 1 where it became Junior Choice on 30 September 1967.
From 24 October 1965 Children's Favourites added a Sunday morning edition. The Radio Times advised that this double helping - initially presented by Paddy Feeny - aimed to "satisfy the mounting number of requests (from both parents and children) which has kept this popular morning programme spinning along for eleven years". It went on to say that "children - from toddlers to teenagers - are explicit about what they like and why. Even the youngest listeners are quick to follow the trends of the new pop sounds, but there's also a constant demand for all those intriguing children's 'standards' - many of them off-beat novelty records which nudge the charts without reaching the hit parade but still delight generations of children. Among the artists who are perennial favourites are Danny Kaye, Charlie Drake, Julie Andrews, Rolf Harris, Burl Ives, Doris Day, Petula Clark, Cliff Richard and Anthony Newley." I'll leave you to provide the appropriate novelty song titles for these singers.
The early years of Children's Favourites are recalled in this 1988 Radio 4 documentary written and presented by Jeremy Nicholas: Hullo Children Everywhere. Nicholas described part of the appeal of the programme as "its thumb-sucking security, each week the same old welcome friends singing the same old welcome songs".
In this second recording it's former Junior Choice presenter Ed Stewart who recreates the days of Children's Favourites. This show was broadcast on Radio 2 on 29 July 1995 as part of the station's celebrations of the Light Programme years.
"An important effect on the working happiness of an ever-increasing number of work-people," was the bold claim made by a factory manager (1) about the impact of one particular radio programme: Music While You Work.
Music While You Workstarted during wartime but became a BBC Light Programme favourite over two decades. Seventy years after the launch of the Light (in the sixth of a series of nine posts) I take you back to the days of Eric Coates's stirring theme of Calling All Workers.
The programme featured a continuous unannounced sequence of music - with "cheerful rhythms and singable melodies" - played by an orchestra, band, ensemble or organist in a 30-minute live broadcast. (2) On the first programme, airing on the morning of 23 June 1940 (3) on the Home Service, the music was provided by Dudley Beaven at the theatre organ. The second (afternoon) edition heard on the Forces Programme had the musical delights of the Organolists: Harry Farmer at the organ, Jack Moss on drums and Jimmy Leach at the piano.
The thrust behind the introduction of Music While You Work was to play a part in the war production drive. The BBC's Year Book for 1941 elaborated further: "Programmes of music for factory workers have been broadcast since the end of June as a help to lessen strain, relieve monotony, and thereby increase efficiency. The initiative came from the factories, and in collaboration with recognised authorities the BBC carried out research among workers to discover their preferences, and among factories to establish their special needs. The result was the mid-morning and mid-afternoon programmes Music While You Work".
Music While You Workwas an undoubted success, at least in terms of listeners. By its third anniversary it reached 7000 factories and had an audience of four million workers. By the end of the war 9000 factories piped the show through their loudspeakers.
As noted above the BBC undertook research to study the effectiveness of the show. Writing in 1945 the programme's then organiser, conductor Wynford Reynolds, revealed the results of a survey of the first five year's broadcasts: "Hundreds of factories have been visited to study reception conditions and to learn the opinions of the men on the job. To quote from a few factory reports, 'The music exhilarates the workers without acting as a harmful distraction When the set was shut down for a week there was a 20 per cent drop in output'. 'There was a production increase of 22.1 per cent in the fuse shop over the period of a year after the introduction of Music While You Work'''. (4)
The sheer volume of live music played on the programme is staggering by today's standards with two shows a day (5) each performed by a different set of musicians and broadcast five days of week. After the war it continued on the Home and General Forces Programme but from 30 July 1945 the afternoon edition went out on the Light Programme. By the early 1950s it was broadcast twice a day on the Light but with the 10.30 am show also being heard on the Home Service - this simulcasting lasting until September 1964.
