The early
days of radio broadcasting inspired a number of songs about the new medium.
There was Flotsam and Jetsam’s Little
Betty Bouncer who ‘loves an announcer down at the BBC’, On the Air by Carroll Gibbons and the
Savoy Hotel Orpheans and Radio Times
–‘the daily times that Big Ben chimes are radio times’- played by Henry Hall
and the BBC Dance Band. Predating these songs was 2-L-0, a foxtrot by Montague Clayton published in 1923, and
recently discussed on the British Broadcasting Century Facebook page.
Was 2LO the first tune written about a radio
station? Probably. But was it the first tune about radio? Well no. Months
before the British Broadcasting Company came into existence in November 1922
there was song called Everybody’s
List’ning-in.
According to
The Era newspaper this was ‘the First
Wireless Song’. On 24 May 1922 they announced it as follows: 'Messrs Chappell
and Co are publishing the first wireless song fox-trot, entitled Everybody’s List’ning In, both the words
and music by Ernest Longstaffe, the composer of Loony Melody and Auld Nest
and incidentally of the music of His Girl
now running at the Gaiety'.
A few days
later on 27 May 1922 London’s The Evening
News said: 'Inspired apparently by the publicity given of late in the Press to the subject of
wireless telephony and broadcasting, Ernest Longstaffe, the composer who wrote
a good deal of themusic of The Golden Moth and His Girl, has written a song fox-trot called Everybody’s List’ning-in'.
What’s
remarkable is that when the song was published there was actually very little coming
through the ether for listeners to tune their cat whiskers into. There was the
frivolities of Peter Eckersley and his team at 2MT in Writtle that had started
in the February and, going on air the same month the song was published, 2LO in
London and 2ZY in Manchester. Of course, if the atmospherics were in your
favour you could also pick up stations from the continent and even the USA.
An internet
search reveals just a short extract of the music and lyrics from the song which
goes: ‘Everybody’s listening. Sitting at home and listening. Everybody’s
list’ning in. Pick ‘em up as they go, to and fro’. Whether the song was
recorded on a 78 remains, for the moment, a mystery. It was, however, broadcast at least once as it was played on Glasgow station 5SC during the afternoon Hour of Melody on 21 January 1924. (With thanks to Mike Barraclough for spotting this).
As for Ernest
Longstaffe (pictured above), he was a composer, arranger and conductor who would eventually join
the staff of the BBC. From 1926 he worked on dozens of radio revues and
pantomimes, many of the early ones starring Tommy Handley, and the concert
party show The Air-do-Wells. He
became a full-time staff member as a producer in the Variety department in May
1935 and was mostly associated with The
Pig and Whistle (1938-44), a series of rural tales centred round a village
pub, written by Charles Penrose, aka The Laughing Policeman, and The Happidrome (1941-47) set in an
imaginary variety theatre. Each week it would sign off with the song ‘We three
in Happidrome, working for the BBC, Ramsbottom and Enoch and me.’ Longest-running
though, was Palace of Varieties (1937-39
& 1944-58) which he both produced and conducted the resident orchestra. It
aimed to recapture the atmosphere of old-time Music Halls. Longstaffe was
billed as the ‘licensee and manager’ of the establishment and the entertainment
in the early programmes was provided by the likes of Suzette Tarri, Al Bowlly,
Harry Hemsley, Clapham and Dwyer and Gillie Potter. Various people chaired
proceedings including actor Bill Stephens, Nosmo King and Rob Currie. For the
recordings the artists wore full make-up and traditional costumes and the
studio audience were given song sheets and urged to join in the choruses of the
old favourites. Presumably this provided the inspiration for television’s The Good Old Days.
If you know
more about Everybody’s List’ning In please
contact me.
With no
sound archive to draw on early radio broadcasts about recent history, whether focussing
on political or social developments, simply relied on some learned person
giving a talk. Eventually feature programmes were created which included interviews
with those who were either there at the time or held some expertise in the
subject. To add further colour some events were recreated, often with effects and
music, either by the participants themselves, assuming they were still around, or
by using actors.
This
essentially is what the Scrapbook
series did, a now forgotten programme that ran on BBC radio for forty years. It
was a programme which ‘to thousands of listeners, as well as the critics ...
represented the art of sound radio at its best’ and that ‘probably gave more
pleasure than any other long-running series of BBC programmes.’ (1)
The person
who devised and researched nearly all these programmes, just over one hundred in
total, was journalist Leslie Baily. He would describe them as ‘an historical
pageant in the air, a weaving of patterns in music and speech to evoke the
events and emotions of years gone by’.
The first Scrapbook was broadcast on the North
Regional service on 8 November 1932. Publicity for the programme read: ‘Old
–fashioned scrapbooks in which there was such an odd, yet such an attractive
conglomeration of contents, seem to be dying out altogether. This evening, in
the North Regional programme, the first radio scrapbook ever to be compiled by
Leslie W.A. Baily, a well-known Northern journalist, and will be produced by
Wyndham Godden. As the name implies, it is just a variety of items - drama,
music, poetry, song and comedy - all placed side by side with no idea of
sequence.’(2)
The
seemingly haphazard approach of the first programme did not garner entirely
favourable reviews though: ‘Perhaps the trouble with the programme lay in its
being too inconsequential. Even a scrapbook must, one feels, reflect something
of the taste of its owner. This radio scrapbook, made, no doubt, in a far from
leisurely way, betokened a too-catholic taste. I do not think the suspicion of
a theme running through it would have destroyed its charm’. (3)
Four Scrapbooks were broadcast from the North
before, in November 1933, it became a production for the National Programme.
