1985 was the year of Live Aid, the end of the miners' strike,
riots on the streets and in football stadia and the rise of the Militant
Tendency. These, and other events, are recalled in this end-of-year round-up
from the Newsbeat team introduced by Frank Partridge.
This programme was broadcast on Tuesday 31 December 1985.
A couple of health warnings: It was recorded on Radio 1 medium
wave in the evening so expect the sound to dip now and then. The original
programme was 2 hours long but, for whatever reason, I only recorded one hour.
I edited it as I recorded it, so apologies for any jarring edits or major
stories I may have chopped out.
Whenever Radio 4 (or Radio 7 or 4 Extra) repeats the special
Christmas edition of After Henry, The Season of Relative Goodwill, it
never gets to pull off the neat scheduling trick of the original 1987 transmission.
Eleanor (played by Joan Sanderson): I really think you two
should be getting dressed now.
Sarah (played by Prunella Scales): What?
Eleanor: Well it'll soon be the broadcast. You weren't
thinking of lolling around listening to Her Majesty in your night things were
you?
Sarah: Hmm.
Clare (played by Gerry Cowper): But Granny
Eleanor: You have to
have some standards.
Sarah: Yes. Yes of course. What's the time?
Eleanor: Well it's ... oh goodness, it's nearly half-past.
Clare: Well I haven't got time to get dressed.
Eleanor: No. Oh dear, you really should have set the alarm
earlier Sarah, then you'd have had time to make yourself look respectable like
me.
Sarah: Yes, you look very smart Mum.
Eleanor: Thank you dear.
Clare: I still think the hat's a bit much Granny.
Eleanor; We all show respect in our own ways Clare.
Clare: Of course.
Eleanor: That is those of us who have any idea what showing
respect means.
Clare: Listen Granny ....
Sarah (interrupting): It's nearly time. We'd better switch
on.
Eleanor: Yes. Er, Just a moment before you do. Clare. At
least do your dressing-gown up.
Clare: All right.
Eleanor: And empty that mouthful immediately. You can't
listen to the Queen with your mouth full.
Sarah; Oh mother!
Eleanor: Quiet Sarah. And Sarah for heavens sakes sit up
straight.
Sarah: Better?
Eleanor: It'll have to do. You might at least have run a
comb through your hair. Now don't frown Clare. (clears throat) Very well Sarah
dear, you may switch the wireless on now.
FX: Sound of radio clicking on.
And there the programme ends. But back on Christmas Day
1987, Radio 4 continuity announcer Laurie MacMillan comes in with "an
almost merry Christmas After Henry. (pause) It's coming up to nine thirty.
(longer pause). In a few moments, after Big Ben, Her Majesty the Queen".
Followed by a short set of chimes and the Queen's speech to the Commonwealth.
(One is always tempted to say "And, cue Queen.")
This is exactly how that half hour was broadcast with the
complete edition of After Henry and
The Queen's Speech.
A festive radio fixture for the last 30 years is the mixture
of music and religion offered by the Canon Roger Royle. By my reckoning he's
had a Radio 2 Christmas Day show every year since 1985. (BBC Genome shows that
the 1986 programme was on Christmas Eve but thereafter its always on the day
itself).
For many years Roger offered wisdom and solace with a touch
of good humour on Pause for Thought.
For six years between 1984 and 1990 he presented Good Morning Sunday and from 1990 to 2007 regularly presided over Sunday Half-Hour. Nowadays the Christmas
Day show, this year relegated to a 3 am slot, is Rockin' Roger's only radio gig.
This is how that 1985 Christmas Day show sounded.
There's rather more of this Christmas Eve edition of Good
Morning Sunday. Roger's guests are General Eva Burrows of The Salvation Army
and, in the second part, Roy and Fiona Castle. This programme aired on Sunday
24 December 1989.
T. S.
Eliot's collection of feline-based poetry gets another airing this Christmas
when Jeremy Irons reads Old Possum's Book of Practical Catson Radio 4. The BBC publicity tells us that they first appeared on
the radio on Christmas Day 1937. Sure enough tucked away in the afternoon on
the Regional Programme is Practical Cats.
The billing tells us: "For some time past Mr. Eliot has
been amusing and instructing the offspring of some of his friends in verse on
the subject ofcats.These poems are not of the kind that
have been usually associated with his name, and they have not yet been
published. With his permission, some of them have been arranged into a programme,
and they will be read by Geoffrey Tandy ".
The
collection was published two years later and they would soon find a young
audience as they cropped up in Children's
Hour and programmes For the Schools
from 1940 through to the late 50s. I dare say they continued to be featured in
English programmes for schools but these billings have so far fallen through
the Genome net.