Even post-war the BBC was still keen to ensure that the programme hit the mark and kept both the musicians and arrangers on their toes. The 1950 music policy for the show, written by the second Music While You Work organiser, Kenneth Baynes, stated that "the tempo of the programme should create a bright and cheerful atmosphere. Consequently all slow items should be played a little more quickly than normally so that there is a lilt. Extremely quick numbers should be avoided..., Singing, humming or whistling with the band is a sure sign that the programme is effective." (6)
In the 1950s the Light Programme's daytime schedule was stuffed full of any number of orchestral music shows - in between Listen with Mother, Woman's Hourand Mrs Dale's Diary. Perhaps this was no surprise given the opinion of the Light Music Supervisor, Douglas Lawrence, who was of the mind that when listeners were "busy with the morning chores such as washing up and getting the children off to school" there should be a minimum of presentation. The programmes should be for "hearing" not for "listening to". (7)
The Music While You Work baton was raised for the final time on the last day of broadcasting on the Light, 29 September 1967. Jimmy Leach, who'd been there on day one, was back with his Organolians for the 256th time on edition number 16,781.(8)
I can't possibly do Music While You Work justice so I'll direct you to Brian Reynolds's excellent Masters of Melody website and his book Music While You Work: An Era in Broadcasting. The website contains a number of shows to download, including that final edition.
For a week in October 1982, as part of the BBC's 60th anniversary celebrations, the programme enjoyed a brief revival on Radio 2. Remarkably it came back as a daily show from January 1983 to January 1984 and popped up again in 1990 and 1991. This is the first of those revival shows broadcast live on 4 October 1982 and features Nat Temple and his Orchestra. Nat had first appeared on Music While You Work in 1947 and made over 30 subsequent appearances.
1 - See BBC Year Book 1941 p. 22
2 - From the summer of 1963 the shows were recorded.
3 - There had actually been a trial run of the programme, according to the BBC Genome website, in the week commencing 1 January 1940.
4 - BBC Year Book 1945p.60
5 - From 2 August 1942 an additional evening edition was introduced aimed particularly at munitions workers. These lasted until the end of the war. Between 1 December 1947 and 15 September 1950 an early evening edition was also broadcast on the Light Programme. It replaced a similar orchestral music sequence programme titled Home to Music. Brian Reynolds notes that each broadcast was allotted a 3-hour rehearsal session and that the choice of music, arrangements and timing were the responsibility of the musical director.
6 - Policy dated 23 March 1950 as quoted in The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom - Volume IV by Asa Briggs (OUP 1979) p. 745
7 - Writing in December 1951 as quoted in Briggs ibid p.745
8 - The figure must be regarded as approximate according to Brian Reynolds as the programme "was sometimes cancelled at short notice, particularly during the war". At the time that the programme was first revised in 1982 under producer Brian Willey the Radio Times reported that research showed that there were 17,329 performances and 480 different combinations.
As part of the BBC's effort to support and entertain those on the Home Front it devised a number of series that would visit the factories and workplaces throughout Britain. These were Factory Canteen, Works Wonders and, the best-known and longest-running of them all, Workers' Playtime. The latter ran on the BBC Light Programme until 1964 and is remembered in this the seventh of nine posts celebrating the launch of the Light seventy years ago this week.
First off the blocks was the professional entertainment for factory workers that was taken care of by members of ENSA in Break for Music. It first aired on 1 January 1940 and started a regular weekly run on the Home and Forces Programme from July 1940 (1) until November 1945.
This was followed by the short-lived Factory Canteen starting on the Home Service on 3 August 1940, but not becoming a regular programme (on both the Home and Forces Programme) until the following May. (2)
Factory Canteen relied on the worker's themselves to provide the entertainment as did the much longer-running Works Wonders that was broadcast on the BBC's Home Service between October 1940 and August 1949.
Meanwhile professional entertainment for the factory workers was taken care of by members of ENSA in Break for Music that first aired on 1 January 1940 and then started a regular weekly run on the Home and Forces Programme from July 1940 (2) until November 1945.
Workers' Playtimewas produced by the variety department of the BBC under the stewardship of John Watt but the programme had the "blessing" of Ernest Bevin's Ministry of Labour. In the 1942 BBC Year Bookhe described what happened on each show:
Every Saturday morning, a small band of engineers and artists, some of them world-famous stars, go by bus to a factory or to some big munition-works buried in the heart of the country. There the studio is set up in the factory canteen, a temporary small wooden stage erected at the end of the room, the microphone slung from the roof, and the entertainment given to as many workers as can be packed into the available space. Of course in these big factories all the people cannot get into the canteen at one time, and accordingly the broadcast is relayed throughout the whole of the works so that everyone can hear it. Workers in their homes, too. can hear it and know what is being done to entertain the members of their families who are working so steadfastly for the national effort.
