The Sarah Ward Collection

It’s the final Sarah Ward Collection on Jazz FM this evening as Sarah ‘steps back’ from the weekly show after seven decades in broadcasting. It marks the end of a career for British radio’s longest-serving female presenter, a feat which deservedly is being recognised. After tonight’s usual show there’s an hour long special The Sarah Ward Celebration in which Sarah talks about her career and we hear from some of the colleagues she worked with. [Note 1]

Ahead of that interview I thought I’d fill in as much as I can about Sarah’s broadcasting career. It’s one that stretches back to the end of the 1950s and would go on to include television roles in the 60s and, from the 70s onwards, radio jobs with both the BBC and commercial radio. But it all starts in Africa.

Sarah was born in Kenya into what she affectionately describes as a colonial family – her grandparents were coffee farmers, her stepfather in the King’s African Rifles. “I’ve heard a lot of people say that Africa’s in your blood”, she told London Calling in 1988. “For me, that’s certainly true. I went there for a visit in the 70s-the homecoming as I arrived at the airport! The colour, the smell, the rhythm. I have very emotional feelings about Africa”.

Staff at FBS Nairobi in 1960. Sarah is on the front row, second in from the right.
Photo Alan Grace in The Link with Home-Sixty Years of Forces Radio

It was in Africa that Sarah got her first taste of radio broadcasting. Aged just 15 it was at the Forces Broadcasting Service in Nairobi that she helped out as tea-maker and general skivvy before getting the chance to do some presenting because “the early hours made it difficult to recruit people”. About a week in she arrived for a dawn shift, switched on the station and saw, coiled round the mic, a snake. She fled the studio screaming – the mic still open. The engineers had beefed up a snakeskin to look like the real thing and made sure the raw recruit got some effective on-the-job training.

After spending some time with the Voice of Kenya English language service, in 1964 Sarah decided to pursue her broadcasting career in the UK. After just six months she landed a job as an in-vision BBC television continuity announcer, presumably they were looking for the next Judith Chalmers. The BBC also appointed two other ‘continuity girls’, Meryl O’Keeffe and Maggie Clews. Sarah was also booked to present the weekly Junior Points of View which she continued to appear on until June 1967. [Note 2]

The Daily Herald of 11 September 1964 reported on Sarah’s arrival:

SARAH—THE NEW FACE ON TV A 23-YEAR-OLD girl who has been working as a waitress and a theatre programme seller is to be an announcer on BBC television. She is Sarah Ward, who came to Britain six months ago from Kenya, where she has worked on TV. Sarah took jobs as a waitress and programme seller while waiting for a ‘break’ with the BBC. Viewers first saw her last Sunday. She appeared in Junior Points of View last night.

Part of her role was to do interview spots at the end of the evening programmes. Her most famous interviewee was undoubtedly Bob Dylan, but it was a bizarre experience. Dylan was at the BBC to record a concert series (shown on BBC1 in June 1965). The interview was live and possibly the first to be done in the UK. Sarah recalls “It was a peculiar interview. He kept spinning round in his chair, sometimes turning his back on me. He’d just been to the BBC canteen and was still eating a biscuit, which he kept waving in my face. He seemed to be fixated by the biscuit, ignoring most of my questions about the pressures of life as a superstar. The only time he really came alive was when I started asking him about the money he was making and he suddenly became very shrewd and on the ball.”    

Sarah with Come Here Often co-host Cliff Morgan

Sarah left the BBC in June 1967 and a month later popped up on ‘the other side’ as co-host, alongside Cliff Morgan, on Come Here Often. Produced by Rediffusion, Come Here Often, was a twice –weekly (Tuesday and Friday tea-time) ‘topical magazine programme dealing with news and interesting events for children aged between nine and fourteen’.  Producer Elizabeth Cowley described it as a ‘junior Tonight’ but it was probably closer to Blue Peter. It can be seen as a forerunner of Thames TV’s Magpie and indeed just before the series ended on 23 July 1968 (as Rediffusion’s lost the franchise to Thames) future Magpie host Mick Robertson had been co-presenting the last few shows with Sarah. [Note 3] Come Here Often wasn’t without controversy as Sarah recalls: “one lively programme [in August 1967] featured a debate between the British Power movement and an opposing group of young blacks. One of the debaters became especially overheated and pulled a knife, which led to the immediate blacking out of the screen and the programme hitting the headlines in the British press the next morning.”   

