Radio Lives - Colin Berry

He was Mr Radio 2 for four decades, the warm, trusted ever-present voice who read thousands of news bulletins and presented hundreds of music programmes. He deputised for many of the other DJs on the network. His technical skills and perfectionism meant he was often the link back at Broadcasting House through dozens of OBs, playing in the records and filling when the line went down. He spoke for the UK jury for 25 years of Eurovision Song Contests. His music knowledge and vast collection of LPs and singles informed his later local radio shows. He was Colin Berry, whose death was announced earlier this month.

All the many tributes to Colin mention his long service on BBC Radio 2 and his Eurovision connection but his radio career started in the days of the offshore pirates. Here’s a look back at Colin’s radio career.

Colin Berry was born on 29 January 1946 (sharing his birthday with his long-time friend Tony Blackburn who was born three years earlier) in Welwyn Garden City, one of the 'Brocket babies' born at Brocket Hall, and educated at the Wembley Grammar School. His first ‘broadcasts’ had an audience of just two, his mum and dad. Young Colin fixed up the Ferguson radiogram at the family home in Kenton so that he could play in the discs and whatever he’d taped off the Light Programme and introduce them.

His first job was working at one of the stores supplied by his father’s company – Cecil Berry was a director of Allied Suppliers – but young Colin was desperate to get into radio or television. Through a family friend he got his break at the London offices of Granada TV slotting adverts into commercial breaks when he was just 17. He then joined Westward TV also working on commercials and selling airtime when an opportunity came up to work on the admin side at Radio Caroline.

Colin joined Radio Caroline in 1964 as an Assistant Traffic Manager but after a few months he was asked to make a tape recording ‘for fun’ that led to him compiling (by recording the Light Programme news) and reading news bulletins and joining some DJs on their shows. He appeared on air as Robin Berry as fellow DJ Colin Nicol was also on the station at that time and management didn’t want two Colin’s on air. 

In 1965 he started recording commercials, such as the Weetabix Partners in Profit promotions, and made some personal appearances around Britain to “get better known”. “I used to get a lot of fan mail which rather surprised me, and even had a few proposals of marriage.” 

With the closure of most of the pirates in 1967 Colin joined Yorkshire Television as an admin assistant at their London office in Portland Place, though it was not a happy time for him as he was sacked for some mistake he’d apparently made but which management refused to tell him exactly what it was. 

Colin in his club DJ days (Surrey Mirror 1 May 1970)

In the late 1960s he was juggling a number of roles: volunteering at the Radio Harrow hospital radio and working one or two nights a week as a DJ at the Starlite Ballroom, Greenford and the 100 Club on Oxford Street. He would also DJ at Crawley’s Starlight Ballroom and the Birds Nest in Harrow, where a fellow DJ was Tony Barnfield who, a few years later, was also a BBC broadcaster and would present features on some of Colin’s overnight Radio 2 shows.   

At the same time he’d also made the acquaintance of some folk in the radio and music business and it was thanks to BBC broadcaster Roger Moffat that he got a job as a music plugger. His employer was the music publishing firm of Campbell Connelly (started by the song writing partnership of James Campbell and Reginald Connelly) and apparently he was responsible for getting Mouldy Old Dough to the top of the charts. So now you know who to blame!

Whilst still working for Campbell Connelly he freelanced as a summer relief announcer at HTV in 1971 and in 1972 at BBC Radio Medway (now Radio Kent). At Medway he took over the Saturday afternoon show Out and About from Simon Dee. Colin covered the music side whilst sports editor George Pixley looked after the sport. Due to his weekday work at a music publisher he had access to all the new releases which helped him build the show for which he had complete musical freedom. (It also gave him access to both commercial and non-commercial records that would help build up his home library that he would often dip into for his BBC Three Counties radio shows). He even had his own custom jingles recorded with the help of Rod Lucas, who at the time was producer of Medway’s Teen Scene. Rod would later provide some drop-ins for Colin at Radio 2.  

In 1973 an opportunity came along to join the BBC at Broadcasting House in the Trailer Unit for Radios 1 and 2 under Presentation Editor Jimmy Kingsbury. Kingsbury was looking for a new voice following the loss of Tony Myatt to Capital Radio. As well as writing and recording trailers the job also offered a position on the rota of presenters of Night Ride (midnight to 2 a.m. on both Radio 2 and Radio 1). It was Noel Edmonds that mentioned the vacancy to Colin over lunch one day, and encouraged him to audition; Noel had started at the BBC doing a similar job.

Colin’s first Night Ride was scheduled for Saturday 29 September 1973 but when his boss, Jimmy Kingsbury, phoned in sick for his shift on the Wednesday night/Thursday morning show he ended up been thrown in at the deep end and doing that one first.

Shortly after, Colin left the Trailer Unit to become a full-time announcer and newsreader. During the 1970s and 1980s the work of the Radio 2 announcers was quite varied. There was the reading of news bulletins on both stations, where Colin would develop a more punchier approach to reading for the Radio 1 bulletins on the half-hour. Evenings and weekends meant live continuity links between programmes as well as recording trailers and attending comedy show and panel game recordings to provide the opening and closing announcements.

