The Day War Broke Out

It was a day like any other Sunday. A cloudless late summer day. The sound of lawns being mowed. The smell of cooking drifting out of the kitchen. People in their finery attending church. Couples getting ready for afternoon wedding ceremonies.

It was a day unlike any other. A day of apprehension as families settled round the wireless set to listen to the expected announcement. The announcement of the outbreak of the second world war. Almost immediately after, in parts of the country, air-raid sirens sent folk scurrying off to the Anderson shelters. People looked east expecting German bombers to fill the skies at any minute. A young lad is sent off to buy 400 fags for fear they be put on ration. Gas masks and blackout material were brought out. Meanwhile for the rest of the day the radio broadcasts were filled with extra news bulletins and endless official announcements about the closure of theatres and cinemas, air raid sirens and the mass evacuation of children.

That day, Sunday 3 September 1939, is recalled in this 50th anniversary broadcast called The Day War Broke Out. Former war correspondent Frank Gillard sets the scene for Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's fateful announcement that "this country is at war with Germany", replayed in full. And then we hear from those that lived through that day, their memories and feelings as to what the war would bring.

The Day War Broke Out was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 3 September 1989 and was produced by Peter Griffiths. This is an edited version.

For the BBC war preparations, months in the planning, had come into effect on Friday the 1st when the orders went out to all the studios and transmitter sites. By six o'clock that evening announcer Robert MacDermott was playing records and telling listeners to tune in to either 391 or 449 metres, the wavelengths of the Scottish and North regions and at 8.15 pm it was announced, for the very first time "This is the BBC Home Service." Additional daytime news bulletins were introduced, breaching the long-standing agreement with newspaper proprietors not to broadcast any news before 6 pm for fear of affecting sales of the evening papers. Any major announcements made overnight would be preceded by a 5-minute Bow Bells interval signal.

On the morning of Sunday the 3rd announcer Alvar Lidell was on duty at 10 o'clock to prepare the country for Chamberlain's announcement: "Following the midnight meeting of the Cabinet, the British ambassador at 9 a.m. this morning gave the German government two further hours in which to decide whether they would at once withdraw their troops from Poland. This ultimatum expires at 11 a.m. The Prime Minister will broadcast to the nation at 11.15 a.m."         

Home Service programmes for Monday 4 September 1939 as listed in the
Daily Telegraph with little offered beyond news, announcements, records and
Sandy MacPherson

It was Lidell who was introduced Neville Chamberlain's broadcast from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street and was the only other person with him in the room whilst he made it. Hourly bulletins followed throughout the day read by Stuart Hibberd and Lionel Marson with the King speaking at 6 p.m. All this was interspersed with intervals of gramophone records, Sandy MacPherson at the console of the BBC Theatre Organ and, one scheduled programme which did make it to air, the first instalment of a reading of J.B. Priestley's new novel Let the People Sing.

The Home Service closed down for the night at 12.15 a.m. The day war broke out was over.    

Read and hear more about the early days of World War II on the BBC's archive pages.

Not the A to Z of Radio Comedy: H is for Hot Club

The Hot Club was a blink and you'll miss it 6-part series broadcast on Radio 2 in 1990 and not heard again since.

Billed as "wit, spit, music and madness" it starred Arthur Smith, at the time familiar face at the Edinburgh Fringe and on Channel 4 and a familiar voice on radio's The Good Human Guide and Peter Dickson's Nightcap. With Smith were Comedy Store alumni musician and comedian Ronnie Golden with Josie Lawrence and Richard Vranch, both regulars on Channel 4's improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Previewing the series for the Radio Times in January 1990 David Gillard wrote:

Putting the heat on in Radio 2's newly opened Hot Club are compere Arthur Smith and singing comics Ronnie Golden, Richard Vranch and Josie Lawrence. each week they'll be bringing their wit to bear on a different topic - from Romance and War to Holidays and Horror. There'll be pastiche musicals among the gags and sketches - 'all in a variety of styles: heavy metal , protest, flamenco, Mowtown, that sort of thing' explains Richard. There'll also be original numbers by the cast - like Josie's off-beat antidote to all those gushily Gallic songs of springtime sentimentality, Paris in March.   