Here John Watt, the BBC's Head of Variety, tells the story of Worker's Playtime:
Like the other series in this post Workers' Playtime had a try-out (in January 1941) before running weekly from May 1941 and then thrice-weekly from October that year. During its wartime run the exact location was kept secret (no doubt for fear of providing information to the enemy), hence the announcement that the programme was coming from "a factory somewhere in Britain". Post-war we at least got the general area; "from a canteen in Coventry" or "from a jam factory in Bristol".
Not all editions came from industrial settings: apparently to celebrate the gathering of record crops in 1942 an edition was broadcast from a harvest field among the Herefordshire hills "when farm-workers, sitting on the grass at sunset, heard famous music-hall artists on a rustic stage decked with hops and corn." (3)
From the start involved in the Workers' Playtime unit were producer and presenter Bill Gates (pictured above) and pianists George Myddleton and Bruce Merryl. Bill remained with the show until the end of its run some twenty three years later. Other regular hosts included Philip Robinson, actors Philip Garston-Jones and Randal Herley and staff announcer Roger Moffat. Regular musical support was provided by pianist James Moody and the Harry Hayward Trio.
The show featured hundreds of comedians, singers and musicians who were prepared to trek across the country for the half-hour performance but (at least from my quick perusal of the BBC Genome website) the cast invariably seemed to include comic Cardew Robinson, impressionist Peter Goodwright, singer Sheila Buxton and a star turn from Ken Dodd. The format was pretty much the same: opening musical act, comedian, singer and finally the star comic.
With such a high turnover of shows Workers' Playtime provided budding comics and singers with radio exposure. One such was Roy Hudd who got his radio break in 1960, thanks to the intervention of Ken Dodd. Doddy had mentioned to one of the show's producer's James Casey, head of Variety for the BBC in Manchester, that he'd seen an up and coming young comic in a show at Babbacombe. Based on that recommendation Casey booked Hudd for Workers' Playtime which came from the Ferodo Brake Lining company in Chester-Le-Street and featured top-billing for Jimmy Clitheroe. (4)
Roy Hudd recalled that first appearance in his autobiography:
I had no idea where Chester-Le-Street was, so I travelled there the night before the broadcast and stayed in a B&B. This cost me all the cash I had and the next morning I had to walk a long way to the factory in the rain. My precious stage suit was creased but dry, as were my precious bad parts. When I arrived among the Fereodo brake linings, soaked to the skin, I was greeted by Jimmy Casey who explained that everyone in the show stayed in Manchester and was transported to the venue on the morning of the gig.: the BBC paid for the hotel and the transportation. Thankfully he did spring me the cost of the B&B or I'd never have got back home.
That Workers' Playtimewas the first of many I did for Jimmy Casey. I was first spot comic with everyone from Albert Modley (who didn't use a script, just a page from an exercise book with six large lettered words on - the cues for his gags), Ken Platt, Cardew Robinosn, Mrs Shufflewick and yet another hero - Ted Ray. (5)
James Casey himself remembered his time producing the show when he spoke to the Radio Times in 1982: "Each factory was an event to the workers in a way it could never be today- now that they can go home to a vast choice of televised entertainment. Those workers were incredibly enthusiastic, and there was such camaraderie that it was too easy for comics to get laughs by slipping in jokes about the factory, perhaps mentioning the foreman by name. We had to try to stop them, because there were thousands of listeners out there who might be wondering who 'Charlie' was." (6)
Workers' Playtimehad started as a Home Service show and remained as such until the Autumn of 1957 when from 1 October it switched to the Light Programme. (7) It trundled on until the final edition aired on 6 October 1964 "from a corrugated case manufacturer's at Hatfield, Herts", still with Bill Gates presenting and featuring Anne Shelton Cyril Fletcher, Val Doonican and The Ramblers.
But it wasn't exactly the end. The following week it was back re-badged as Variety on Tourwith Bill Gates & co. not just visiting factories but also "Service Establishments and hospitals". You'd have been hard pressed to spot the difference as the first show came from the North - a factory in Hebden Bridge - with a bill that featured Ken Dodd, was presented by Roger Moffat and produced by James Casey.
Variety on Tourlasted just six months and came off-air in April 1965. But in a nod to its Workers' Playtime heritage top-of-the-bill were Elsie and Doris Waters. As Gert and Daisy they'd often appeared on the show and were the main guests on the one-hour fifth birthday show (along with their brother Jack Warner) and the twenty-first birthday show in 1962.