From now on each programme would look at a particular year and the technique
was refined as Baily and producer Charles Brewer sought to ‘bring to the
microphone people who did the things, who saw the things, that the Scrapbook recalls.’ That first National
edition covered 1913 (see above) and included the Volturno Disaster, the Tango Craze, the
Pelissier Follies, the production of Hindle Wakes and the Suffragette Movement.
Lt-Col John Moore Brabazon reminisced about aviation, cricketer Percy Fender
talked about the sport and Walford Hyden, musical director to Anna Pavlova,
also contributed.
By the
following year a Scrapbook for 1909
employed a number of actors to dramatise events with the cast including Dorothy
Holmes-Gore, Adele Dixon and Carleton Hobbs. There was music from the BBC
Theatre Orchestra and the voices of Christabel Pankhurst, Ernest Shackleton,
Winston Churchill and others played from gramophone records.
Twenty-eight
editions of Scrapbook aired before
World War II with some years being revisited such as 1913 having a revised Scrapbook in December 1937. Further
editions were broadcast in wartime including a New Year’s Eve special billed as
For Auld Lang Syne featuring forty
years of memories and melodies. In the summer of 1940 a different approach was
attempted with a series of Everybody’s
Scrapbook (36 editions of 4 series 1940-43) with Baily explaining that
instead of a particular year the memories would be ‘more widely selected’.
How the Scrapbooks are made. Radio Times 2 November 1934
Writing in
1957 Baily said that ‘the Scrapbooks
are now the oldest-established feature in British Radio’. He went on to say how
he and producer Charles Brewer ‘in our wildest dreams and ambitions ... did not
foresee that the Scrapbooks would
still be running more than twenty years later’ and how ‘the large and faithful
audience which the Scrapbooks
continue to attract today, despite the counter-attraction of television.’
For many of
the 1930s and 1940s editions the person who regularly turned the pages of the
scrapbook, i.e. the narrator, was actor Patric Curwen. Post-war the main
narrator was announcer Freddy Grisewood. In My
Story of the BBC (1959) he wrote: ‘One of the chief reasons for its
popularity is, of course, that there is always a nostalgic memory in each
broadcast for practically every listener of mature years. I always marvel at
the skill with which Leslie Baily selects the salient points, never missing
anything of consequence. The he ferrets out suitable characters to relate the
incidents from personal experience. He manages to track down the most
surprising people; and when those who should have told the tale are dead he
ably weaves in contemporary recordings of their speeches. The living and the
dead thus meet as though the years stood still, thereby adding considerably to
the sincerity of the scenes re-enacted.’ Others who provided narration were Carleton
Hobbs, Gordon Davies and David Peel, commentator Robert Hudson, Jack de Manio, Desmond
Carrington and, for the final 14 editions, Michael Flanders.
Such was the
popularity of the Scrapbooks that
some were issued on disc as early as 1935 (Scrapbook
for 1910) and in 1963 Fontana issued LPs for 1914, 1940 and 1945. (4) Baily
also wrote three Scrapbook volumes
covering 1900 to 1914, 1918-39 and one just on The Twenties. The retention rate
of the programmes in the BBC Sound Archives is good and they have often been
plundered for other documentary series and CD collections. Some audio clips of
early BBC broadcasts, especially from the first decade before recordings were
regularly kept, are, in fact, re-creations from Scrapbooks such as 2LO announcements by the first director of
programmes Arthur Burrows. The Scrapbook
for 1924 (Home Service 1958) had Beatrice Harrison playing her cello to
coax the nightingales to sing but it had, in fact, been recorded in 1955, though the nightingales
proved microphone shy that eveing. (5)
On one notable
occasion the programme itself was responsible for unearthing a rare recording,
that of the first royal broadcast when King George V spoke at the opening of
the British Empire Exhibition on 23 April 1924. It was known that a recording
had been made but that it was missing in the Sound Archives. Leslie Baily
mentioned this in Scrapbook for 1924
(Home Service 23 February 1955) which prompted listener Dorothy Jones to
contact the BBC saying that her husband had recorded it at home and that she
still had the metal disc. (6)
As the
series progressed and more recent years were featured so a greater use was made
of archive recordings. So, for example, Scrapbook
for 1940 broadcast in 1960 had the recorded voices of The Queen, Churchill,
Eden, Chamberlain and so on as well as contributions recorded specially for the
programme and a repertory of actors.
The Scrapbook team in 1960 of (l-r) producer Vernon Harris, narrator Freddy Grisewood and Leslie Baily. Far right is Sydney Moseley who'd worked for the Baird Television Company in 1932
By 1960 the
70thScrapbook was
broadcast and the team had ticked off 40 years with Baily adding: ‘Sometimes we
make a new version, and when we do this the old script is discarded’. (7) ‘Each
show has a theme determined by the mood of the year under review’. New editions
continued to be added in the 1960s, interspersed with repeats but there had
been an interval of over two years when the programme re-appeared in April 1967
with Scrapbook for 1952. From then on
the programmes were written and compiled by John Bridges as Leslie Baily,
suffering from ill-health following a stroke in 1964, was stepping back from
work, though he still advised the production team.
The final
two Scrapbooks aired on Radio 4 in
1974 with Michal Flanders turning the pages for 1963 – JFK, Profumo, The
Beatles etc. - the most recent year that the series alighted on, and a final
wartime visit, a first time review of 1943. And that was it, apart a repeat of
the final edition the following year the Scrapbooks
have not been heard of again on BBC radio for over half a century.
Leslie Baily illustration Daily Express 31 December 1949
What about
the creator of the Scrapbooks? Leslie
Baily was born in 1906 in St Albans and educated at the Quaker boarding school
in Sibford, Oxfordshire, and Cheltenham Grammar School. He joined the staff of
the Yorkshire Evening Post as a
junior reporter, later becoming their radio correspondent, and then radio
editor for the Sunday Referee.