Posing with way too many cups of BBC tea for
Night Ride 17 May 1974

Many announcers would also host live shows such as Night Ride, Music Through Midnight and The Late Show as well as programmes featuring one of the radio orchestras. Colin was particularly adept at the live shows, so much so, that when Simon Bates left the Early Show it was Colin that took over (for two years) from January 1976, so starting a long association with that time of day. These 6 to 7 a.m. Early Shows were carried on both Radio 1 and Radio 2, with Colin being the warm-up man for either Noel Edmonds or Terry Wogan (who was wont to refer to Colin as 'Wallace Beery'), depending on who you switched over to after the 7 o’clock pips. Most of the BBC local radio stations also carried part of the show so the audience ran into millions.

There’s a flavour of what these Early Shows sounded like in this sequence.

It was in 1977 that Colin also started his long association with all things European. That was the year he first acted as spokesman for the UK jury at the Eurovision Song Contest, a role he held, apart from in 1980 and 1998, through until 2002. Based down at Television Centre he would start off with the usual “London Calling, here are the results of the United Kingdom jury”, though it wouldn’t be until the 1994 contest that the world eventually saw the Berry visage when results were first delivered to camera.         

His first in-vision appearance as UK jury spokesperson. 
Colin's favourite Eurovision song was Take Me to You Heaven,
the winning Swedish entry by Charlotte Nilsson in 1999  

In 2012 Colin told me how things were organised behind the scenes for the song contest:  “On the day of broadcast the jury were assembled at Television Centre were they would watch the afternoon full dress rehearsal and there was a chance for them to hear any of the songs again if they wished. In the 70s and 80s the London end was under the control of Light Entertainment Organiser Tony James ...[who] was a great ambassador for the BBC and did everything with great finesse. He made sure that the jury members were well looked after, that all the introductions were made, providing a waitress-service dinner and having studio tours during breaks. When Tony’s team left in the 90s it was all clipboards and vouchers for the BBC canteen.”

During the contest itself Colin also had a monitor and a lip-microphone should “Wogan’s line vanish and there was a need for me to continue commentary. It never happened, but got within thirty seconds of it one year.”

He went on to say that “when it came to announcing the UK decision there was an agreed script but as the years passed I deviated a bit to make it less formal. Others did too eventually, but they tended to overdo it sometimes, building up the part”.

The BBC did acknowledge Colin’s 25 years in the spokesperson role and so threw him a lunch and presented him with a BBC inscribed microphone but at the same time they let it be known that changes were planned for the following year (as it transpired in the form of Lorraine Kelly) and that he’d no longer be required. This was despite supportive words from the King of Eurovision Terry Wogan who started his after-lunch speech by saying "I don't know why you’re getting rid of yer man....if it ain't broke why mend it?"

YouTube user ESC Clarinet Moon has compiled this video of Colin’s appearances in the Song Contest voting.  

Meanwhile, back on Radio 2 Colin maintained the European link by presenting the Europe music programmes (Europe 78, Europe 79 etc. ending in 1982) and taking over as main host of European Pop Jury. European Pop Jury, which had been running at intervals since 1965, featured pop juries in several countries passing verdict on the latest pop releases from each nation in a Europe-wide hook-up. David Gell presented the London end (pre-recorded at the Paris Theatre, Lower Regent Street and later the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House) until he went back to his native Canada in 1977 when Andy Cartledge, Nick Page and Don Durbridge all had a go at it. Producer Mel House auditioned them plus David Allan and Colin to permanently take over the job with Colin getting the gig until it all ended in December 1983.    

Radio 2 had planned to switch over to 24 hours broadcasting in November 1978 but in the event, due to industrial action, it was postponed until the following January. By then it was Colin who was going to kick things off in the early hours of Sunday 28 January with a four hour stint. He’d spent the previous week popping into other people’s shows to promote the new service and during Ray Moore’s Saturday night show was on hand to chat to Ray and link up with BBC2 viewers.

You and the Night and the Music was run on a shoestring. All the presenters were staff announcers on a daily presenting rota and there was, according to Colin “a mere ten minutes of commercial needletime. The shows were full of foreign recordings and studio sessions. Musicians Union restrictions were hard on music lovers in them there days!” To further pad out the shows pre-recorded features were also dropped in. Colin presented YATNAM, as it became known, at intervals until November 1983.

All this time Colin continued to read news bulletins as he felt he didn’t want to lose the skill. He was also recording a weekly Golden Days show for BFBS radio and music shows for Inflight Prodcutions Ltd. At Radio 2 he was the backstop during many outside broadcasts, playing in the discs, reading any traffic reports and just been on standby if the line went down, whether it was an afternoon at the races or the JY prog coming from Rhodesia or Toyko. This was also the time when if a main Radio 2 presenter was off they could often call on one of the announcers to cover, which he did for Terry Wogan, Ray Moore, David Hamilton, Charlie Chester and others. The only bit of broadcasting he regretted not doing was reading the classified football results on a Saturday afternoon.

In this montage we hear Colin across the years on Radio 2 (and Radio 1).

One of Colin’s best mates was fellow broadcaster Ray Moore, whose shows often followed Colin’s or who would cover each other programmes in what Ray termed as a ‘Box and Cox’ arrangement.  In his autobiography Ray recalls that he first met Colin in the late 60s “when he was a young record plugger who regularly turned up at The George at lunchtime wearing a baggy pink suit, a very daring number even for those liberated times.”

