Pure Radio – Featuring Nesta Pain

This post was originally going to be called Flies and Greenflies but I thought that might lead you to think I was writing about an edition of Gardeners’ Question Time rather than a radio feature from a series that looked at the world of insects and other creepy-crawlies. You’ll find out why later. The creator of the programme was the writer and producer Nesta Pain.

Nesta Pain was on the staff of the BBC from 1942 until 1963 but continued to work for the Corporation on a freelance basis until the 1980s. She is principally remembered for her work on ‘Features’ and her radio adaptations of novels and plays. Despite having no formal scientific training she would become a leading writer and producer of science-based programmes, so much so that the BBC Handbook for 1950 picks her out for her ‘continued indefatigably to interpret the mysteries of science to the lay listener’.

The Features Department has started life in 1928 as a small Programme Research Section attached to the Drama Department. It was especially concerned with new dramatic techniques and the new possibilities offered by the mixing and controlling unit, later known as the Dramatic Control Panel.

The eventual head of Features, Laurence Gilliam, attempted a definition and described it as ‘a group of writers and producers...exploring the possibilities of the radio medium itself. Because what they produced fitted no known formula, and for that reason stood out from the run of programmes stemming from existing forms, they were grouped under the generic title of features programmes.’

A feature programme, Gilliam explained, ‘should be an expression of one mind, whatever technique it uses’ and that it is ‘pure radio, a new instrument for the creative writer and producer.’ The features programmes were researched and scripted, though they might include unscripted interviews and reality recorded on location. They usually involved actors, music and sound effects. It was into this environment that Nesta Pain started to flourish following her appointment to the team as a producer and writer in June 1943. In particular she was championed by the Assistant Controller of Programmes, Lindsay Wellington, who was keen to see more scientific programmes being commissioned. 

The 1950 book on BBC Features offered this glowing introduction to her work so far: 

Nesta Pain ... has steadily won an increasing public for her programmes on scientific subject, among them So This is Man, The Silent Areas, the series War Against Disease, and the Light Programme science magazine Searchlight. Educated at Liverpool University, where she read classics, and at Oxford, Nesta Pain claims no scientific training. This is probably one secret of her success with leading scientists in many fields, who have been generous with their co-operation with one so expert in her own field of exposition. 

Nesta Pain was born Florence Nesta Kathleen Taylor in Liverpool in 1905, the daughter of a ship-owner. From the age of ten she attended a boarding school, West Heath at Ham Common in Richmond upon Thames, and in the Sixth Form she discovered she had a passion for classics but was discouraged from attempting a scholarship at Oxford because she had started to learn Latin and Greek too late. Instead she went to Liverpool University to read classics. “In my first year I got engaged and married. In my second I produced my daughter Angela, and in my third I got a First.” A few years later she did eventually get to Oxford to read comparative philology. She began to write magazine articles, made a start at writing a novel and did a correspondence course in journalism. An involvement with the Liverpool Playhouse gave her the impetus to write a play, The Jews of York, which was performed at London’s Duchess Theatre in 1939. Her next effort was a farce that was produced by a repertory company in 1941. It was her plays that brought her to the attention of the BBC by way of the husband of an old school friend, Scottish Regional Programme Director Andrew Stewart (at the time seconded to the Ministry of Information). By 1942 she had separated from her architect and surveyor husband, Coard Henry Pain, was living down in London with her 15-year old daughter and in April that year she joined the BBC, initially on a temporary contract working for the Overseas Service at Bush House.    

A picture of domesticity whisking up another production.
Reynolds Newspaper 2 August 1959  

One of her first notable early features was on sleeping sickness for the series War Against Disease (Home Service, 26 February 1944). Nesta was doing some research at the Colonial Office which led her to interview a leading authority at the School of Tropical medicine. ‘I got it all up in three days and began to talk to him hopefully. He said:”Would you like to see a trypanosome – that’s the organism which causes sleeping sickness?” He pricked the tail of an infected mouse, slipped a drop of blood on to a slide. There was this astonishing sight, the corpuscles being pushed by hundreds of dragon-like monsters. That, for the first time, made me really interested in science.’   

Tenacious and thorough in her research, on at least one occasion a broadcast irked officialdom, as was the case with Focus on Milk (Light Programme, 25 February 1947). Stephen Potter, another writer/producer in Features, made this diary entry:

Laurence very excited about what really is an extraordinary affair about today’s Milk feature. Nesta Pain was absolutely third degreed by the Milk Marketing  Board and Sir Donald van de Peer, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, tried to get Haley [the Director-General Sir William Haley] to stop the broadcast. In other words, vested interests (farmers), represented in both Board and Ministry, attempt to stop this broadcast, approved by doctors and by Ministry of Health. 2000 children die yearly from non-pasteurisation of milk.     

Nesta fostered working relationships with a number of scientists to help inform her programmes. This included Professor Alexander Fleming who helped with War Against Microbes (Home Service 1944) - he also wrote an introductory piece for the Radio Times – and Louis Pasteur (Home Service 1945). She favoured dramatic reconstructions with a cast of actors rather than interviews and location recordings. One of her staff reviews by Laurence Gilliam observed that ‘Mrs. Pain is devoted to the dramatized style of documentary and allergic to actuality.’ For instance in The Atom Explodes (Home Service 1945 and retained by Sound Archives) included some familiar names in the cast: Laidman Browne, Valentine Dyall, Norman Shelley and Carleton Hobbs.