By the early 1970s Sarah was working for the BBC World Service appearing on the request spot at the end of The Merchant Navy Programme with Malcolm Billings, where she ‘built up a huge fan-club of sailors’. Her ambitions to expand into general presentation were initially thwarted, as whilst her boss at Bush House was “very sympathetic towards her programme ideas ...unfortunately Radios One and Two just didn’t want to know”.

Undeterred, Sarah went for an audition with commercial rivals Capital Radio that was due to launch in October 1973. The audition was for the job of record reviewer on Nicky Horne’s nightly rock show You’re Mother Wouldn’t Like It. “I did a lovely late night audition with Nicky which was relaxed and nice”, she remembers, “and apparently they liked my voice and said let’s use it for something else.”

When Capital started director of programmes Michael Bukht offered Sarah a role as one of the presenters (with ex-BBC radio’s Sean Kelly) of Night Flight ‘late night music that’s easy on the ear, open line for night owls to air problems, ask advice, have a chat’. Later she gained her own show Sarah and Friends. “It was always what I’d wanted to do, in fact ... I was saying to myself and also to one or two people at the BBC that I would like to do a late night show, a combination of music and chat.”

Of those Capital days Nicky Horne recalls that “there were quite a few of us who were the more sort of leftfield thinkers, and Sarah was really part of that gang. She was at the time a bit of a rock chick and loved her rock. I remember in those early days there was chaos all round but that Sarah always had a calmness and a serenity about her”. He describes her as having  a real love for the medium of radio and, unlike a few others, she was unencumbered by ego. A magnificent voice and a beautiful soul.”  Sarah also expressed her preference for radio: “there’s less emphasis on being the polished pretty product. There’s more scope to be genuinely yourself and I enjoy the teamwork which radio demands.”   

Sarah left Capital in 1975 but would return at the end of the 70s and continued to appear on the station presenting London Tonight for a while and latterly, until 1986, a Sunday afternoon show. When Capital Gold was launched Sarah presented the late-night show in 1988 and 1989.

Recalling her time at Capital, Sarah was doing a “fairly hard-hitting interview with a journalist about Idi Amin’s Uganda. He was extremely nervous and I was doing everything possible to help him and put him at his ease. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the studio door slowly open and someone- who shall remain nameless- crawling across the studio floor towards us. To my horror, he grabbed hold of my interviewee’s foot and started to take off his shoe. The interviewee was absolutely transfixed. It was just like watching a rabbit freeze. We had to terminate the interview abruptly and go into a commercial break.”

Back to 1975 ahead of the launch of Portsmouth’s Radio Victory, head of programmes David Symonds recruited the “silky smooth” Sarah to join the team. At first she was on late nights – playing quite a bit of album rock - but was also involved in the Saturday lunchtime kid’s show Up 2 U and then devise, and for a while (in 1977/78) present The Wonderful Wobbly Wireless Show. Both programmes featured significant involvement from local children including two aspiring broadcasters: John Terrett and David Dunning. At any one time about ten kids would be invited into the studio to present reports, choose the music and interview guests, all under the supervision of Sarah. As a reward they were allowed to raid the record box and grab any spare promotional discs – John’s first pick was Springsteen’s Born to Run – but later they were offered expenses for turning up.  On one occasion David remembers interviewing a family friend who was a Solent shipping pilot based at Ryde Pier. Off we went with a UHER tape recorder but “I had no concept of actually arranging it in advance but gave the impression Uncle Sammy would be delighted to talk to us. He wasn’t in the office when we arrived and lovely kind Sarah gave the impression that ‘these things happen’ ...but even a naive 10 year old knew it was my first big broadcasting cock up and she was a tad annoyed.”   