Colin and Ray

When Colin married Sandra Barker in the summer of 1981 their honeymoon was in Corfu. Ray takes up the story: “Our good friend Colin Berry had married, inappropriately enough on Independence Day, and had invited the two of us to go on honeymoon with him and his wife Sandra. It seemed a bizarre idea at first but, given that the four of us were far from strangers, it began to look quite logical. The episode took on a rather less rosy dimension when, after five days away, I became semi-housebound thanks to a boating accident”.

The Face behind the Voice in 2009

According to the 1983 edition of Who’s Who in Radio Colin’s likes were motoring, walking and a good pint of real ale. His dislikes: traffic jams, bad timekeepers and pressurised beer. In later editions the real ale was still there but now with added likes of the Isle of Wight, Victoria Wood and oysters with ‘most folk music’ and cricket on the negative side.   

On a personal note I’d been listening to Colin since the days when I first started recording programmes and clips off the radio in early 1976. Tuning in to Radio 1 or Radio 2 before 6 a.m. it was either dead air or test tones until he came on with the early show. When I started writing this blog in late 2010 Colin was one of the people I contacted and, fortunately, he responded. He was always very helpful in assisting me to identify voices from the past and freely answered questions on programmes and broadcasters. We swapped airchecks and I was only too pleased to provide audio for one of his local radio specials on pirate radio. I was fortunate to meet Colin back in 2015 for a long lunch at the Bree Louise pub (since demolished). He was concerned that I’d spot him (of course I did) saying “hopefully you will recognise me.. a good bit more hair missing since the last photo”. I joked that I’d carry a rolled-up issue of the Radio Times, and I did indeed pop into WH Smiths at Euston for a copy. We enjoyed a long chat over a pie and several pints of real ale (naturally). We’d planned to meet up again in 2018 but for one reason or another it didn’t happen.

As the Daily Telegraph obituary says: ‘Switching between the soothing, unforced tones of a presenter, and then the authoritative ones of a newsreader, Berry was skilled at creating the necessary intimate connection with the listener.’ As someone has commented to me “he had his own built-in compression”. Apparently amongst Colin’s regular listeners were the Kray twins with Reggie telling the News of the World: “We both love to listen to Radio 2. We’ve learned to appreciate another side of life. One of my favourites is Colin Berry of Radio 2...he’s a nice fellah.”

Away from the radio studio Colin made only occasional forays onto television. Aside from those Eurovision duties he appeared on The Generation Game, Blankety Blank, Bargain Hunt and Supermarket Sweep, both of these with Tony Blackburn, and just one appearance on Top of the Pops alongside Peter Powell on 30 October 1980. 

Colin in the Radio 2 studio sometime in the 1980s.
He claimed to able to work those faders and knobs blindfold
so frequently was he on air

Colin continued to present shows on Radio 2 throughout the 80s and 90s, mostly late night or early morning shifts. “The only trouble with early shows”, he said, “is that they get earlier!” He hosted the weekday early show, with a 4 a.m. start, from 1984 to May 1988 and the weekend version in 1993 and 1994. Meanwhile, overnight, he was one of the presenters of Night Ride between 1989 and 1995. Colin’s last billed Radio 2 show was on 31 March 1995, but it wasn’t actually the last. Fast forward to 2012 when Richard Allinson was doing a weekend 3 to 6 am slot and Colin was on late news-reading duty when one weekend Richard doesn’t make it to the studio and it ends up with Colin doing an impromptu fill-in.

Enjoying a real ale with Dave Cash

Colin retired from the BBC in 2006 but remained on the books as a freelance newsreader on Radio 2 until September 2012. By this time the plan was for broadcast journalists to read the news on the station, as they did on 6 Music and increasingly overnight on Radio 2. Colin’s final bulletin was at 3 a.m. on 8 September 2012 and with “and that is likely to be it from me” he signed off for the last time, just shy of 39 years of news-reading.   

Meanwhile, over on BBC Three Counties Radio Colin was settling in for some regular weekend music programmes. He’d already appeared on 3CR in 2004 and in 2008 until early 2009 he was on the Saturday night late show. From April 2009 until July 2010 he presented a three-hour early evening show known as The Saturday Club. Both these programmes were also carried on other stations across the eastern counties to give a fairly substantial audience. From 2011 until 2019 Colin continued to work for the station covering for Richard Spendlove on his Saturday night programme many times as well as occasional specials he called A Little Light Music, one on Eurovision songs (of course), one on pirate radio and, in the last couple of years, mining a seam of one hit wonders.

From 26 December 2014 here’s Colin remembering the days of the offshore pirates.

Those 3CR shows were a real mix of musical genres and styles. Colin had a penchant for light music and library music so often his only source for these, and some rare pop 45s that he played, were from his own vinyl collection. He was concerned that the BBC would, in a computerised ViLoR studio setting, still support the use of record players and his liking for dubbing stuff off onto mini-disc (I once sent him a pack of blanks MDs to keep him stocked up), especially after the move to new studios in Dunstable in 2015.  

Colin’s final radio programme, again on one hit wonders, was broadcast on BBC Three Counties Radio on 25 December 2019. The pandemic the following year, and changes to BBC local schedules as a result, greatly decreased the opportunity for further occasional shows. 