The Cats only put in occasional TV appearances;
the first in 1952 on Children's Television
when actor Anthony Jacobs read a couple of the poems. In 1971 they got the full
Omnibus treatment as part of an
appreciation of Eliot's work.
In 1954 Alan
Rawsthorne set six of the poems in a work for speaker and orchestra, the studio
recorded version featured the voice of Robert Donat. This has made several
appearances on Radio 3 - it is first
billed on Network Three in 1965 - right into the noughties. A similar idea by Humphrey Searle only seems
to get the one billing, in 1985.
Straight
readings of the poems are heard on the Home Service in 1962, read by Val
Gielgud and Hugh David. In November 1974 BBC2 closes down each evening with a
poem read by either Sian Phillips or Richard Bebb; The Naming of Cats appears on the 27th.
Radio 4 broadcast
the reading of all 15 poems in a five-minute slot just before the 9 am news
during September and October 1988. It offers a starry line-up of readers: Alec
McCowen, Anna Massey, Roger Daltrey, Richard Briers, Fenella Fielding, Wendy
Hiller, Maurice Denham, Penelope Keith, Derek Jacobi, Michael Bryant, Max Wall,
Charles Gray, Alan Bennett, Ian McKellen and Bernard Cribbins. These are so successful that they get a
repeat in 1989 and in 1994, though they have not, to my knowledge, been heard
since.
The installation of Eric Gill's sculpture of Prospero and
Ariel over the original entrance of Broadcasting House was mired in controversy
from the moment it was unveiled in 1933.
The nude Ariel, or at least the size of his
"organ", caused maidens to
"blush and youths to pass disparaging remarks", according to the Daily Herald. An unrepentant Gill
retorted that he had only followed the Corporation's request: "I am only a
servant of the BBC, and if a statue is placed under the responsibility of Sir
John Reith and other directors then it must be all right. Supposing I want to
erect an immoral statue outside Broadcasting House, I could not do so. Ariel,
the boy, is only ten years old. He cannot be offending women, and are men going
to be offended? I think not "
Local MP George Gibson Mitcheson passed the sculpture every
day on his way home and is reported to have claimed in Parliament that the
figures were "objectionable to public morals and decency". Eventually
Gill compromised and chiselled a bit of the offending part of Ariel. He did,
however, leave behind a hidden memento at the back of the sculpture, the face
of a girl that "nobody will find until Broadcasting House falls
down". In the event it was uncovered in 2004 when work began on cleaning
and remodelling the building.
Referring to the carvings at Broadcasting House in his
autobiography Gill viewed them as a "failure". Elaborating on this he
said: "I mean simply that I don't much like looking at them. The idea was
grand but I was incapable of carrying it out adequately. Prospero and Ariel!
Well you think. The Tempest and
romance and Shakespeare and all that stuff. Very clever of the BBC to hit on
the idea, Ariel and aerial. Ha! Ha!"
As to why he chose to represent them as Father and Son:
"I don't know anything about Shakespeare's intentions, but it didn't seem
to me to be unduly straining the poem to see in the figure of Prospero much
more than that of a clever old magician, or in that of Ariel more than that of
a silly fairy. Had not Prospero power over the immortal Gods? At any rate it
seemed to be only right and proper that I should see the matter in as bright a
light as possible and so I took it upon me to portray God the Father and God
the Son. For even if that were not Shakespeare's meaning it ought to be the
BBC's".
He was pretty scathing about his fellow artists too: "My
sculpturing experiments were, after all, only an extension of my lettercutting
into another sphere - but it was a sphere into which the arts and crafts
movement of William Morris and his followers had not only never extended, but
had fought shy of and turned away from. My friends in the arts and crafts
circles rather looked askance at me. I seemed to be deserting their homely
fireside and going into brothels and dance-halls. They really are like that;
they're terribly strait-laced and prim."
Gill was, and remains, a controversial figure, though his
sculptures are much admired and his lasting contribution to typefaces - see
Gill Sans etc. - and through to modern-day fonts is undeniable.
Seventy years after his death Gill was back in the news in
the wake of the Savile scandal with the Daily
Mail, never failing to hop onto any passing bandwagon, calling for the BBC
to "remove sculpture of naked boy from outside Broadcasting House".
This picked up on some disturbing revelations in a Gill biography, though this
had been published some twenty-odd years earlier. Needless to say they still standing,
overlooking Portland Place.
You can hear more about Eric Gill and his work for the BBC
when Radio 4 Extra repeats The BBC Tour
on Saturday 12 December.
References:
Autobiography by
Eric Gill (Jonathan Cape, 1970)
The Story of
Broadcasting House by Mark Hines (Merrell, 2008)
Action Stations by
Colin Reid (Robson Books, 1987)