London Calling April 1980

Meanwhile back at Bush House Sarah started to be offered more work. In 1977 she had a daily 15-minute show of ‘music and chat’ as well as being on the rota of presenters of the Request Show.  Between 1979 and the summer of 1986 she hosted a weekly 30 minute show of music and guests called Sarah and Company. When that came to end Sarah was given the opportunity to ‘exploit her broad interest in all kinds of popular music’ in the World Service’s Multitrack 3. This would feature ‘interviews with the more off-beat pop bands, new to the music scene and unlikely to reach the charts but producing a brand of non-mainstream music of interest to the programme’s young audience’.  Multitrack 3 ran until August 1994. [Note 4]  

In 1989 and early 1990 Sarah co-presented the weekend breakfast with Ed Boyle on LBC's short-lived Crown FM service. 

1990 proved to be a significant year for Sarah, with the start of her involvement in what was to become Jazz FM and presenting her first national breakfast show. That breakfast show was on the newly launched BBC Radio 5, the education and sports channel, which came on-air in August 1990. Sarah co-presented Morning Edition with Jon Briggs (ex-Radio Oxford and future Voice of Siri and The Weakest Link) until February 1992.

From Wednesday 29 August 1990 here’s Sarah and Jon with Morning Edition.

In 1993 Sarah started to cover some shows on Classic FM and, from February 1994, took over from Margaret Howard to present the nightly weekday news and arts magazine show Classic Reports. Sarah remained with Classic FM until early 1997 by which time she was presenting the weekend breakfast shows.

Profile from the Radio Times in 1991

Sarah has long shared a passion for jazz with her life partner Ken, himself a jazz saxophonist and composer. She remembers the time they both visited Ronnie Scott’s Club when Charles Mingus was there “and Ken was left in awe after briefly meeting him. Later in the evening, Mingus spotted Ken smoking a pipe and asked him to swap tobacco. The ice was broken after this and they chewed stories, mostly about Eric Dolphy.” She would broadcast on the various incarnations of Jazz FM (Jazz 102.2, ejazz.fm, jazzfm.com) starting shortly after it went on air in 1990 and again from 1997 onwards. Sarah is mostly associated with three programmes: Dinner Jazz that she first presented in 2004 (taking over from Helen Mayhew), and again from the 2008 re-launch as Jazz FM. There’s also Jazz Travels – ‘a musical spin of the globe’ - that started in 2011 and, for almost a decade, The Sarah Ward Collection.

For many years home for Sarah and Ken has been on the edge of Dartmoor. In December 1998 and again in August 1999 she supported and broadcast on the 28 day licence station Palm 106.2 in Torquay. Her shows for Jazz FM have either been recorded at local radio studios in Devon and, more recently, from her home studio.

From 19 December 2011 here’s part of that evening’s Dinner Jazz.

The final edition of The Sarah Ward Collection is tonight at 6pm followed by The Sarah Ward Celebration at 9.pm.  

Note 1: UK radio’s oldest broadcaster with a regular show is David Hamilton, daily on Boom Radio. Until her death earlier this year the second-longest serving female radio DJ would’ve been Annie Nightingale who was a friend of Sarah’s.

Note2:  Junior Points of View had started in January 1963 as a spin-off from the main Points of View programme but aimed at “younger viewers”. Initially presented by Robert Robinson and then young tv announcer June Imray. June’s Scottish accent was itself a cause of some controversy and she left the BBC in September 1964, eventually returning to Grampian Television as an announcer.

Note3:  Come Here Often had some stiff competition on the BBC. On Tuesday it was up against Tom Tom and on Friday Crackerjack and (ironically) Junior Points of View.  All episodes are missing.

Note 4: The BBC World Service Pop Music Unit produced three editions of Multitrack each week. Multitrack 1 (Mons) was the top 20 show, Multitrack 2 (Weds) new releases, interviews and news and Multitrack 3 (Fris) on the ‘alternative’ scene.

Most of the quotes from this post come from Record and Radio Mirror (30 March 1974) and London Calling (October 1988).

With thanks to David Dunning, John Terrett, Nicky Horne and David Symonds

Capital Gold photocard from Robin Blamires and UK Radio Merchandise Archive 

Home Service Day 1964

This coming Saturday (28 December) BBC Radio 4 Extra is going to party like its 1964. For day only, all the programmes between 6am and 10pm are what you would’ve heard on the BBC Home Service in December 1964. Most are getting their first repeat broadcast in sixty years.