This recording of Workers' Playtime comes from a week-long revival on Radio 2 in October 1982 - to coincide with the BBC's 60th anniversary. The Monday to Thursday shows were once again produced in Manchester by James Casey, this time with Peter Wheeler as compère. The stars included Ken Dodd (again!), Harry Worth, Roy Castle and Les Dawson with good old Harry Hayward and his Trio providing the musical accompaniment. But this is the Friday edition from "a record factory in Hayes" (EMI, of course) with Arthur English, Colin Crompton, Sweet Substitute and the Max Harris Trio. The master of ceremonies is Ray Moore doing sterling work by observing the two rules to get the audience on your side: knock the surroundings and drop in the name of the foreman. This edition aired on 8 October 1982.
1 - The first edition of the series on 22 July 1940 went under the title Between Shifts and included an introductory announcement by Ernest Bevin. The programme reverted to Break for Music from 29 July 1940.
2 - The final edition of Factory Canteen aired on 23 October 1941
3 - As quoted in the BBC Year Book 1943 p. 32
4 - Broadcast on 17 November 1960 and also featuring Jill Day and Frank Cook. Needless to say the actual factory name wasn't mentioned on air or in the Radio Timesbilling.
5 - Quoted from A Fart in a Colander by Roy Hudd (Michael O'Mara Books 2010)
6 - Quoted in Playtime again by Kenneth Robinson in the edition dated 2 October 1982
7 - And in the event was cut down from two editions a week to just one a week for the rest of its run.
Actor, director, author, playwright, producer, humanitarian, polyglot and raconteur. There were so many facets to the late Sir Peter Ustinov, but what often gets overlooked is his work for BBC radio. The balance is being redressed this coming Saturday as Radio 4 Extra presents PeterUstinov-The Radio Years.
In this three-hour tribute journalist John McCarthy explores the archives and introduces:
In All Directions: A 1952 comedy teaming Ustinov with Peter Jones
Appointment With Daughter: An exclusive interview with John McCarthy and Sir Peter Ustinov's eldest daughter, Tamara Ustinov
Encounter On The Balkan Express: A 1956 comedy for radio by Wolfgang Hildesheimer starring Peter Ustinov as Robert Guiscard
I'll Never Forget The Day: Ustinov on the popular 1950's radio series
Down Your Way: A special edition from 1991 with Ustinov in Leningrad
Quote Unquote: A memorable appearance by Ustinov on the popular quotation quiz hosted by Nigel Rees
Ustinov's radio appearances date back to 1940, mostly in acting roles, but his only major series was the above mentioned In All Directions. In his autobiography he recalls how he and Peter Jones "evolved a comic series for the BBC, which preceded the Goon Showand was like chamber music to the orchestral follies which were to follow. Pat Dixon produced these programmes, and our guardian angels, and consistent inspirers were Denis Norden and Frank Muir, masters of the ridiculous".
According to Barry Took: "Muir and Norden would invent a situation and then Jones and Ustinov would ad lib the dialogue to fit it. It was worked out in advance in Muir and Norden's office, and the results of this ad lib session were transcribed into script form, and then recorded in a BBC studio with further ad libs contributed by Ustinov and Jones".
Took goes on to say that the best-remembered characters "were Morry and Dudley Grosvenor, a pair of Jewish fly-by-nights, always involved in dubious transactions and usually having to run for it with the law in hot pursuit. The theme of the series was the search for the mysterious Copthorne Avenue, and as Morry and Dudley wandered vainly towards their goal their encounters with various people along the way constituted the show".
Ustinov again: "Peter and I invented a couple of characters out of the folklore of London, Morris and Dudley Grosvenor, low characters with high ambitions, as their name suggests. they spoke in the lisping accent of London's East End, and had endless wife trouble with their platinum-haired companions, as they did with the wretched character called simple 'The Boy' who was sent out on dangerous and sometimes criminal errands, in which he consistently failed. These programmes were improvised within a certain framework, and often they reached satisfactory heights of comic melancholy. Foolishly asking 'How's Zelda?' on one occasion, I received the following exercise in gloom from Peter Jones.
'Zelda? I'll tell you this much, Mowwie, if every evening after work you are hit on the head with a beer bottle with monotonous wegularity mawwiage soon loses its magic.'
The characters, sort of, made the transition to the big screen. In School for Scoundrels (1960) Peter Jones and, this time, Dennis Price play two used-car salesmen Dudley and Dunstan Dorchester.
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