He started
writing for the BBC in 1924, his first broadcast being an adaptation of A Christmas Carol for Belfast station
2BE. By his own admission his “knowledge of radio dramatic technique was nil”
and that he adapted it “more or less as you would arrange him for stage”. The
following year he was writing for the Leeds station including their first
birthday programme The Spirit of 2LS.
He continued to adapt and write works for both the Leeds and Manchester
stations including Hello Yorkshire in
1926 featuring cricketer George Hirst and novelist Willie Riley which provided
the germ of an idea for the Scrapbook
series. Other works of note were The
Trial of William Penn (8) that reconstructed the 1670 Old Bailey trail in
which Penn was charged with ‘causing a tumult’; this was also broadcast by NBC
in America. There was also The Fantastic
Battle (9) based on a story by C.R. Burns about ‘a nation whose idealistic
chief discovers a method by which war will be made an impossibility’; this was also
broadcast in New Zealand, Canada and Ceylon. In 1937 he joined the staff of the
BBC as a writer-producer in the Variety department working on shows such as The Story Behind the Show (‘the story of
famous stage successes’), a series of ‘radiobiographies’ called Star-Gazing as well as the Scrapbooks.
Baily left
the BBC in 1946 to become a freelance writer for radio and television and also
penning radio columns for the Evening News
in London, Yorkshire Evening News and
Lancashire Evening Post. As well as
radio plays and features in 1947 he wrote and researched a six-part profile of
Gilbert and Sullivan (10) and in 1950-51 edited and introduced Dear Sir... a ‘correspondence column of
the air.’ This was followed by Leslie
Baily’s Log Book (Light Programme 1953-4) billed as ‘a journey through
Britain with a recording machine’. In one programme, for instance, he
interviewed a sewerman in a Manchester sewer, a diver on the bed of the Clyde
and met exiles from Lancashire on a Cornish flower farm. Baily made brief
forays into television such as a weekly inert of scrapbooks on South Coast holiday
resorts for Southern TV’s Day by Day
programme (1962).
During the
1950s he lived in Sibford where he was active on the Village Hall Committee and
his wife Margaret in the local WI. In 1960 they moved to Saffron Walden but by the
Spring of 1975 they were back in Yorkshire, at Shipton-by-Beningbrough, to live
with family members. He died just under a year later, in February 1976. The
obituary in The Times described him
as ‘a pioneer of British radio broadcasting’ who will be ‘remembered with
affection by more than one generation of listeners for the BBC Scrapbooks’.
The idea of
annual scrapbooks did not disappear completely from the airwaves. There was,
for instance, the Radio 2 series A Year
to Remember in which Cliff Michelmore ‘opens his scrapbook to capture the
songs that made a particular year special’. Radio 1 had 25 Years of Rock (later 30
Years of Rock) and reworked as Radio 2’s Sounds of the 20th Century ‘an audio journey through
five decades of triumph, tragedy and trivia’. And, with a title refering
directly back to the Scrapbook programmes, Chris Kelly played ‘soundtrack
memories of a year in film’ in Radio 2’s Cinema
Scrapbook. (11)
There was
also another Scrapbook-related
series, and I have some audio for this, and that was the 13-part series Time to Remember. Written and presented
by Leslie Baily and produced by Scrapbook
producer at the time, Vernon Harris, it took a more thematic approach
rather than concentrating on a particular year, though it inevitably plundered
the archive recordings from the Scrapbooks.
Made for the BBC’s Transcription Service (so primarily aimed at overseas radio)
it was also broadcast on the Home Service in 1962. Time to Remember was billed as follows: ‘ Leslie Baily, journalist
and broadcaster, looks back on some of the events of our lives and introduces
the recorded voices of famous personalities, past and present’.
In the
fourth edition titles Strange things are
coming the theme is one of technological developments, especially radio.
The story starts in 1896 with Guglielmo Marconi and moves to 1910 and the role
of wireless in the arrest of Dr Crippen complete with recollections from
Captain of the SS Montrose, Henry Kendall. Moving on to 1913 the importance of
wireless signals in saving passengers and crew of the SS Volturno. Marconi
engineers W.T. Ditcham and W.J. Pickett recall their experiments in
trans-Atlantic transmissions from Ballybunion to Nova Scotia in 1919. Next we
hear the voice of Robert Watson-Watt and his 1935 experiments that led to the
invention of radar. The programme concludes with Bernard Lovell and the work at
Jodrell Bank.
This edition
of Time to Remember was broadcast on
the Home Service on 25 July 1962, though it’s likely that the recording was
made from a broadcast on another station as the continuity announcer says that
another edition follows tomorrow at 5 pm, which doesn’t match the Home Service
schedules of the time.The recording was
kindly donated to me by Duncan Lockhart.
(1) Quoted
in The Golden Age of Wireless by Asa
Briggs
(2) Report
in the Hull Daily Mail 8 November
1923 p.8
(3) Review
in the Yorkshire Post 12 November
1923 p.8
(4) The Scrapbook for 1940 is on Mixcloud –
uploaded by Fred Bunzi – as is 1938 which comes from an off-air recording of
the repeat on 10 July 1964
(5) The
first programme retained in full is Scrapbook
for 1901 (Regional Programme 1936) which includes author John Foster-Fraser
who was an eye-witness to Queen Victoria’s funeral. The earliest surviving
clips are of Scrapbook for 1921
(National Programme 1935) with actor Davy Burnaby on the Co-Optimists concert
party, Marconi engineer Noel Ashbridge on early broadcasting and Harry Bateman
talking about the R.38 airship disaster. Only clips remain of the wartime Everybody’s Scrapbook series.