Both she and Richard came to comic prominence through TV's Whose Line Is It Anyway? and London's Comedy Store. Richard has been the music director of the Cambridge Footlights revue whilst Josie has appeared on TV as an ad-woman in Campaign and a murder victim in Poirot before moving  on to the comic road. Wary of being pigeonholed, she insists: 'I'm an actress who happens to be doing comedy, not a comedienne.'

Meanwhile it's sizzling songs and sketches that are keeping both on the boil. Hot stuff, indeed.

There are some now familiar names amongst the writing credits: Mark Burton and John O'Farrell who jointly received the BBC Radio Comedy Writers Bursary in 1988 and worked on Week Ending and Spitting Image. Also from the Week Ending writer's room are Mark Brissenden, Simon Bullivant, Michael Dines,  Alan Whiting and Bill Matthews.

The producer is Lissa Evans.

I only have the third episode in my collection, taking war as its theme. This was broadcast on Radio2 on Tuesday 30 January 1990 and gets its first airing in 29 years.

The Eagle Has Landed

Fifty years ago the world was going space crazy. All eyes were on what was going on 'up there' as three intrepid astronauts blasted off on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. Back on earth we just couldn't get enough of all things astronautical. You could send away for a Weetabix Solar System Chart and as a young lad I well remember collecting small plastic models of the command and lunar modules found lurking in the bottom of packets of Corn Flakes. I too had a copy of the Ladybird book of The Rocket from the How it works series. 

Watching on our black and white telly- the pictures from Apollo 11 were in black and white anyway  - coverage of the moon landing itself went through the night of Sunday 20 July into Monday 21 July. I've a vague memory that my parents got me up super early to watch some of the historic event before setting off for school.  

Scheduled to run from 6.15 pm to 1.00 am the evening programme on ITV 

On ITV it was ITN that provided the programmes with Alastair Burnett presenting and Science Editor, Peter Fairley (I've still got one of his Peter Fairley's World of Wonders annuals)  and Paul Haney, a former voice of NASA's Mission Control. And because the final approach and moon landing happened on a Sunday evening London Weekend were in charge so we had the added glamour of David Frost and a 'starry' array of show business folk including Lulu, Cliff, Engelbert and Cilla. 

The commercial offering was a decidedly more glitzy affair than the Beeb's offering. Also on hand was Eric Sykes, Roger Bannister, Desmond Morris, Chris Bonnington, Dame Sybil Thorndike and the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson. There was also David Threlfall, the man who back in 1964 had made a 1000-1 bet at William Hill that there'd be a lunar landing by 1970. During the show he was presented with his £10,000 winnings and promised half to his parents whilst with the remainder he'd take a Caribbean holiday and invest the rest. Tragically he died in a car crash in November 1970.  

The BBC1 evening line-up for Sunday 20 July 1969

Over on the BBC, mainly BBC1 but with some colour simulcasts on BBC2, it was Cliff Michelmore, Patrick Moore and James Burke in the Apollo Space Studio and Michael Charlton at Houston Mission control. No showbiz shenanigans here, though on that Sunday evening you could've watched The Black and White Minstrel Show and over on BBC2 the Show of the Week featured Lulu (again).

As we now know most of the live television coverage was either not kept or just wiped and some of what does remain comes from off-air recordings. However, it's great to hear and see James Burke back again and his radio appearances include tonight's Archive on 4 called James Burke: Our Man on the Moon. Last week James was selecting his favourite music and talking about science and his love of all things Italian to Michael Berkeley in Private Passions.  

What of the radio? Perhaps surprisingly most of the live coverage was on Radios 1 and 2 with only some shared output on Radio 4. That station wasn't yet as news driven as it would become but the Apollo mission was covered on Today, The World at One and Radio Newsreel and some news coverage is in the archive. I'm not aware of any surviving recordings of the Radio 1 and Radio 2 programmes but off-air recordings must surely be in a box in someone's loft.