Guiding listeners through the day will be Wes Butters. Of the Home Service Day he says:

“It’s an extraordinary privilege to take the helm of BBC Radio 4 Extra for Home Service Day! This is not just any regular Saturday; it’s an opportunity to step back in time and relive the magic of Christmas 1964. The schedule is a treasure trove of radio history, featuring a comic operetta that includes an early performance from Dame Patricia Routledge, a drama starring the acclaimed Shakespearean actor Sir Donald Wolfit, and an anarchic comedy by my hero Spike Milligan, alongside an up-and-coming Barry Humphries! We’ve rooted around in all the nooks and crannies in the BBC Archive to uncover lots of hidden gems, and pieced together a day that will truly capture the spirit of Christmas exactly 60 years ago."

The day starts with the comic operetta The Duenna. The three part operetta by Richard Brinsley Sheridan was first performed in 1775 and had been revived in 1924. It was updated and adapted in the 1950s by musical theatre writer Julian Slade, best known for Salad Days (1954), and theatre director Lionel Harris and it’s their version that’s used here. Producer Peter Bryant thought that rather than perform it in the studio it would be best recorded before an invited audience at the Camden Theatre. Amongst the cast are Patricia Routledge, Andrew Sachs and Denis Quilley. Music is performed by the Sinfonia of London conducted by Marcus Dods with the John McCarthy Singers (stalwarts of many Friday Night is Music Night concerts). The Duenna was broadcast at 8pm on Christmas Eve 1964.

The Silver King is based on the 1882 Victorian melodrama by Henry Arthur Jones and Henry Herman that tells of a gambler who, after losing all his money, escapes to America.  The play had been broadcast on BBC radio three times previously: in December 1930, June 1945 and in December 1954. That ’54 production had starred the actor-manager Donald Wolfit in the lead as Wilfred Denver, a role he reprised in this 1964 production. The play was produced for radio again in December 1991 with John Duttine as Denver. The Silver King was broadcast in the Afternoon Theatre slot at 3.15pm on Monday 28 December 1964 though the recording survives as it was issued by BBC Transcription Services under their World Theatre titles.   

Next up is comedy from Spike Milligan in The GPO Show. This has been repeated before in December 2014 as part of a lost comedy gems season on 4 Extra. As I wrote then: 

the Radio Times unhelpfully describes it as follows: “Spike Milligan takes a benevolent but distinctly Milligoonish look at the work of that mighty institution the British Post Office. In fact he braves the hallowed precincts of Mount Pleasant itself, to report the merry, festive scene. With the stalwart shape of Harry Secombe and John Bluthal, to name but six, he will be giving listeners a seasonal view of Operation Mailbag in full swing.”  The GPO Show was recorded just five days before transmission and by then the Post Office had objected to the title on the grounds that GPO was a registered trademark so it was hastily changed to The Grand Piano Orchestra Show. The script, in part, was a re-working of an earlier Goon Show from 1954 titled The History of Communications.  

The GPO Show was first broadcast after the Queen’s message at 1.10pm on Christmas Day 1964.

We Don’t Often Lose a Boffin was a comedy written by actor and writer John Graham. John was in 100s of radio plays and series including the role of Roddy MacKenzie in The Dales. You’ll likely hear him in repeats of The Men from the Ministry. The ‘boffin’ in question is top government scientist Dr Grebe played by Patrick Barr. Playing the ‘top brass’ at M.I.5 is Frederick Treves and at Whitehall its John Graham himself. This play was an Afternoon Theatre production broadcast at 3.00pm on 23 December 1964.

Radio 4 Extra then schedules a couple of Sherlock Holmes mysteries starring Carleton Hobbs and Norman Shelley as Holmes and Watson.  In 1964 both these stories, The Three Garridebs and The Norwood Builder, had first been heard on the Light Programme in September but did get a Home Service repeat in December. They’ve been heard on 4 Extra a number of times before.