(6) For more
on this seek out Paul Kerensa’s British
Broadcasting Century podcast episode 85. Baily mentions this in his 1964
appearance on Desert Island Discs,
available on BBC Sounds
(7)
Surprisingly, despite scouring the pages of the BBC Programme Index it’s
difficult to say precisely how many programmes were made. In 1959 when Scrapbook for 1936 was broadcast Baily
wrote in the Radio Times that “there
have been well over a hundred Scrapbooks”
and that it was the 38th year to have been covered. Yet a year later
when Scrapbook for 1910 was transmitted he wrote that it was “our 70th
new production since the series began in 1933”.
(8) First
broadcast by the BBC on 7 May 1935 the cast included David Tennant, no, not
that one. This David Tennant had been a 2LO announcer at Savoy Hill until 1929
when he married actress Hermione Baddeley. He was the son of Lord Glenconner
and one of the original members of the Bohemian ‘Bright Young Things’. At the
BBC’s HQ in Savoy Hill he was nicknamed the ‘£90,000 announcer’.
(9) First
broadcast on the Regional Programme on 11 September 1933 and repeated the
following day on the National Programme. It was presented by Francis Worsley
who would go on to produce ITMA as
well as the wartime Scrapbooks and Everybody’s Scrapbook. The Fantastic Battle was revived in July
1934, this time produced by head of drama Val Gielgud. The story had originally
appeared in the Radio Times for 3
August 1928.
(10) This
was remade in 1949 and again in 1955 and reworked as a 6-part series in 1965. In
1952 Baily’s The Gilbert and Sullivan
Book was published by Cassell which formed the basis of the screen play he
co-wrote with Sidney Gilliat for the 1953 film The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan starring Robert Morley and
Maurice Evans.
(11) A Year to Remember ran on BBC Radio 2
for five series 1996-2001 with some editions presented by Cliff Morgan. 25 Years of Rock first aired on BBC Radio
1 in and five years later was extended as 30
Years of Rock. Those editions were then used as the basis for Sounds of the 20th Century broadcast
on Radio 2 in 2011-12. Cinema Scrapbook
with Chris Kelly ran for six series between 1983 and 1988. There was also an
earlier 1957 Light Programme music series titledA Year
to Remember with ‘melodious memories’ of a particular year’ scripted by Roy
Plomley.
Time to Remember episode guide
1: The Changing World
2: Glamorous Nights
3 The Airship Men
4 Strange things are coming
5 The End of the War 1918-1945
6 The Edwardian Musical Stage
7 Science unlocks the secrets
8 History is People
9 Because It’s There
10 The Musical Stage Between the Wars
11 Adventures if Flight
12 Votes for Women
13 The War to End Wars
Scrapbook episode guide
RP=Regional
Programme NP=National Programme FP=Forces Programme HS=Home Service R4=Radio 4
Most of the
pre-war editions were first broadcast on either the National or Regional
Programme and then repeated the same week on the other service. All are titled Scrapbook for ... whichever year unless
otherwise indicated
1 RP (North) 8 November 1932
2 RP (North) 7 January 1933
3 RP (North) 3 February 1933
4 RP (North) 6 March 1933
1913 NP 11 December 1933
1909 RP 19 February 1934
1914 NP 7 May 1934
1910 RP 24 September 1934
1918 RP 9 November 1934
1921 NP 12 February 1935
1905 NP 5 June 1935
1911 NP 21 November 1935
1914 NP 23 March 1936
1924 RP 27 May 1936
1901 RP 24 September 1936
1908 RP 10 November 1936
1922 RP 21 January 1937
1912 NP 9 March 1937
1902 NP 7 May 1937
1907 RP 25 October 1937
1913 NP 17 December 1937 ‘reissued
with new episodes and new personalities’
1900 Victorian 24 February 1938
1928 NP 26 April 1938
1914 4 August 1938 ‘a revival of the
original production in May 1934’
1923 NP 11 October 1938
1903 NP 6 December 1938
1909 NP 7 February 1939 ‘revised
version with new features and songs’
1929 NP 2 May 1939
1906 HS 29 October 1939
1929 HS 12 November 1939
1910 HS 3 December 1939
For Auld Lang Syne 1900-1940 Forty years of memories and melodies 31 December 1939
1930 HS 11 February 1940
1923 HS 31 March 1940
1903 HS 28 April 1940
Songs from the Scrapbooks FP 23 May 1943
1929 HS 23 December 1945
1919 HS 3 February 1946
1910 HS 3 March 1946
1937 HS 31 March 1946
1901 HS 5 May 1946 ‘revised edition’
1906 HS 27 October 1946
1925 HS 24 November 1946
Victorian Scrapbook HS 22 December 1946
1912 HS 21 December 1947
1927 HS 18 January 1948
1933 HS 15 February 1948
1939 HS 16 October 1949
1899 HS 25 December 1949
1929 HS 15 March 1950
1904 HS 11 June 1950
1902 HS 21 December 1952
1935 HS 18 January 1953
1937 HS 8 March 1953
1903 HS 22 November 1953
1914 HS 28 December 1954
1924 HS 23 February 1955
1930 HS 20 March 1955
1905 HS 1 November 1955
1945 HS 29 December 1955
1920 HS 31 January 1956
1934 HS 27 June 1956
1922 HS 31 October 1956
1896 Victorian HS 26 December 1956
1939 HS 30 January 1957
1947 HS 17 March 1957
1911 HS 21 April 1957
1928 HS 2 June 1957
1951 HS 10 October 1957
The Story of Scrapbook HS 19 November 1957
1908 HS 1 January 1958
1951 HS 8 March 1958
1918 HS 8 November 1958
1936 HS 25 February 1959
1919 30 September 1959
1949 25 November 1959
The BBC’s Christmas Scrapbook HS 24 December 1959
1932 HS 24 January 1960
1946 HS 20 March 1960
1910 HS 15 May 1960
1940 HS 5 October 1960
1931 HS 15 January 1961
1926 HS 7 March 1961
1921 HS 2 October 1961
1938 HS 7 September 1962
1922 HS 14 November 1962 40th
anniversary of the BBC
1902 HS 23 January 1963
1953 HS 26 June 1963
1907 An Edwardian Scrapbook HS 15 October 1964
1914 HS 11 November 1964
1952 HS 19 April 1967
1917 R4 7 December 1967
1930 R4 6 August 1968
1918 Armistice Scrapbook R4 10 November 1968
1948 R4 9 April 1969
1911 R4 25 June 1969
1923 R4 13 November 1969
1950 R4 5 March 1970
1945 R4 7 May 1970
1933 R4 25 August 1970
1900 R4 1 December 1970
1948 R4 23 April 1971
1926 R4 12 October 1971
1935 R4 13 March 1973
1941 R4 4 September 1973
1963 R4 5 March 1974
1943 R4 14 May 1974
Everybody’s Scrapbook episode guide
The narrator
was Patric Curwen and producer Francis Worsley. All broadcast on the Home
Service except some series 4 episodes that aired on the Forces Programme.