To give a taste of the what you might have heard here's a rather ropey recording made during the Apollo 12 mission in November that year with Arthur Garratt and science correspondent David Wilson covering the second moon walk during Paul Hollingdale's Breakfast Special.

The Apollo 11 mission Moon Special radio programmes were presented by Arthur Garratt and Colin Riach with Reginald Turnill at Mission Control. Reg became very well-known as the BBC's aerospace correspondent and, on his retirement in 1976, he continued to keep young viewers to Newsround informed. Arthur and Colin would continue to present the radio coverage of the Apollo missions through to Apollo 17 in 1972. Colin went on to produce Tomorrow's World and Young Scientist of the Year. Arthur presented science programmes on BBC tv and radio for about 30 years and he was on hand for the radio broadcasts of the Skylab launch in 1973 and the Apollo Soyuz mission in 1975. 

Unfortunately BBC Genome doesn't show these panels online so here's the detail for
Sunday 20 July 1969

The Radio Times panel for Monday 21 July 1969

For more on the first moon landing listen to the excellent World Service podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon.
See also the BBC Archive page on the moon landings.

Arwisgiad Tywysog Cymru

With BBC Parliament re-showing the Investiture of The Prince of Wales from exactly 50 years ago I thought I'd look at how BBC radio covered the event.

Unlike today's royal event coverage we didn't have hours of build-up speculation and talking to the folk in the crowds in Caernarvon, at least not on the radio, BBC television started their programmes at 10.30 am. The afternoon ceremony, lasting a little over two hours, was, perhaps surprisingly, relayed on Radio 3 sandwiched between Test Match Special (with the fifth day of the second England v West Indies Test from Lord's). Commentating on the ceremony itself was the well-known broadcaster and entertainer Alun Williams, with Raymond Baxter describing events in Castle Square.   

Listeners to Radio 4 in Wales could hear commentary in both Welsh and English from Emyr Jenkins, John Darren and T. Glynne Davies. Elsewhere Radio 4 was providing coverage from Wimbledon (it would move over to Radio 2 the following year) as well as updates on the Test Match.

Radio 4 did, however, broadcast a 45-minute edited version of events that evening and, by a stroke of fortune, David Mann has contacted me to say that he still has his recording of that programme. So for those interested to hear the pomp, pageantry and Prince Charles's rather dodgy Welsh accent here it is. Recorded on long wave and missing the opening announcement I think I can safely say this hasn't been heard since.

The television coverage was in the safe hands of Cliff Michelmore. who'd taken over the mantle of these big events following the death of Richard Dimbleby. With Cliff were Richard Baker and Emlyn Williams. The BBC1 pictures were in black and white but if you could afford a colour set BBC2 offered a colour version.

ITV were also in Caernarvon that day with renowned broadcaster Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, who'd joined HTV a couple of years before. Wynford, a former BBC commentator and war correspondent, had covered royal events since 1937 when he provided the Welsh commentary of the Coronation of King George VI. Also heard that day were Brian Connell and Richard Burton. Burton was to return to royal duties 12 years later for BBC radio's coverage of the marriage of Charles and Diana.    

With thanks to David Mann.

The Voices of D-Day

Operation Overlord had been months in the planning. A vast allied onslaught of men, machinery and armaments onto the beaches of Normandy that eventually got the go-ahead on D-Day Tuesday 6 June 1944. The official announcement on BBC radio came at 9.30 a.m. with the reading of Communiqué Number 1.

"This is London. London calling in the Home, Overseas and European services of the BBC

and through United Nations Radio Mediterranean, and this is John Snagge speaking.

Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force have just issued Communiqué No. 1.

Under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces, supported by strong air forces, began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern

coast of France".

Facing something on an editorial dilemma the Corporation had already broken the news at 8 a.m. to forestall any rumours that may have started to circulate following an early morning announcement on German radio that had been recorded by the Monitoring Service in Caversham.