For fans of Henry Cecil’s Brothers in Law – the 1970s radio versions starring Richard Briers have been aired many times on 4 Extra – there’s an adaptation of his 1961 novel  Daughters in Law. The plot summary reads: ‘Major Claude Buttonstep has two sons who fall in love with a judge's attractive twin daughters - one is a barrister and the other a solicitor. But Major Buttonstep, normally a mild, kindly rural Squire, has a pathological aversion to lawyers’. It stars Cecil Parker as the major and Naunton Wayne as Mr Trotter. The daughters are played by Gudrun Ure (tv’s Super Gran) and Diana Olsson (a long term member of the BBC dram rep). This production of Daughters in Law was first broadcast in Saturday-Night Theatre on 2 September 1961 but qualifies for this repeat as it was heard again on the Home Service at 2.30pm on Sunday 27 December 1964.      

Although we inevitably associate Johnny Morris with Animal Magic he had an even longer radio career of over four decades as a storyteller, narrator and panellist. His longest running series was the travelogue Johnny’s Jaunt that ran from 1954 to 1975. At first Johnny and his travelling companions George and Leslie would visit areas of Great Britain but by 1958 they were off around the world. These fifteen minute talks were produced by Brian Patten (a Bristol-based producer not to be confused with the Merseyside poet) and it is he that produced this Christmas broadcast of Knock Up Ginger. The unlikely subject is doors with “childhood memories of doors he has faced, knocked on – and swiftly run away from. Knock Up Ginger was first broadcast at 9.40pm on Tuesday 22 December 1964. 

As well as these programmes Wes will also be playing other archive clips from 1964 including some from the daily afternoon magazine show Home this Afternoon  which had started in March that year and the daily topical programme This Time of Day. There are also new interviews with Dame Patricia Routledge and Spike’s daughter Jane Milligan.

The Home Service Day programmes will be broadcast on Saturday between 6am and 2pm and then again between 2pm and 10pm. They will be available on BBC Sounds for 30 days, except for the Sherlock Holmes programmes that are available all the time.

Whilst BBC Sounds has the programmes available most of Wes’s links are missing, as are the interviews and extra archive clips. To rectify this here’s some of what isn’t online.

Firstly the interview with Dame Patricia Routledge:

Secondly the interview with Jane Milligan:

Thirdly Scottish comedian Jack Radcliffe talking to Howard Lockhart about ‘the art of making the season festive’ taken from Home this Afternoon. This comes from a Scottish produced edition broadcast on Friday 1 January 1965: 

The King and the Cotswold Shepherd

Ninety years ago on Christmas Day 1934, King George V was at Sandringham House preparing to make his broadcast to Britain and the Empire. Just before three o’clock his message was introduced not by a BBC announcer or the director-general Sir John Reith, but by a Cotswold shepherd by the name of Walton Handy.

The King had delivered his first Christmas Day message in 1932 in a broadcast heard not just in the UK on the National and Regional Programmes but around the world on the recently opened Empire Service (now the World Service). That Royal Message to the Empire was preceded by an hour of ‘greetings to and from British citizens wherever they may be’ in a feature called All the World Over. This format was repeated in 1933 in a programme titled Absent Friends, with listeners advised that ‘this broadcast will be considerably more interesting if they have an atlas ready before it begins.’ 

For Christmas Day 1935 producer Lawrence Gilliam devised Empire Exchange. But there was a radical departure from the previous round-ups  in which items from overseas were from ‘anonymous broadcasting or Government officials’, This time ‘the sound pictures or informal messages’ were from ‘ordinary individuals or commentaries describing events actually in progress at the time of the broadcast’.

The Ilmington locals that took part in the Christmas Day broadcast.
Walton Handy is pictured with his shepherd's crook and dog Sam.
Standing beside him is Spenser Flower.
(Credit: Ilmington Images)

For Empire Exchange the programme started at 1.55 with the bells of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, followed by bells from Bombay, Wellington, Ottawa, Armagh and then St Paul’s. At 2.00 after the Big Ben chimes there was the technical challenge of link-ups starting with Mr A Patterson, a superintendent of the milk supply in Wellington, New Zealand followed by Canada, Australia, India, some Chelsea pensioners, Ireland, South Africa, Glasgow, Southern Rhodesia and Liverpool. After a final port of call, to a Xhosa settlement in South Africa, attention swung to ‘a quiet village in the heart of England – to the Manor House of Ilmington, Warwickshire.