Series 1: Weekly then fortnightly
with 12 episodes 25 July – 13 December 1940
Series 2: Monthly with 6 episodes 23
March – 10 August 1941
Series 3: Monthly with 7 episodes 28
December 1941 – 7 June 1942
Series 4: Mostly fortnightly with 11
episodes 27 September 1942 – 31 March 1943
On Saturday 30 September the BBC launched Radio 1. Charged
with overseeing the transition from the Light Programme to Radio 1 and Radio 2
was Robin Scott. Ahead of the launch Scott wrote for the Corporation’s in-house
magazine Ariel. In A New Chapter in Radio History he
explains some of the programme schedules and name checks some of the
departments responsible for getting and keeping the new services on air.
The
text of his article is reproduced below:
At 7 am on Saturday 30 September, Tony Blackburn seated in
Radio Continuity 1 will switch 247 out of the Light Programme network and
launch Radio 1 on its course with the first of his Monday to Saturday early Pop
Shows. At 5.30 the same morning new transmitters will have come into service carrying
247 meters to cover 85 per cent of the country. The VHF network, previously
linked to 247, will slave to Radio 2 on 1500 metres.
Tony Blackburn will be – technically speaking – steering his
own programme, playing in the records, slotting in the ‘jingles’, ‘station
idents’ and ‘promos’ on cassette.
‘Breakfast Special’
In Continuity 2, Paul Hollingdale, having carried both
networks to 7 am, will guide Radio 2 over less frenetic waters to 8.30 am. He,
Bruce Wyndham, Peter Latham, John Dunn, and Robin Boyle are experienced hands
at running the shop on their own and have for many months been sustaining – and
building – a large Breakfast Special
audience with a blend of light and popular music scientifically prepared by
Cyril Drake and his Popular Music Department team. The format of Breakfast Special will be adapted to
provide greater contrast to the Pop on Radio 1.
At 8.30 both networks will join Junior Choice presented by Leslie
Crowther but at 10 am they break away again as Keith Skues brings in Saturday Club on Radio 1 opposite Max
Jaffa and the Radio Orchestra on Radio 2. At noon Keith hands over to Emperor
Rosko and Max to a programme of Waltzing and Marching...
So much for the ‘pattern’ of the first few hours, which is
typical of the new choice to be offered. Monday to Friday sees Jimmy Young on
Radio 1 and 2 from 10 to 11 am – but opposite Radio 2’s Morning Story, The Dales
and Melody on the Move presented by
Jimmy Hanley from 11 to 12. Midday Spin
is extended to sixty minutes and brings in Kenny Everett, Duncan Johnson,
Stuart Henry, and a new BBC ‘staff-man discovery’, David Rider, to join Simon
Dee. From 1 to 2 pm – as a contrast to the lunchtime Pop Shows – Radio 2 will
be serving a varied bill of entertainment and music. Pete Brady is the afternoon
Dee Jay on radio 1 – with a daily stint of two-and-a-half hours- Radio2
welcomes an earlier light-melodic Roundabout
from 4.30 to 6.30 with Brian Matthew, followed by Sports News and Album Time – featuring the latest
‘middle-of-the-road’ LPs and EPs. Meanwhile, Radio 1 has kept tabs on the
latest Pop discs and David Symonds has swung into the early evening Pop Show.
At 7.30 pm News-Time with Corbet Woodall as the Newscaster
brings the tow networks together and they carry the same – but restyled –
evening pattern of music and entertainment programme up to 10 pm. On Sundays
and Wednesdays Radio 1 goes most of the way on its own with The Jazz Scene and Jazz Club.
Late Night Extra
Monday to Friday nights fills the 10 to midnight slot (Radio 1 and 2). The
programme produced by Light Entertainment reflects not only the best in Pop but
also keeps a pulse on what’s new in the current scene. It is hosted by Pete
Myers (from World Service), Barry Alldis, Terry Wogan, Bob Holness, and Mike
Lennox. Saturday night finds Pete Murray at the helm and Sunday night reflects
the best in Show Music.
Through to bedtime
At midnight after a new Midnight Newsroom a Light Programme
team of announcers/presenters (Sean Kelly, Bruce Wyndham, Dwight Whylie, Roger
Moffat) take the networks through to bedtime at 2 am.
A host of other new or extended programmes fill the weekend.