The logistical planning for Operation Overlord had started in early 1943 with a target set for the following May. By the end of the year SHAEF (the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) had been established and General 'Ike' Eisenhower appointed as Supreme Commander.

The BBC was playing its part too and in May 1943 established the War Reporting Unit with the team of correspondents undertaking courses of physical training, reconnaissance, weapons training, signals, aeroplane and tank recognition and map-reading. Before D-Day they were deployed so that they could cover every phase of the landings. On the day itself the first eyewitness accounts from onboard a bomber were heard after the one o'clock news.

That evening saw the first edition of War Report which pulled together first-hand reports from the War Correspondents. The voice of John Snagge was heard again: "War Report number one, the story of D-Day. Throughout the day the British Broadcasting Corporation has been telling the world that allied forces have crossed the Channel into France. With every arm of the liberating forces went a BBC correspondent and soon after the assault was launched reports began to come in."

The following day, D-Day+1 a new radio service, the Allied Expeditionary Forces Programme, was launched by Franklin Engelmann complete with its famous Orange and Lemons theme.

Over the years BBC radio has regularly commemorated the events of that day, most notably for the 50th anniversary in 1994 when there was a whole bunch of extra programmes.  

Some notables programmes over the years include:

The Story of D-Day (Home Service 6 June 1948)- an account of events produced by Laurence Gilliam of the BBC Features Department and written by former war correspondents Chester Wilmott and Robert Barr. This retelling contained no actuality and accounts were read by actors. 

Five Years After (Home Service 5 June 1949) -memories from the war correspondents who reported at the time including Richard Dimbleby, Stanley Maxted and Colin Wills.

This Was D-Day (Light Programme 7 June 1953) - "A sound-picture ... compiled entirely from on-the-spot recordings made by War Correspondents and men of the Allied Forces"

D-Day Anniversary Programme (Light Programme, 6 June 1954) - a number of programmes throughout the day to mark the 10th anniversary

Dawn of D-Day (Home Service 14 June 1959) with Lt-General Brain Horrocks narrating

OK! Let 'Er Rip (Radio 4 4 June 1974) - taking its title from the supposed invasion order given by Eisenhower

D-Day: 6 June 1944 (Radio 4 6 June 1984) - see below

Overlord  (Radio 4 18 & 25 May 1994) - Christopher Cook tells the story of the military and diplomatic preparations

D-Day A Moment in History (Radio2 6 June 1994) - a collection of eye-witness accounts from British, allied and German ex-service personnel.

The People's D-Day (Radio 4 5 June 2004) - a two-hour sequence, presented by Libby Purves, of "short features and stories told by the people who made D-Day happen".

From Dunkirk to D-Day (Radio 4 5 June 2004) - Charles Wheeler recalls "the epic of survival and strategic success that made cross-Channel victory possible".

The finest of these commemorative programmes must be the 1984 documentary, D-Day:6 June 1944,  compiled and written by Alan Haydock and Dan Kelleher. It relies almost entirely on the voices of the men and women that were involved in the planning, logistics and invasion of the Normandy beaches, all recorded especially for the programme. They tell their story in a matter of fact way, and is all the more powerful for it.  There's minimal narration, in this case from actor Frank Windsor (of Z Cars fame) and only a little archive material with reports from Frank Gillard, Richard Dimbleby, Chester Wilmot and Colin Wills.

From that same day, 6 June 1984, comes this clip from Radio 4's Six O'Clock News marking the 40th anniversary of D-Day. Newsreader Eugene Fraser introduces reminisces from John Snagge and reports by Philip Short, Geoffrey Wareham, Clive Small, Martin Sixsmith and David Smeeton.  

If you have been, thanks for listening

Long-time listeners of BBC Radio 4 who have been enjoying Greg James's new series Rewinder may have an unerring sense of deja-vu. Yes, for a programme that makes a virtue of dipping into the Beeb's sound archives it's a recycled idea. For the best part of twenty years Radio 4 offered listeners a regular Monday morning archive programme. And the voice most associated with that slot was John Ebdon.