For about three years Colin had been unwell and was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. He died on Wednesday 16 October. He is survived by Sandra and their children Marina and Jonathan.

In 2012 I edited together this short sequence of Colin on the radio over 50 years.

Colin Berry 1946-2025

On the Front Line with the Robinsons

Before the Archers, before the Nashs and Tysons, and even before the Dales, there was one radio family that had millions of listeners tuning into their wireless sets each day – and that was the Robinson family. To find out who they were and why they came to be on air we have to go back to the Second World War.

As part of the war effort the BBC had split its Overseas Services into five divisions, one of which was the North American Service (NAS). Seconded to that service were a number of American and Canadian broadcasters. Heading the service was Maurice Gorham, who’d transferred over after editing the Radio Times for eight years, and had spent some time Stateside studying their broadcasting experience.

To appeal to their North American audience the service had “so far as radio technique is concerned [be]...presented in a different way”. A drama serial was seen as one way of providing a distinctive schedule as well as aiming to generate North American support for the British war effort.

It was Ernie Bushnell, seconded to the BBC from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who first floated the idea of having what he termed “a family life serial” (the term ‘soap opera’ was not used) and that it would “have to be a specially written script dealing with the daily doings of the average British family, particularly in war time”.

Hearing of the proposed serial it was writer Alan Melville (who’d been working as a BBC producer in Aberdeen and Glasgow before joining the NAS in London) that expressed an interest in developing and writing it. To help give him a steer on what North American audiences were used to, Bushnell had brought over some tapes of US soaps and by March 1941 the programme was ready to go into production, its title Front Line Family. The serial would be described, in the words of the London Calling billing as ‘the adventures of the British Family Robinson in Wartime London’. A later press report explained further: ‘It tells the adventures day by day of the London family Robinson, the father, the mother, their grown-up children, friends, neighbours and tradesmen, and gives overseas listeners a vivid idea of what a typical London family experiences under war conditions’.  

Front Line Family was broadcast six days a week (there was no episode on Sundays and it was later reduced to five days a week) with the first episode airing on 27 April 1941. Melville wrote all the episodes for the first year and a half himself, just over 400 of them, writing one each evening and then rehearsing and recording it the following morning. They were recorded three weeks in advance of transmission with each episode airing twice a day.

This rather prosaic description of the programme’s genesis is at odds with the story that Melville often told in that he had the idea for the drama whilst having dinner with Bushnell during a heavy London air-raid. Apparently they had to duck for cover under the dining table several times during the meal. In his autobiography, Merely Melville he takes full credit for the idea: “in an unguarded moment I suggested to the Powers that Be that it might not be a bad idea to put on the North American Service a daily soap opera about a London family Taking It. The Powers, after some dithering, agreed and said I could have a go for six weeks only, and to watch the budget.”

What Melville doesn’t mention in his recollections was the earlier BBC series The English Family Robinson. First broadcast in 1938, and again in 1940, it told the everyday story of Charles and Clara Robinson and their three children Joan (20), Peter (19) and John (13). It was written by comedy actress and writer Mabel Constanduros and her nephew Denis, with Mabel taking the part of Clara and Ralph Truman as Charles. A Radio Times introductory article references that this type of drama is typically American: ‘It is not often that British listeners have the chance to really get acquainted with a set of characters on the air. The serial feature, which is the backbone of American radio, has made few and fleeting appearances here’. It goes on to say that The English Family Robinson ‘are as near to real people as you can expect on the radio.’ However, with just six episodes in 1938 and three in 1940 it’s really more of an earlier sitcom than a radio soap. The Robinson family continued their lives after the radio series when Mabel and Denis wrote the characters into the 1943 stage play Acacia Avenue (a name that would become synonymous with an everyday middle-class suburban street) that toured throughout the 1940s and a 1945 film titled 29 Acacia Avenue.

The actors behind The Robinson Family are revealed in this
photo from 4 May 1946 (Manchester Evening News)

The Robinson family, Mum, Dad and their three offspring lived at 88 Ashleigh Road. The cast of Front Line Family weren’t credited on air but included Burnley-born variety singer and actor Ernest Butcher who played Yorkshireman John Robinson and Scottish actress Nell Ballantyne was Helen Robinson, whose exclamations of “what I’d give for a nice cup of tea” became something of a catchphrase. Then there was Paul Martin (later John Dodsworth) as elder son Dick who served with the Auxiliary Fire Service, Tony Halfpenny as the younger son Andy, Nancy Nevison as the daughter Kay (a part later played by Gabrielle Blunt) and Dulcie Gray as the daughter-in-law who, when she wanted to leave the programme for a theatre engagement, was written out as being pregnant. The part of Mary, Andy’s wife, was eventually taken by Margaret Long. Others in the cast included Wilfrid Fletcher as Mr Bowker, Beatrice Varley as Mrs Williams, Charles Lamb as Freddy Williams, Dorothy Smith as Maggie Mackenzie, Gladys Young as a family friend plus Judith Fellows, John McLaren and Alec Ross.

Others who appeared in Front Line Family and found post-war acting fame were Harry Fowler who played a young lad called Charlie Williams who was always getting into trouble and worrying that the war would end before he was old enough to fly a bomber; Joy Shelton, co-starring as PC Archibald Berkeley-Willoughby’s girlfriend Joan in The Adventures of PC 49, and Jean Anderson, best remembered as Mary Hammond in BBC tv’s The Brothers.