Eric Robinson on Radio 2 competes with Ed Stewart on Radio 1 on Sunday
mornings, both networks share a two-hour Family
Favourites linking friends and relations not only in the Forces but throughout
the UK and Commonwealth. Pete Drummond is principal Dee Jay for a three-hour
Radio 1 show on Sunday afternoons. Alan Freeman’s Pick of the Pops spreads to 120 minutes from 5 to 7 pm followed by
Mike Raven’s Rhythm and Blues Show on
Radio 1 and Sing Something Simple on
Radio 2. Such a catalogue of changes and innovations- which add up to a total
of over fifty-three new hours of broadcasting and a grand Radio1 and 2 total of
nearly 200 hours a week – cannot convey the style or ‘image’ of Radio 1. This
will be fast-moving, fresh and ‘uncluttered’, with presenters handing over to
each other –whilst Continuity continues on Radio 2. Both networks will share
the same news summaries exactly slotted at the half-hours – a rigorous
discipline which demands professional skill of Presentation Department headed
by David Lloyd James with Mitch Raper, Presentation Editor for Radio 1 and 2,
responsible for establishing the correct routines at programme junctions.
Philip Monson, Don Cummings, and their staffs on the
Engineering side have been carrying through the modifications to Continuities,
the provision of a new ‘spare’ Continuity, the extension of the 247 transmitter
network (to name but a few of their tasks); Production Planning has been
wrestling with new demands for studio space; the Popular Music, Gramophone,
Light Entertainment, Light Music and Central Programme Operations Departments
have faced up with enthusiasm to new tasks and new programme ideas.
Awaiting the reaction
No one expects miracles and certainly it would be rash not
to expect some brickbats partly from those who want Pop throughout the
twenty-four hours and partly from those who want a continuous programme of
Sweet Music. The choices – governed by ‘needle-time’ and sheer economics- have
been made. Our concern now is with success. After the first exciting – and no
doubt very fraught – weeks we shall await the first listening figures with
unusual interest. Between Ed Stewart and Eric Robinson, between Keith Skues and
Max Jaffa, between Pete Drummond and The
Clitheroe Kid, between David Symonds and Alan Dell, between Jimmy Young and
The Dales- how will the audience
break? It’s anybody’s guess.
But September the 30th will add quite a chapter to BBC Radio
history.
[Article ends]
From today’s perspective one can make a couple of
observations. First is that the programme schedule is very messy and
complicated with only four daytime Radio 1 DJs stripped across the week,
something inherited from the pirate stations: Tony Blackburn at breakfast,
Jimmy Young mid-mornings, Pete Brady in the afternoon and David Symonds at
tea-time. Other than that both stations have the usual mishmash carried over
from the Light where there are different programmes each day of varying lengths
and where there are regular shows e.g. Breakfast
Special or Late Night Extra, it’s
a different presenter either each day or each week. This was what Scott
referred to as a “fragmented planning pattern” in that year’s BBC Handbook.
Presumably it encouraged the sale of the Radio
Times to help listeners navigate their way round!
The second thing you notice is how male-dominated it all is.
The article doesn’t mention a single female presenter. Looking over the first
week’s schedule the only woman broadcasting on Radio 1 is journalist Miranda
Ward who reports for Scene and Heard
(Saturday afternoons) whilst over on Radio 2 its Marjorie Anderson on Woman’s Hour.
Interesting too is his use of the term ‘newscaster’, a term
most associated with ITN whereas the BBC uses ‘newsreader’.
Here's Robin Scott making the introductory announcement before 7am on Saturday 30 September 1967.
“To be a foreign correspondent is to inhabit a world in which abroad is home, in which communications are lifeblood and in which ‘the story’ is elevated to the status of a god that must, at whatever cost, be treated with reverence and with constant attention to its capricious changes of mood or substance.”
From Our Own Correspondent, always known in BBC-speak as FOOC, has been a fixture of the radio schedules for seven decades. It was first broadcast on the BBC Home Service on Sunday 25 September 1955 when announcer Colin Doran introduced as follows: "This is the BBC Home Service. From our own correspondent. We are broadcasting now the first of a new series of programmes in which BBC correspondents will deal with current affairs as seen from their own posts in various parts of the world," There followed reports from six BBC correspondents, three based in the States and three European-based. This actually represented nearly 50% of all the overseas correspondents the BBC employed at that time as there were only 13 of them. (1)
For many years the programme was introduced by staff announcers but since 1998 former foreign correspondent Kate Adie has been the regular presenter. FOOC is also heard on the World Service (2) and since 1990 has been produced separately from the domestic version with its own presenters. Again it was World Service announcers that introduced each edition, until about 2006 when broadcast journalists started to present it. More recent presenters have included Alan Johnston, Owen Bennett-Jones and, since 2012, Pascale Harter.
Here’s a Radio 4 example of FOOC with announcer Laurie Macmillan presenting. This edition dates from Saturday 27 December and includes reports from Tim Sebastian in Warsaw, Philip Short in Peking (now Beijing), John Thorne in Johannesburg, David Willey (who would become the BBC’s longest-serving correspondent with over 40 years based in Italy) in Rome and Bob Jobbins (later the Head of the Arabic Service) in Cairo.
In my last blog post on FOOC, back in September 2015, I included a recording from 1985 when the programme marked its 30th anniversary. Now, ten years on I’m going back another five years to the 25th anniversary in 1980. This programme titled Foreign Correspondent was introduced by Ian McDougall. Ian had been a BBC foreign correspondent since 1949 initially posted to Paris but eventually filing more than 10,000 reports from 40 countries. From 1979 until his retirement in 1988 he was the editor and presenter of Radio 3’s current affairs programme Six Continents.