Ebdon came to radio in 1962 after his voice was heard by BBC producer Denys Gueroult at the London Planetarium where Ebdon was providing commentaries (he later became the director). He has asked to make occasional broadcasts for the programme, A World of Sound (Home Service then Radio 4 1960-69) which featured recordings from the Sound Archive linked together by Ebdon, adopting a style which would later be described as "whimsical musings with which he threaded carefully excavated conversational snippets."  Essentially adopting a storytelling role, a similar series developed specifically for Ebdon, Nonsense at Noon (Home Service 1966-67), followed and he also gave talks on Woman's Hour and Home this Afternoon.

Some of the A World of Sound programmes filled the post Today gap at quarter to nine on Monday mornings when Yesterday in Parliament wasn't on and they usually consisted of sound archive material with presenters like Robert Stannage, Ann Meo, Alan Keith and Harold Abrahams with Memories of the Month), as well as John Ebdon. When Radio 4 came along that 15-minute slot was variously filled by short, usually humorous talks as well as more mining of archive from a clutch of presenters that included Ebdon (see below), eventually adopting the long-running Radio Times billing of "John Ebdon, in which continues his investigation of the BBC Sound Archives but once again comes to no serious conclusion".  His opening greeting "How do you do?" and sign-off "If you have been, thanks for listening" became catchphrases.    

From 1968 until the end of 1986 John's rummage amongst the archive clips aired every 3 or 4 weeks. Though only 15 minutes long they were carefully crafted and involved hours of research and writing that John totally immersed himself in.    

In Hello Again! Simon Elmes recalls how John worked: "Slim, feline and svelte, John would pace into the office and, in exactly the same almost reproachful and tentative manner he adopted on air, greet us with a cheery 'hello'. He would then head off for days of incarceration in his favourite eyrie in the Archive, mining for fragments of old recordings which he could lift in order to 'illustrate' his lightly witty narratives"

John's real life Siamese cat Perseus (surely the inspiration for Ed Reardon's Elgar?) was an unseen and unheard presence in many of the broadcasts and was often used to voice some of his more contentious opinions. When Perseus passed onto kitty heaven it made the Radio 4 news and a newspaper obit.

Ebdon, born in 1923, had since boyhood had a passion for Greece and its history and culture. As one of his producers of the Monday archive programme, Angela Hind recalls he was "So educated; so brilliant, so bonkers.  He was obsessed with Greece - he'd lived there for years and loved the place.  He reminded me of Byron in that respect.... anything Greek he absolutely adored.  He was the only man I knew (back then it was most unusual) - to wear a kaftan when he was relaxing at home"

The programmes, produced by the Archive Features department under Head Producer Helen Fry (the department was also responsible for Pick of the Week,  Bookshelf, Enquire Within and The Year in Question) required only a light touch from whichever producer was assigned to the quarter to nine Monday series. Angela Hinds told me "I never had to do anything much at all.  He chose the subject, researched the archive, chose the bits he wanted and wrote the script - which he then ran past me with timings all neatly written in the margin.  I was quite amazed that I had any role at all, especially as a producer! I learnt a lot from him really too - as the scripts were punctuated with quotations, observations about life and extraordinary facts.  Which by the way - I never checked.  I just assumed he knew what he was talking about".

"The programme that John presented, was really just a platform for him to indulge his passion (finding the archive); and to be totally in charge of something in his golden years.   A really lovely chap - and producing the programme really wasn't producing at all.  Just had to be a sounding board for someone who seemed to know what they were doing". 

His obituary in The Times picked out one of Ebdon’s best archive programmes was "an example of his more serious social comments" and was based on Budget speeches. "He listened to every budget speech between 1931 and 1968. Whether the Chancellor was Chamberlain, Cripps or Jenkins, in Ebdon’s view the speeches were meaningless, saying the same things in clichés. He cut and reassembled fragments from them which told you all you need to know about political speeches".