What was to happen next was previewed in the local Stratford-upon-Avon Herald (21 December 1934):

A great compliment has been paid to Ilmington—and Warwickshire—by reason of the fact that the village is to take part in the Empire broadcast on Christmas Day. It is the only English place to be so honoured in a broadcast which the BBC estimate will be heard by several hundred million people. The Ilmington programme is intended to provide a peaceful English background for the King's speech after the necessarily disjointed items from the various parts of the Empire. The arrangements have been entrusted to Mr. Spenser Flower, who, as our readers will recollect, scored an undoubted success on the occasion of Ilmington’s first broadcast in the early part of the year. The broadcast from Ilmington will open with some introductory remarks and messages to the Empire, after which an old Christmas carol will be sung. Mr. Spenser Flower will then introduce an old shepherd (Mr. Walton Handy), who will speak. Then will come an old harvest song, after which Ilmington, representing the Empire, will send a loyal message to the King. The King will then speak, and immediately afterwards Ilmington will sing the first three lines of an Empire National Anthem, which will be taken up in turn (three lines each) by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, &c., the finale being sung by a full choir in London. This is a wonderful technical feat which must be a source of great worry to the BBC engineers responsible for the timing. The Ilmington broadcast will occupy only six or seven minutes. Special lines have been laid and apparatus installed at the Old Tithe Barn at Ilmington Manor, from which the broadcast will be given.

Sure enough, just before 3pm Walton Handy’s voice was heard across the Empire as he proclaimed “in the name of Ilmington, Merry Christmas to you all. And in the name of the Empire, God bless our gracious King”’ The King’s broadcast followed immediately without a further announcement. Here's that part of Empire Exchange:

Major Spenser Flower (a member of the Stratford-based Flowers brewing family) was the Squire of Ilmington Manor. Writing to the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald he seemed well pleased with the day’s events:

May I ask you to extend to me the courtesy of your columns to express my gratitude to everyone of my Christmas Day Empire Broadcasting party for the wonderful help they gave me in a not too easy undertaking. To get simplicity into a programme is not necessarily simple. I could not have made a success of this item in the Empire broadcast without a good deal of rehearsal and the loyal co-operation of the party. Of many kind and congratulatory messages I have received is one from the London BBC, in which they ask me to convey ‘their heartfelt thanks to all for a truly magnificent programme.’ I have received a telegram from as far away as New Zealand, where we were apparently very clearly heard. Mr. Walton Handy has rightly and deservedly received widespread notice, and I am deeply grateful to him; but the minor members of the party, viz., the bell-ringers and the carol singers, also contributed to the success of the programme. The following are their names :— Mrs. Bessie Faulkner, Miss Gwennie Smith, Mrs. Bennett, Mrs. Freeman, Mrs. Robotham, Mr. George Hands, Mr. Venables, Mr. Cook, Mr. Cook, Jr., Mr. Boswell, and Mr. Mayo. The actual arrangements were a little nerve racking, as, owing to the Empire programme running late, cuts had to be made up to the last moment, including a complete carol.— Yours, &c.,

Why was Ilmington chosen by the BBC for that Empire Exchange? As that first newspaper article says this wasn’t the first broadcast from the village that year, so it is possible that the technical issues of broadcasting from that location and the availability of the Manor House were addressed in that earlier transmission. It also seems likely that Flower himself may have been influential in negotiating the return visit. Aside from his brewing interests he was an amateur actor, public speaker, Rotarian, president of the local Conservative Association, governor of the Stratford-upon-Avon Memorial Theatre, an electrical engineer and member of the I.E.E.   

Sam Bennett pictured in the Radio Times
for the Ilmington Meets the Microphone 
programme

That earlier broadcast was Ilmington Meets the Microphone heard on the Midland Regional Programme on 2 June. It was part of a series intended to give a glimpse into the life of villagers in various parts of the country. Acting as compère was the Squire himself Spenser Flower with ‘local colour’ provided by villagers. Those locals included Samuel Bennett – who performed in his attire of smock, bells, ribbon-trimmed hat and white breeches – who’s ‘fiddling, singing or recounting numerous anecdotes...provided rare entertainment”. There was singing from the duet of Mrs Bennett and Mrs Faulkner and the Terry family of hand-bell ringers.