In Foreign Correspondent Ian talks to, as the Radio Times billing reads, “some of those who were ‘in at the beginning’ about the excitements, the frustrations and the challenges of being a foreign correspondent for the BBC”.
In an accompanying article (above) by Vivien Lipschitz there is mention of the early difficulties of filing reports, the changing nature of foreign reporting and the increasing demands for more and more reports – at this time most correspondents tended to work in either radio or television with bi-media reporting coming back in from the mid-90s.
Contributing to Foreign Correspondent are: Angus McDermid on communication problems, Ivor Jones recalls the Hungarian revolution, Christopher Serpell with tales of Cuba, Gerald Priestland recalls one of his dispatches been sent off in a beer bottle, Charles Wheeler who had a report tapped out in Morse code, Erik de Mauny on censorship in Russia, Anthony Lawrence, the first editor of FOOC when he was Foreign Duty Editor, on finally getting into China, Douglas Stuart on the aftermath of the JFK assassination and Kenneth Matthews, the BBC’s first ever foreign correspondent, on the start of FOOC.
If this all sounds rather like a gentlemen’s club that’s because the BBC was still six years away from appointing Diana Goodman as their first female foreign correspondent who was based in Bonn. She would be joined just a few weeks later by Elizabeth Blunt to cover West Africa and in 1989 by Bridget Kendall who was posted to Moscow.
Foreign Correspondent was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 29 September 1980 and repeated on Saturday 4 October 1980.
To mark the
70th anniversary of FOOC
the BBC is recording a special programme at the Radio Theatre on 1 October for
broadcast in December. Hosted by former BBC Middle East correspondent and Today presenter Anna Foster, the event
will feature a panel of special guests including From Our Own Correspondent presenter Kate Adie and current senior
BBC foreign correspondents.
Further listening
Here are a number of Radio 4 and World Service programmes that mark the 50th and 60th anniversaries of FOOC.
The Archive Hour: Celebrating 50 Years of From Our Own Correspondent
(1) This was the number of correspondents posted abroad for fixed terms and included a resident correspondent at the UN headquarters in New York. If a major foreign news story broke the BBC could also send other home based correspondents to the area.
(2) I can’t trace exactly when the World Service also started to carry the programme other than some time in the 1960s. When FOOC started in the 50s the General Overseas Service equivalent was called Special Despatch.
If you’ve tuned
in to Vernon Kay’s Radio 2 show just after 10 am you’ll be familiar with the
feature Vernon’s Vault where old
radio and tv recordings are dusted down and given an airing. Quirky reports
from the like of Nationwide, Tomorrow’s
World or by Fyfe Robertson seem to be particular favourites.
Vernon’s
Vault itself is introduced by a selection of clips that runs for just 15
seconds. But have you ever wondered what they are? Well wonder no more, here’s
the answer.
Here’s what
you hear in quick succession:
Stand by for
switching, get tuned to Radio 2, 2LO Calling, This is direct television, This
is London, BBC Radio 2, Billed as the greatest show on earth, One thing’s never
going to change, They think it’s all over, Radio 2, go [Cue theme]
So let’s
pull this thing apart and see what we have here.
“Stand by
for switching, get tuned to Radio 2.” This is Robin Scott, the first Controller
of Radio 1 and Radio 2 at the launch of Radio 1 on Saturday 30 September
1967.
“2LO Calling.”
This clip proved the most difficult to track down with 100% certainty and I
pestered a few people to get to the bottom of it. It’s obviously a re-creation
of an opening announcement from when the BBC started in November 1922. There’s
a similar announcement on track 1 of the double CD 75 Years of the BBC but that has no credit and the voice isn’t
quite the same. For the BBC’s 100th anniversary a recording of
Arthur Burrows, the first director of programmes and the man that read the
opening news bulletin, was released but here he says “2LO, Marconi House,
London Calling” rather than just “2LO Calling”, though that could be down to a
bit of editing. In the full recording of Burrows here he talks about the BBC
starting 15 years earlier and that he is talking in 1937. That suggests it’s
his contribution to Scrapbook for 1922
broadcast on the Regional Programme on 21 January 1937 and repeated on the
National Programme the following day. I know that BBC Sound Archives retained
this programme so on balance I’ve gone for that date.
“This is
direct television” is the voice of Elizabeth Cowell, the first female TV
announcer. The clip comes from a film made of test transmissions at the Radiolympia
exhibition at Alexandra Palace in August 1936.
“This is
London” is the unmistakeable voice of announcer John Snagge. The clip is his
D-Day announcement on 6 June 1944.
“BBC Radio
2” comes from the start of BBC Radio 2 at 5.30 am on Saturday 30 September
1967. Presenting Breakfast Special that
day was staff announcer Paul Hollingdale.
“Billed as
the greatest show on earth” is Newsbeat’s
Frank Partridge reporting ahead of the Live Aid concert on Saturday 13 July
1985. I found a recording of this in the Radio 1 documentary Live Aid – One Year On.
“One thing
that’s never going to change” comes from the last ever scene of The Dales, previously known as Mrs Dale’s Diary. Jessie Matthews plays
Mary Dale who was always worried about her husband Jim, played here by Charles
Simon. The final episode aired on BBC Radio 2 on Friday 25 April 1969.
“They think
it’s all over” is part of the famous BBC tv commentary by Kenneth Wolstenholme
for the 1966 World Cup Final between England and West Germany just as Geoff
Hurst scores his decisive last minute goal. The final was played on Saturday 30
July 1966.
“Radio 2 go”
is again from that Robin Scott announcement.
And finally
what of the Vernon’s Vault theme.
That’s a piece of production music from BMG Production library called Bygone Bumps. Composed by Ron Baines,
it’s a track on the Vintage Sunshine
album from Deep East Music. I’ve also used part of a performance of the track by
members of the brass section of the BBC Philharmonic as featured on Vernon’s
show on 15 December 2023.