John stepped down from regular broadcasting in 1986 and a special John  Ebdon's
Silver Archive aired in December 

John stepped down from the archive programmes in 1986 though he continued writing and also working for the Planetarium for another 3 years. He suffered for many years from cancer of the spine and died in 2005.

I don't have an exact date for this recording but it's probably early 1986. Here John pokes some gentle fun at the medium itself and moves into Jonathan Hewat bloopers territory with some broadcasting slips of the tongue and corpsing.

Other broadcasters heard on the Monday morning archive slot on BBC Radio 4 from 1967 until it ended in 1989 included Wilfrid Thomas, David Franklin, Norman Turner, Steve Race, Christopher Matthew, Rene Cutforth, James Cameron, Ray Gosling, Miles Kingston. Glyn Worsnip, Ian Skidmore, Phil Smith and Andy Kershaw. As well as Angela Hind producers included Helen Fry, Brian Cook, Anne Howells, Andrew Parfitt (later Controller of Radio 1), Fran Acheson and Kate Fenton.

With thanks to Angela Hind and Tessa Kulik

Not the A to Z of Radio Comedy: I is for Injury Time

BBC radio has (or certainly had) a long association with the Cambridge Footlights, with the student drama club providing a rich source of on-air comedic talent and radio producers.

The cast of Injury Time were all Footlights alumni with three of them being past presidents: Jimmy Mulville in 1977, Martin Bergman in 1978 and Robert Bathurst in 1979.  The other two participants were Emma Thompson and Rory McGrath.

The sketch show Injury Time was one of the those Radio 4 shows that used to be dropped into the schedule to fill the summer recess when Week Ending was taking a holiday. Some lucky ones enjoyed more than one series - Injury Time was one such and ran over three years (1980-82). 

To add to the show's comedic pedigree, and overseeing proceedings, was producer Geoffrey Perkins (Oxford University) and contributing to the scripts were Guy Jenkin, Jon Canter, Douglas Adams, Clive Anderson and Stephen Fry (all Cambridge University, with Canter being Footlights President in 1974 and Anderson in 1975). For the second (1981) and third series (1982) Martin Bergman was replaced by another Footlights graduate Griff Rhys Jones, who'd already served time as a producer on Week Ending and the scholastic quiz Top of the Form.       

From 1 August 1980 comes my off-air recording of the first ever edition of Injury Time.  At the time this series seemed to offer something fresh but listening back it does play safe, certainly safer than The Burkiss Way which it name checks in the closing credits - even if there is a Burkiss-style jokey continuity announcement  at the end. It's nearest influence was probably Not the Nine O'Clock News and its perhaps no coincidence that Griff appeared in both.   

Listen out for an impression of the now persona non-grata Clement Freud "one of the few Liberal MPs not to be accused of... (Buzz) Deviation" and a short sketch using the Play School theme voiced by Emma Thompson whose Dad was, of course, on the pre-school programme in the 60s. The Musicians Union sketch references the industrial action taken as a result of BBC cutbacks to its in-house orchestras (and the dropping of Waggoners' Walk). The gymkhana sketch has Emma in Joyce Grenfell mode and to prove we're on Radio 4 there's a longer piece that relies on the audience's knowledge of Kafka.

Mulville and McGrath went on to write and star in the Channel 4 sketch show Who Dares Wins and to found, with Denise O'Donoghue, the influential Hat Trick Productions company. Mulville continued to work mainly behind the scenes while McGrath tended to spend a lot of time on panel games. Bergman married US comedian Rita Rudner and has worked in Hollywood. Bathhurst appeared in the underrated Joking Apart and has spent years playing David Marsden in Cold Feet. As for Emma Thompson, she was never heard of again!  

This is the first in an occasional series of posts, i.e. when I can be bothered and/or find the time in which I'll dart around the alphabet in no particular order and delve into my archive of old comedy shows. I'll be picking those shows that rarely, if ever, get a repeat on Radio 4 Extra.