The Radio Times billing set the scene: 

The village of Ilmington lies to the west of the Stratford-Oxford main road. Ilmington is in Warwickshire. An attempt was recently made to have it transferred from Warwickshire to Gloucestershire. The story goes that at the height of the controversy, a resident was asked which he preferred, and plumped for Warwickshire ' because it's so mortal cold on top of they Glahstersheer hills '. It has an interesting old church, and fine old manor-house. Simon de Montfort , who was killed at the Battle of Evesham, lived there; several of the de Montforts were Rectors. The manor-house is now the residence of Mr. Spenser Flower, who compères this village feature. Inhabitants will describe the life of the village, and the talk will be broken up with music and snatches of song.

Back to that 1934 Christmas Day transmission, for behind the picture of bucolic charm trouble was brewing (no pun intended). What the above reports don’t mention is that the handover to the King was originally supposed to have been performed by the village’s oldest inhabitant, 95 year old Richard Long. But, as the Daily Express reported three days after the broadcast, Long had been dropped because his photograph had appeared in the newspaper before Christmas (see article above). Spenser Flower is quoted as saying that the ban was imposed on the instructions of the BBC ‘as an undertaking was said to have been given on behalf of the villagers that no detail of the broadcast would be divulged.’ However, the BBC stated that Mr Long had been unable to broadcast as he was ‘bed-ridden’. There was further village unrest as Sam Bennett, already something of a local celebrity and described in the report as the local ‘fruiterer, bramble merchant and fiddler’ [Note 1] was also excluded and wrote to Flower “It was my broadcasting party, and you threw me out”, to which the Squire replied “If you want a fight, I can fight too”. There are no reports of aggro on the village green so presumably some kind of peace was restored.   

Walton Handy and Sam pictured in 1940

There is, however, a heart-warming postscript to this story. In his Christmas Day message Walton Handy had mentioned his brother Josh who’d emigrated to New Zealand in 1907. He asked that if his brother happened to be listening to write to him as he’d not heard from him for many years and had lost his address.  By the following February Walton had that letter from Josh in Papakura, Auckland. The Daily News reported: “We were sitting round the radio,” wrote Josh, “as we knew Ilmington was going to broadcast, but never dreamed it was you. When you began I said to my wife, ‘That’s our Walt,’ but she ridiculed me. As you went on it proved I was right. To hear you 12,000 miles away gave me the biggest thrill of my life.”

The story doesn’t end there. On Christmas Day 1939 Laurence Gilliam was yet again charged with producing the pre-Royal message programme The Empire’s Greeting and billed in the Radio Times under Christmas in the British Isles is ‘a Shepherd in the Cotswolds’. Yes, it’s our old friend Walton Handy who yet again took the honour of greeting the King, this time George VI. Such was Walton’s fame that theatre impresario George Black offered him an engagement to appear at a London music hall, an invitation that he declined. Walton Handy died in January 1951 aged 81.

The story of the 1934 broadcast from Ilmington was told in a 2020 drama Voices Out of the Air produced by the Stratford-based Run Home Productions and broadcast on BBC CWR on 23 December 2020. Written by Mark Carey it tells the story through the eyes of a young radio engineer and some of the scenes were recorded at Ilmington Manor and St Mary’s Church. You can read about this drama on Run Home website and hear the full recording here.

Note 1: Supposedly his notepaper was headed ‘Badger Killer and Bramble Merchant’. His expertise in folk music and dance meant he was already well known not just in the UK but also in the States. In 1928 he accepted an invitation from Henry Ford, no less, to visit the USA. Bennett was also a parish councillor.

Note 2: There were three BBC broadcasts from Ilmington in 1934. With the equipment already in place for the Christmas Day programme The Burford-based Westhall Singers were on air from the Tithe Barn at the Manor House for part of Carol Contrasts on the Midland Regional service on Christmas Eve.    