All those
clips appear in this video sequence I’ve put together.
With thanks
to Phil McGarvey, Janine Maya-Smith and Mark Punter
On Saturday
28 July 1945 the BBC closed the Allied Expeditionary Forces Programme (AEF) and,
at least for domestic listeners, the General Forces Programme (GFP). The
following day Sunday 29 July, as the BBC week at that time began on a Sunday,
regional broadcasting returned to the Home Service and a new station came on
air, the BBC Light Programme.
The Light
Programme was carried on 1500m (200 kHz) long wave from Droitwich (with some
filling-in on 261m MW), the first time long wave transmitters had been used for
domestic broadcasts since before the war. Immediately before the Light came on
air 1500m had been used by the European Service.
A number of
GFP entertainment shows were carried over to the Light: from Variety Bandbox and Music While You Work to Grand
Hotel and ITMA. By the following
year programmes such as Family Favourites,
Housewives Choice and Woman’s Hour had been commissioned,
programmes which helped to define the Light and give it some of radio’s largest
audiences
It would be
lovely to bring you some of the highlights of that first day of broadcasting on
the Light but sadly the BBC kept just 50 seconds. That recording features the
voice of Chief Assistant Tom Chalmers (he’d become the Controller of the
network three years later) followed by the start of a news bulletin read by
Alvar Lidell. In Tom’s opening announcement there was the word ‘entertainment’
right from the off:
Good morning
everyone, this is the BBC Light Programme on wavelengths of 1500 and 261
metres. It’s the first time we’ve said those words, BBC Light Programme, which
we hope are going to mean for you now, and in the days to come, all that is
best in radio entertainment from nine o’clock in the morning till midnight.
By way of
contrast the BBC did retain the last programmes transmitted on the AEF
including the hour long Farewell AEF
and the final moments with the news read by Guy Belmont, prayers from the Rev V
Russell and announcer Margaret Hubble. A minute or so of Marjorie Anderson
closing the General Forces Programme has also survived. In case you’re
wondering, over on the Home Service the only surviving archive is that of
Regional Director Melville Dinwiddie welcoming listeners to the Scottish Home
Service.
This year
marks the 80th anniversary of the launch of the Light in 1945, a
network that would broadcast for the next 22 years until its demise in
September 1967 and the arrival of Radios 1 and 2. The BBC are not marking the
anniversary, though Boom Radio are when David Hamilton recalls listening to the
Light and appearing on it in a programme airing at 9pm on Tuesday 29 July.
However, in 2017 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of BBC
Radio 2 did tell The Story of the Light
in a two-part programme presented by Paul O’Grady.
The first
episode of The Story of the Light was
broadcast on 18 September 2017. You’ll hear reminiscences from (in order of
appearance) Nicholas Parsons, Petula Clark, Denis Norden, Esther Rantzen, Tony
Blackburn, Ken Bruce, Pete Murray, June Whitfield, Paul Hollingdale, Barry
Cryer, Owen Money, Johnny Beerling,
Angela Rippon, Ray Galton, Alan Simpson and Judith Chalmers.
In this
first show a number of contributors refer the BBC‘s ‘forces programme’. The
term seems to be used interchangeably for two distinct services. The history
gets a bit complicated here so this is my attempt to summarise it.
There was
the Allied Expeditionary Service, an Anglo-American station (half British and
Canadian and half American in content) aimed at troops in north-west Europe
that ran from 7 June 1944 to 28 July 1945 (see my June 2014 post Oranges and Lemons). This service had
been inspired by the American Forces Network which had started on 4 July 1943
and used several low-power transmitters to provide entertainment for US troops
based in the UK. The AFN featured mainly American programmes, many of them
shipped in from the States, as well as relaying some BBC programmes. The BBC
would start to re-broadcast the AFN on its shortwave transmitters.
The other
more home-grown service was the General Forces Programme. This had started on
Sunday 27 February 1944 and was an amalgam of what had been the Forces
Programme plus programmes from the General Overseas Service (what would eventually
become the World Service).The Forces
Programme itself had started on Sunday 7 January 1940 initially offering some
evening alternatives to the Home Service but broadcasting all day later that
year.The General Forces Programme didn’t
end when the Light Programme launched and continued on short-wave for members
of the forces overseas. It shared programmes and resources with the General
Overseas Service as well as taking some programmes from the Home and Light. The
title General Forces Programme was dropped after 31 December 1946.
The second
episode of The Story of the Light was
broadcast on 25 September 2017. Adding their memories are Ken Bruce, Esther
Rantzen, David Hamilton, Russell Davies, Pete Murray, Angela Rippon, Paul Hollingdale,
Judith Chalmers, Johnnie Walker, Barry Cryer, Tony Blackburn, Petula Clark,
Brian Reynolds, Gerald Jackson, Brian Matthew and Johnny Beerling.
The Story of the Light was produced by Derek Webster and
Ashley Byrne and was a Made in Manchester Production for BBC Radio 2.
The passage
of time does, of course, mean that some memories can get a little muddled. In
case you’re taking notes In Town Tonight
was never on the Light Programme but on the Home Service.
For more on
the Light Programme head back to my blog posts On the Light published in July and August 2015 plus more recent
posts Back in Time on the Light and
this year on the subject of The Robinson Family, Go Man Go, Mrs Dale’s Diary
and Make Way for Music.
Announcer
and presenter Roger Moffat, on duty for the last programme on the Light, read
the news bulletin at 2am on Saturday 30 September 1967 to close down the
station for final time. “There we end broadcasting in the Light Programme, not
just for today but, as it seems, forever.”
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