Each episode would end with a cliff-hanger explained Melville: “usually a bomb coming down on what was obviously going to be a direct hit (it wasn’t) or the news that Mrs Robinson’s sister’s semi-detached had been hit by an incendiary and was a raging inferno with Mrs Robinson’s sister trapped in the upstairs bedroom or that young Andy Robinson in Fighter Command had been reported shot down over enemy territory.”   

The serial was proving so successful that by late 1941 it was also carried by the Pacific and African Services as well as on the General Overseas Service (now the World Service) itself. It was possible for short-wave listeners in the UK to tune in, which many did. It was also re-broadcast by radio stations in Canada though not, it seems, by any in the USA. 

By May 1942 the BBC noted that Front Line Family “seems to have created more general interest than any other programme except the news, the talks by Priestley and Wickham Steed and possibly Newsreel”. There’s a story that when a BBC official visited Field Marshall Montgomery’s caravan, Monty’s first words were: “I’ve a bone to pick with you. Why have you changed the time of The Robinsons so that we can’t hear them?” 

It was also reported that during the war two American women were interned in Italy and wrote to the BBC: “As enemy aliens in an enemy land we risked the death penalty over four years in order to listen to Front Line Family. Even when bombs were falling and shells whistling overhead, we never missed a single instalment.”

Remarkably two episodes of Front Line Family have survived (they were recorded on discs at the time). A clip from an episode is on BBC Sounds under History of the BBC, however that full episode can be found under the World Service Audio webpage maintained by Sean Saunders and taken from tapes donated by former World Service broadcaster, the late Andrew Piper. In the episode from 13 June 1941 (the BBC website is wrong on two counts: the date is not 4 July 1941 and the station is not the National Programme) a German fighter plane crash lands whilst John and Andy are on their way home, there are some other domestic scenes in which we hear the rest of the family and finally there’s one of the cliff-hangers that Melville mentions. In a second episode, number 59, from 4 July 1941 the story is all about Andy who has started his RAF training – he would later become a Squadron Leader.

The first Radio Times billing for the serial
on the Light Programme 30 July 1945

The end of hostilities could have also spelled the end of the Front Line Family, but it was to enjoy a post-war civilian existence. This decision didn’t enjoy the full support of everyone in the BBC. Famously the Head of Drama, Val Gielgud, was against such “ludicrous”’ American style serials which he saw as ”the lowest common denominator” and that it diverted production staff and time away from more worthy productions. In an internal memo he wrote that: “Front Line Family, as it stands, is not a programme fit for any home service” and concluded that “we shall be creating a Frankenstein monster whose influence upon programmes will be bad, though its popularity may be immediately good”.

But Gielgud was overruled by the man who had originally commissioned it, Maurice Gorham, who was now the controller of the new Light Programme and wanted a regular drama serial in its schedules. So on Monday 30 July 1945, the second day of broadcasting on the Light Programme, the drama continued in an early afternoon slot five days a week with much the same cast as before and now billed as The Robinson Family. It would also continue to be heard on the General Overseas Service. 

Much like the wartime broadcasts the cast of The Robinson Family was not widely advertised on air or in print, the Radio Times, for instance, never published a cast list. One can only assume this stems from Val Gielgud who wrote in a memo to Gorham: “When you consider that the type of actors employed will be those of about the third rank – for no-one above that would accept an engagement of this kind – it is clear that they will see themselves provided with a comfortable livelihood for which, ultimately, they will be able to demand salaries equivalent, for example, to the best people in our Repertory.”

However, I have traced a few names of those who appeared in the serial including Shelagh Kennedy as the Irish maid Biddy Sullivan, Dick’s wife Connie was played by Joyce Heron, Janet Barrow as Aunt Maud, Olwen Brookes as Mrs Blair plus Susan Scott, Thea Wells and John Carol. The narrator of The Robinson Family was Douglas Burbidge and in later episodes Ellis Powell appeared as Mrs Williams, both would go on to star in Mrs Dale’s Diary as Jim and Mary Dale.   

By March 1946 Front Line Family and The Robinson Family had jointly clocked up 1,300 episodes. On 23 July of that year the characters of Mr and Mrs Robinson made an appearance on television in a broadcast from Alexandra Palace in which a Ministry of Food official talked about bread rationing and ration books. Mr and Mrs Robinson were there to ask the official about the food coupons. In one episode Sir Malcolm Sargent is supposed to have made an anonymous appearance

The afternoon audience was over 3.5 million, with the loyal listeners welcoming the Robinsons as friends: “A crisis in the family brings advice in the next post. An injury to some member of the family brings sympathetic letters and telephone calls. When Mrs Robinson was ill once, there were extremists who wired threats of reprisals if she was allowed to die.” (Daily Express 29.4.46)

From 31 March 1947 the title was changed to just The Robinsons by which time the drama department had created a separate division to handle drama serials (Dick Barton-Special Agent having started the previous October).

