It’s now more than 30 years ago since Ray Moore’s passing but he remains fondly remembered by listeners and fellow broadcasters alike. Comments such as “the best presenter Radio 2 ever had... still much missed” have been made to my YouTube posting of Ray’s last show from January 1988. “I don't think Ray ever realised how good he really was. He just loved doing the job!” reads another, and “Ray made getting up for work a fun experience. Sadly missed”. Radio 3’s Ian Skelly told me he thought Ray “a genius broadcaster who really knew how to burnish a phrase to make it stick. I learnt so much from him about how to properly talk to the one person I know is listening. So few seem to clock that’s what it’s all about. You’ve got to look them in the eye, as Ray put it”. One-time BBC Light Entertainment producer Dirk Maggs said that “Ray Moore was one of the sweetest, poetic and bravest (in the face of terminal illness) people I’ve had the privilege of working with”. The technical operators working for Radio 2 at the time loved working with him, Richard Murrell (now a BBC news senior director) recalls that the TOs would offer to get the teas and he’d reply “Thank you, I’ll have a cup of brown and filthy thanks” and that “Joyce the resident tea lady loved him!”
Thankfully recordings of Ray’s shows still surface from time to time. So I’m grateful to Nancy Sandoval who contacted me to tell me that she’d taped some of his mid-80s morning shows to take with her when she moved to the USA, taking a little bit of home with her as it were.
In this post I’m presenting most of this treasure trove of recordings which have kindly been digitised by Stacey Harris.
Listening back to these shows you can hear how Ray weaves some real magic despite, let’s be honest, a paucity of material. There are letters from listeners offering light-hearted abuse or telling of their many ailments. The music playlist has few highlights, seemingly mainly consisting of recorded sessions and country music tracks you’ve never heard before.
The earliest recording dates from Wednesday 24 July 1985. At this point Ray’s show ran from 6 to 8 am, between an early show usually presented by his mate Colin Berry – though this particular week it was Martin Kelner – and Ken Bruce at breakfast.
Here’s the first hour. How many DJs would come out of the news quoting a hymn “When morning gilds the skies, my heart awaking cries” into The Hollies with Here I Go Again? The music selection includes such corkers as Perry Como’s Weave Me the Sunshine from a “slightly shop-soiled LP” (it was actually from 1974) and The Adventures with Feel the Raindrops that reached the dizzy heights of number 58. Needletime restrictions were still in force so we get recorded sessions by Iain Sutherland and his Orchestra and former NDO pianist Tom Steer with his Orchestra.
Show two is two sections from Tuesday 27 August 1985. A listener has spotted a brief tv appearance from Ray on In at the Deep End, “you didn’t half sound posh”. These programmes do throw up some rare tracks including yet another record by that prolific session musician Tony Burrows, this time as part of West End Boys with Summertime. We also hear Maxine by Raf Ravesnscroft whose best-known contribution to pop music is of course playing sax on Baker Street. In session this week is Ronnie Aldrich and his Orchestra and Tony Barrett and his Swing Band.
We move onto October 1985 for the first of four recordings all from the same week. From Monday 21 October Ray is back “full of vigour and vim... and a little drop of scotch as well” after being unwell the previous Friday. There’s a reminder that the early Pause for Thought slot was sometimes just a hymn rather than a spoken contribution. Especially recorded for the show this week is Johnny Arthey and his Orchestra who first started broadcasting on the Light Programme in 1963. The uncredited newsreader is Paul Leighton. If the version of America after the 6.30 bulletin sounds familiar that because it’s played by an outfit going by the name of The Sunshine Steel Band which includes our old friend Tom Steer. Their recording of Coconut Woman was used as the theme for Radio 4’s Trivia Test Match – listen out for it on Thursday’s show.
On to Tuesday 22 October where the recording – running at just over 20 minutes -starts with a Godley and Creme track Golden Boy that totally failed to trouble the chart compilers. Irish singer Mary O’Hara speaks and sings in Pause for Thought. The comments about ‘licking the other side of Peter Sellers’ are about the Royal Mail stamps featuring some famous faces from British cinema history. Sellers was on the 17 pence stamp.
Skipping a day it’s now Thursday 24 October and the recording starts with the unmistakable sound of the Pink Panther theme, here played by Johnny Arthey’s lot. Then it’s Pause for Thought regular, Frank Topping, talking about the Biblical character of Onesiphorus who “cheered people up”. There’s some banter about operations in “the knicker area” and the whereabouts of the Donkey Islands (they’re in Greece but I had to Google that one). Reading the 6.30 am headlines is David Geary. If you’re wondering what on earth the “concrete doughnut” is, it’s Ray term for Television Centre where he would do the odd shift pre-recording those BBC tv trailers – “programmes for Tuesday evening on BBC1”.
Reaching the end of the week with the show for Friday 25 October. Reading the trailer for Radio 2’s Humoresque is Steve Madden. There’s also a reminder that Su Pollard enjoyed a brief career as a singer as Ray plays her first single Come to Me (I Am Woman), though she gets cut off in her prime on this recording.
And finally a generous chunk of the show from Friday 9 May 1986 in the week after Ray has presented Radio 2’s coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest in Bergen. By now Ray’s timeslot has changed to a 5.30 am start running through to 7.30 am when Derek Jameson hosts the breakfast show, having taken over from Ken Bruce the previous month. The music is interspersed with news of counts at two by-elections in Ryedale and in West Derbyshire where it was triggered by the resignation of Matthew Parris when he joined ITV’s Weekend World (so an era when MPs weren’t also expected to present current affairs programmes!). With Ray in the studio is political correspondent Noel Lewis.
Ray would often mention what was going on in the other studios and there’s a nod to his Radio 3 colleagues who announce This Week’s Composer (who happens to be Johannes Ockeghem). Listen out for Peter Barker “with the Black and Decker hairstyle”, “talcum Malcolm with the shiny apple face” (Malcolm Ruthven) and “old Holmstrom sewn up for the duration in his Fair isle woolly and National Health glasses” (John Holmstrom). Another Radio 3 announcer from that period, Donald Macleod – now of course the long-time host of Composer of the Week – remembers Ray would kid listeners that he was “always kilted and carrying with me a sgian dubh to pick lumps of Smetana out of the studio carpet”.