Note 3: Richard Long died in October 1935 aged 97. Spenser Flower died just a week after the declaration of World War II on 12 September 1939, He was 62. Sam Bennett enjoyed considerable success as a fiddle player even appearing on In Town Tonight. He died in February 1951 aged 86. A programme about his life was broadcast in the Midland region on 15 February 1952. Ilmington Manor remains in the Flower family and the gardens are regularly open to the public. The bells of St Mary’s church can be heard on BBC Sounds if you search under Bells on Sunday. 

Worldwide Requests

In May 2012 I wrote about the BBC World Service request show hosted by Sandi Jones and ended the post by writing “I've no recordings of Sandi on the World Service - if you have please contact me”. Well nearly 13 years later I have a recording! More on that, in a moment.

The World Service request show had started in late 1975 and ran until October 1988. Initially there were four shows a week with a different presenter for each edition, at first Don Moss and Brian Matthew then a year or so later by Don, Sandi Jones, Sarah Ward and Bob Holness. By 1979 there were two editions per week presented by Sandi and Tony Myatt who would both continue to share presenting duties for the rest of its run. [Sarah Ward continued on the World Service with Sarah and Company, Bob Holness with Anything Goes]. From January 1981 just one edition per week was recorded going out on what would be its fixed day and time of Sundays at 1345 GMT (initially with a midweek repeat). 

We get a chance to find out what a whole edition of the show sounds like, in this case from Sunday 26 December 1982, thanks to a cassette that has turned up. Unearthing the recording was Dennis Biggs. The tape had been kept by his wife Doina who was producing the show at the time. This particular edition was the final request show she produced and Sandi acknowledges this at the end, as well as mentioning her daughter Nadina.

For many years Doina Biggs was a producer for the BBC’s Romanian section at the BBC in Bush House. The Romanian Service had started broadcasting on 15 September 1939 – it would close in 2008 – and when Doina joined as a secretary in 1968 it was a time of change in the service which at that point mainly consisted of pre-war emigrees such as Ion Podea and Liviu Cristea. Doina and Dennis had married in Bucharest in September 1967 and after being virtually expelled from Romania the following February she joined her husband in London. By the early 1970s she’d undertaken training courses with a view to becoming a programme producer. She would specialise in youth features and pop music shows and was seconded to the English service for about a year during which she produced the request show with Sandi Jones. Eventually, after having to work many night shifts and as a result of internal politics, Doina left the BBC in 1995. She continued to have an interest in Romanian issues and took in a number of Romanian dissidents who she assisted in their citizenship applications. She had frequently travelled to Romania until she was warned that her safety couldn’t be guaranteed as her activities were being monitored by the secret police. Doina passed away in September 2023.    

London Calling magazine listings for
26 December 1982

In this edition of The Sandi Jones Request Show it’s apparent that the programme enjoys wide listenership in Ghana as Accra is mentioned many times and there are also messages from St Louis, Bahrain, Sri Lanka, Cork, Singapore, India, Monrovia, Southampton, Paris, Bhutan, St Helena, Saudi Arabia, Ascension Island and Malawi.    

Although it’s a request show in most cases no particular record is chosen or it’s a case of a “record of your choice please”. There are, however, requests for specific records by Simon and Garfunkel, Carpenters, Boney M as well as any Judy Garland track and also something by Chicago which the team “just cannot trace”. The playlist is:

When I Need You – Leo Sayer, O Holy Night – Nat King Cole, Coat of Many Colours – Dolly Parton (“a much loved record that’s been much played and is, I’m afraid, sounding a bit ancient now”),  Just You ‘n’ Me – Chicago, Where Do I Begin – Andy Williams, Ave Maria – Elaine Paige, The Wanderer – Donna Summer, The Sound of Silence – Simon and Garfunkel, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas – Judy Garland, Every Beat of My Heart – Gladys Knight, Top of the World – Carpenters, Mary’s Boy Child – Boney M and We Wish You a Merry Christmas – Ray Conniff.     

So its back 42 years to 1345 GMT on Boxing Day, Sunday 26 December 1982 for this edition of The Sandi Jones Request Show.

With thanks to Dennis Biggs and in memory of Doina Biggs.