Very few script writers, of which there were about 15 in total, get credited in the pages of the Radio Times but they included Ronald Gow, Adrian Thomas A.W. Colley, Lesley Wilson, Ted Willis and Jonquli Antony. Both Willis and Antony would write for Mrs Dale’s Diary. Joan Littlewood, of Theatre Workshop fame, provided scripts. In her autobiography it gets the briefest of mentions: “Marjorie (BBC producer Marjorie Banks) managed to get me a temporary pass. We wrote a series between us, Front Line Family, precursor of today’ soaps.”

By October 1947 the BBC revealed that The Robinsons would be coming off air at the end of the year. It appears that tensions regarding the production – the continuing battle between Drama department and the Light Programme management – rather than a drop in listeners led to its demise. It was ironic then that its replacement, Mrs Dale’s Diary, was yet another domestic drama that would ultimately run for 21 years.

And so, after seven years, on Christmas Eve 1947, The Robinsons were heard celebrating their last Christmas. There were protests, if a little muted, with the BBC receiving just over 200 letters in the January mourning the loss.

But that wasn’t quite the end of the Robinson family saga as, in 1948, Jonquil Antony and Lesley Wilson wrote a follow-up novel The Robinson Family. Later that year Antony also wrote a stage version of The Robinson Family that had a short run with Nell Ballantyne in the cast. It was revived in August 1949 in Belfast and then toured English theatres through until the following January. This touring version starred Hylton Allen and Renee Kelly as Mr and Mrs Richardson. And with that the Robinsons disappeared into post-war oblivion.  

News Briefing in Brief

Tomorrow morning BBC Radio 4 will, for the last time, broadcast the early morning News Briefing. A fixture of Radio 4’s schedule for nearly half a century it’s yet another victim of financial cuts.

News Briefing is a 13 minute round-up of international and national news, a full weather forecast, sports news, review of the newspapers, business news, sports news and ending with a on this day in history feature.

The cuts in the news division means not only the end of News Briefing but also, from next month, that World Service bulletins will be carried overnight on Radio 2, Radio 5 Live and BBC local stations.

Radio Times billing 3 July 1978

News Briefing, read by Eugene Fraser, was first broadcast as a 10-minute bulletin at 6 am on Monday 3 July 1978 as part of a refresh which saw Today start at 6.30 am and the dropping of the two editions of the notorious Up to the Hour sequences.

The weekday edition was dropped from 3 April 1998 leaving just the Saturday and Sunday briefings. From that date on weekdays Radio 4 opened at 5.30 am with a World News bulletin followed by the Shipping Forecast. The World News is dropped at the end of April 2000 and Radio 4 starts the day at 5.35 with the Shipping and Inshore Forecast. Meanwhile, from March 2003, the Sunday edition, now reduced to 5 minutes, is just described as a news summary.

Radio Times billing 2 May 2006

On 2 May 2006 News Briefing returned as a seven days a week programme of 13 minutes with a 5.30 start, after the Shipping Forecast, where it has, until this week, remained. There was a brief hiatus during the Covid-19 pandemic when it was dropped from 30 March 2020 and Radio 4 started to leave the World Service at the slightly later time of 5.32 for the Shipping Forecast. News Briefing returned on Monday 13 July 2020.   

The last News Briefing airs tomorrow at 5.30 am. From Monday (24^th) Radio 4 will leave the World Service at 5.00 am for a news bulletin followed by Yesterday in Parliament which moves back over from Radio 4 Extra where it has been for the last year. There’ll be repeats at times when Parliament isn’t in session. The Shipping Forecast moves to 5.34 am followed by, as usual on weekdays, Prayer for the Day and Farming Today.   

Some audio now, and the earliest News Briefing I can lay my hands on comes from Tuesday 3 February 1998 where the lead story centres on the libel suit by Richard Branson against GTech in the bid to run the National Lottery. The reader is Andrew Crawford and there are correspondent reports from Torin Douglas, Jon Silverman and Paul Reynolds. The weather forecast is delivered by Sarah Wilmshurst and with the sports news it’s Garry Richardson.

The second edition dates from Saturday 29 September 2012 and is read by Corrie Corfield. The weather forecaster is Chris Fawkes and the sports news read by Seth Bennett with a report from golf correspondent Ian Carter.

After News Briefing was dropped during the 2020 lockdown it was, in the world of announcer Jane Steel an “auspicious date” when it returned on 13 July. Here’s how the full morning sequence panned out with the World Service handover, the Shipping Forecast read by Ben Rich and then Jane with News Briefing. The business report is by Andrew Wood and the sports report by Paul Sarahs.    

The final News Briefing on 23 March 2025 was read by Jane Steel.

Give Us A Conch

Conch (noun) a thick heavy spiral shell occasionally bearing long projections of various marine gastropod molluscs of the family Strombidae.

Give Us A Conch (later The Conch Quiz) was a light-hearted natural history quiz that ran on BBC Radio 2 between 1984 and 1987. Teams wrestled with “animal sounds, songs and riddles” in an attempt to win the (virtual) “glittering Conch Shell”.  Given its subject matter it’s perhaps not surprising that it was produced by the Bristol-based Natural History Unit, with programmes recorded at the city’s Watershed Theatre.

Chairing every edition was Paddy Feeny (pictured with conch above), at the time co-chairing Top of the Form and presenter of the World Service sports service Saturday Special. Paddy told the Radio Times: “We’re so surrounded by scientific hardware these days that I get the impression people just can’t hear enough about natural history”. He later confessed that chairing the quiz has “turned me into a real enthusiast. I now read books on the subject just so that I can suggest a few questions.”

The panellists were a mix of zoologists, botanists and so on, and showbiz guests chosen for their particular interest in the subject such as Frank Thornton, Eric Morecambe, Spike Milligan, Bill Oddie, Bernard Cribbins and Andrew Sachs. (They had all previously appeared as guests on Sounds Natural with Derek Jones, episodes of which have been repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra).  Folk that regularly worked for the Natural History Unit also popped up, names such as Derek Jones, Tony Soper and Johnny Morris. For later episodes they split into two teams captained by Pam Ayres (sometimes Don Maclean) and marine biologist Dr Sheila Anderson.  

The questions were set by Kate Tiffin and later Tess Lemmon, both of the Natural History Unit. Kate went on to write natural history books and contribute to the BBC Wildlife magazine. The producers were Melinda Barker (for series one and two) who also produced Radio 4’s The Living World. She later married wildlife film director and producer Alastair Fothergill. Producing series three and four was John Harrison who was with the BBC in Bristol for 18 years from 1973, working mainly on The Living World with Derek Jones

Give Us A Conch ran for 20 episodes in 1984 and 1985 and came back in late 1985 for a further 18 episodes as The Conch Quiz. Other than the last series being aired on the BBC World Service the quiz has never been repeated, so this is a rare opportunity to hear what it was all about. From 1^st January 1985 this is the first programme in series two with Don Maclean, Derek Jones, Sheila Anderson and zoologist Professor Mike Stoddart. The continuity announcer is Jean Challis.

It’s a week later, 8^th January 1985, for the second episode with Pam Ayres, Johnny Morris, Sheila Anderson and Mike Stoddart. The announcer at the end of the recording is Nick Page.

Give Us A Conch series details  

Series 1:  25 January to 28 March 1984 (10 episodes)

Windsor Davies, Andrew Sachs, Pat Morris, Chris Mead, Frank Windsor, David Shepherd, Mike Stoddart, Wilma George, Carol Drinkwater, Derek Jones, Michael Clegg, Sheila Anderson, Bill Oddie, Tony Soper, Penny Anderson, Malcolm Coe, Eric Morecambe, Pam Ayres and David Bellamy

Series 2: 1 January to 5 March 1985 (10)

Don Mclean, Derek Jones, Sheila Anderson, Mike Stoddart, Pam Ayres, Johnny Morris, Tom Baker, Michael Clegg, Judy Geeson, Jeremy Cherfas, Jeffrey Boswell, Frank Thornton and Andrew Sachs

Name changed to The Conch Quiz

Series 3: 25 November 1985 to 13 January 1986 (8)

Don Maclean, Sheila Anderson, Irene Christie, Malcolm Coe, Pam Ayres, Bernard Cribbins, Michael Clegg, Roger Lovegrove, Bill Oddie, Johnny Morris and Joe Henson

Series 4: 24 January to 28 March 1987 (10)

Pam Ayres, Sheila Anderson, Don Maclean, Roger Lovegrove, Johnny Morris, Michael Clegg, Joe Henson, Bernard Cribbins, Peter France, Spike Milligan and Lionel Kelleway

This series was repeated on the BBC World Service August to October 1987 

The answers to the picture quiz are (l-r) a slug, a North American salamander, a furry armadillo

Churchill and the BBC

When Winston Churchill died on 24 January 1965 the BBC went into full obit mode, a special Radio Times supplement printed and plans made to broadcast the state funeral on Saturday 30^th (1) But the relationship between the former Prime Minister and the Corporation had always been problematic to say the least, even during their ‘finest hour’ in World War II.

The antagonism stemmed from, on one hand, Churchill’s belief that the Government should be able to commandeer the BBC to broadcast whatever messages the Government decreed and, on the other, the BBC’s (both as a company and a corporation) battle to retain its hard-won independence. A continuing story of our times, of course. 

During the war Churchill was intent on clipping the wings of the BBC and issued a memo that stated that “the Ministry of Information will take full day-to-day editorial control of the BBC and will be responsible for both initiative and censorship.”  Back in 1933 he told the Commons that “these well-meaning gentlemen of the British Broadcasting Corporation have absolutely no qualification and no claim to represent British public opinion.”

But the first run-in between the politician and the BBC was during the nine-day General Strike of May 1926 when it fell to managing director John Reith to ward off any takeover.

David Low cartoon on the General Strike

The BBC was only dragged into the political mire of the General Strike because the printing of all newspapers, save for The Times, had come to a halt and both the government and the TUC were keen to put forward their side of the argument. The government, under the premiership of Stanley Baldwin, saw the dissemination of news and official communiqués as falling to the BBC and its own hastily produced newspaper, The British Gazette. Meanwhile, the TUC produced The British Worker, the ‘official strike news bulletin’.

Baldwin had given the job of editing The British Gazette to his then Chancellor, Winston Churchill, a former journalist himself, of course, as a war correspondent for a number of newspapers around the turn of the century. Churchill viewed the strike as some form of Bolshevik revolution and was “prepared to resort to extreme measures” to put it down.    

One positive outcome for the BBC was the dropping, albeit temporary, of the requirement to only broadcast evening news bulletins, so as not to adversely affect newspaper circulation. During the strike bulletins went out at 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm, 7 pm and 9.30pm each day. (2) The news, put together by a hastily formed team, was sourced from Reuters and from the Admiralty and many of the bulletins were read by Reith himself, his deputy, Rear-Admiral Charles Carpendale and chief engineer Peter Eckersley. It is claimed that senior management went on air as the announcers sounded ‘nervous’, though announcer Stuart Hibberd claims that is was just due to the increased frequency and length of each bulletin. Reith himself was at the microphone both when the strike was officially announced and when it was called off.     

Whilst Churchill was keen to invoke the emergency provisions on the BBC, this was not the opinion of the majority of the Government, including Baldwin who was more emollient. In a meeting with the Reith, Baldwin and John Davidson (Deputy Chief Civil Commissioner acting as vice-chairman of the Emergency Committee and liaison between the PM, Churchill and the BBC) Reith noted in his diary that the PM “said he entirely agreed with us that it would be far better to leave the BBC with a considerable measure of autonomy and independence. He was most pleasant.”

The General Strike and the battle lines between Churchill and Reith have been explored in three dramas, one for the stage and two radio productions. The most recent radio programme to explore the working relationship between the two men is the 2022 Drama on 3 production Churchill versus Reith. Aware that most of the main protagonists that lock horns are male, writer Mike Harris decided to give Reith’s trusted secretary Isobel Shields (played by Emily Pithon) a voice and make her the narrator, “because secretary’s know everything”. This helps to lend lightness and humour to what would otherwise be a dry subject. There is also focus on Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson, ‘Red Ellen’ (played by Helen O’Hara) who, writing in the Radio Times in late May 1926, accused the BBC of causing “pain and indignation” and that she “felt like asking the Postmaster-General for my licence fee back”. She might well have added #DefundtheBBC! Playing Reith is Tom Goodman-Hill whilst Christian McKay is Churchill. That end sequence with Reith quoting Blake’s Jerusalem is not poetic licence, this did happen on the night of 12^th May, Reith offered thanks to God for ending the strike and, on the BBC’s role said “we hope your confidence in and goodwill to us have not suffered. We have laboured under certain difficulties, the full story of which may be told someday.”

Churchill versus Reith can be found on BBC Sounds here.

Photo credit Manuel Harlan

At London’s Donmar Warehouse in the summer of 2023 there was a production of Jack Thorne’s When Winston Went to War with the Wireless. This starred Adrian Scarborough as Churchill, Stephen Campbell Moore as Reith and, in a piece of gender-blind casting, the late Haydn Gwynne as Baldwin. Much like Churchill versus Reith we get glimpses of the men behind the story in scenes with their respective spouses and mention of Reith’s earlier infatuation with the young Charlie Bowser. It’s mainly set at the BBC’s HQ at Savoy Hill (and an impressive set by all accounts with various sound effects and microphones visible at the back of the stage) with the drama and news bulletins interspersed with variety acts of the day. No recordings exist but you can hear the cast, crew and author speaking about When Winston Went to War with the Wireless on the Donmar Warehouse YouTube channel.

The second radio offering is from the 1990 BBC Radio 4 six-part drama series The Churchill Years written by David Wheeler. The series focused on “six turning points in his career” and in this fourth episode it’s the General Strike. The emphasis is more on events rather than personalities with the story starting with discussions between Baldwin and the mineworkers - “Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day” – and rallying speeches from the likes of Labour leader Ramsey MacDonald (Hugh Fraser). Churchill is charged with setting up The British Gazette which, in the eyes of the PM “puts him in a corner and stops him doing worse things” whilst Reith has a microphone set up at his Barton Street residence so that he can broadcast at a moment’s notice. Baldwin’s speech for which Reith famously wrote the final words about not compromising for “the safety and security of the British constitution” were broadcast from Reith’s study.

 Amongst the illustrious cast are Nigel Davenport as Baldwin and John Moffatt as Chamberlain. Taking on the role of Reith is the wonderful Graham Crowden (an actor who was just a couple of weeks older than the BBC itself).  Doing his best, if rather distracting, Churchill impression is Daniel Massey. He told the Radio Times “I remember hearing him on the radio during the blackout when I was about 7 or 8 – it was like a vitamin injection”. And on getting the rumbling tones right: “the voice has become a bit of a cliché though Churchill didn’t talk in clichés but in wonderfully rounded sentences that reflected his imagination and vision.

Episode 4 of The Churchill Years titled Class Wars was first broadcast on Wednesday 28 March 1990 and repeated on Sunday 1 April 1990. It was directed by Louise Purslow.

You can hear more about the BBC and the General Strike in Nick Robinson’s series Battle for the Airwaves.   

(1) The funeral was broadcast on BBC1, the Home Service, the Light Programme, the Third Programme and the General Overseas Service. Read more about the BBC tv coverage on the History of the BBC pages. The radio commentary for the funeral service is on the Internet Archive here. 

(2) After the strike the bulletins returned to their normal times for 7pm and 10pm. They were moved forward to 6.30 pm and 9.00 pm in early 1927 when the BBC was now Corporation. News was part of the Talks Department until December 1929 and again between February 1932 and August 1934 when it finally became a separate department under its first editor Professor John Coatman.    

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