Her first feature on the world of insects was in 1951 (Home Service 23 October 1951) on the subject of ants - ‘their agricultural and pastoral pursuits, their mating flights, their slave raids, and their life in the nest together.’  From the off she engaged Antony Hopkins to compose the music. Hopkins would later became well-known for his long-running series (1954-1992) Talking About Music.  She had become interested in insects after reading Social Life of the Insect World by French entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre. Of Fabre she said: “No naturalist has ever carried out such detailed and imaginative experiments as Fabre did, or observed the lives and habits of insects with such devoted care, or recorded them with such charm.“

Further insect-related programmes followed at intervals between 1952 and 1958 covering Beetles, Spiders, Scorpions, Honey Bees, White Ants, Grasshoppers and so on. She authored a couple of related books on the subject: Lesser Worlds in 1953 and Grassblade Jungle in 1957.

In 1962, and again in 1963, the insect series was revived on the Home Service with either new programmes, new productions of the originals or repeats from the 1950s broadcasts. Introducing them for the Radio Times (23 August 1962) Nesta Pain attempted to explain what they were all about, though when she says the first one was on the subject of spiders this seems to contradict the listings which show it was ants (see above):

The insect series began with a single programme on spiders (which are not, of course, insects). It was not intended to have a successor, but Antony Hopkins, who composed the music, and I became so attached to the type of programme that we kept on doing ‘just one more’ until in the end we had broadcast a dozen. It is difficult to say what these programmes are. They are certainly not straight natural history, and they are not intended to inform. They are not really allegorical and they are not, strictly speaking, satire. Nor are they altogether comedy. Perhaps they are ’Horror Comics’. Certainly they were once described in the Press as ‘suavely shocking,’ and an eminent critic, who was to discuss one of them on air, exclaimed to his wife, ‘I will not listen to this – no, not for money!’ But he did.

Five of them are to be broadcast in this present series – Grasshoppers, Beetles, The Praying Mantis, White Ants and Spiders. Michael Hordern will once again be the narrator. David King-Wood is flying back from America especially to play his old parts. Lionel Harris will once more be heard as Dr Muffet, Heron Cavic as the more sinister entomologist who snips off wings in the interests of science, and Duncan Carse as the more kindly observer who sees poetry in insect life.

Antony Hopkins’s music was incomparable – witty, gay, heartrending, or macabre as the occasion required. I am looking forward to hearing it again.

The BBC Transcription Service issued ten programmes on five discs for overseas sale under the title Grass Blade Jungle. The editions were: White Ants, The Praying Mantis, Beetles, Grasshoppers, Spiders, Flies and Greenflies, The Solitary Wasp, Scorpions, Cicadas and Ants and Wasps. It was one of these Transcription Service versions, on Flies and Greenflies, that you can now hear.  

The recording was made in about 1980 from a Radio New Zealand broadcast by Duncan Lockhart who kindly sent me a copy earlier this year. The programme was retained in the BBC Sound Archives but to my knowledge it hasn’t been repeated on BBC radio since its first broadcast on the Home Service on Friday 27 September 1963.  

The opening announcement tells to what we can hear about: ‘The courtship of gnats and their need for blood. The anthrax fly and the sinister requirements of its young. The mild-mannered greenfly and its numerous persecutors’. 

The other significant part of Nesta’s output was producing, and in some cases adapting novels, for radio, some of which went on to be filmed. These included: Richard Gordon’s Doctor at Sea (Home Service 1953) with David King-Wood as the Doctor (filmed in 1955 with Dirk Bogarde in the main role), the tales of a newly qualified barrister in Henry Cecil’s Brothers in Law (Home Service 1955) with Donald Sinden as Roger Thursby (filmed by the Boulting Brothers in 1957 with Ian Carmichael as Thursby) and Alan Sillitoe’s The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (Third Programme 1961) with Barry Foster (a Tony Richardson directed film with Tom Courtenay in 1962).

Doctor at Sea first broadcast on the Home Service 27 August 1953.
Cast included David Kossoff, Norman Shelley and John Laurie 

But her most significant partnership, lasting for a decade, was with John Mortimer. It was in about 1955 that Nesta first approached him to write a play for her though he ‘put it off for a considerable time’, but eventually a lunch and persistent phone calls spurred him on to write The Dock Brief (Third Programme 1957), a two-hander with Michael Hordern as the inept defence barrister and David Kossoff  as the wily criminal. The production won the Drama Prix Italia that year, was adapted for BBC television with the same cast later that year, was staged in London the following year (with Maurice Denham replacing Kossoff) and was made into a 1962 MGM film in 1962 starring Peter Sellers and Richard Attenborough. The Dock Brief also partly provided the inspiration for Rumpole of the Bailey, indeed Mortimer was initially keen for Hordern to be cast as Rumpole, the role eventually going to Leo McKern. Hordern would get the starring role in Paradise Postponed (ITV 1986).

John Mortimer described Nesta Pain as "a remarkable woman who talked precisely but with a slight stammer and seemed like an enlightened headmistress, a marked contrast to the expansive grey-haired men in knitted ties and the hard-drinking poets who stood around her in the bar of the George.” [Pub on Great Portland Street frequented by BBC staff]

Further collaborations with Mortimer were I Spy (Third Programme 1957), A Voyage Around My Father (Third Programme 1963 plus the tv adaptation for BBC2 1969), Education of an Englishman (Third Programme 1964), Personality Split (Third Programme 1964), The Rare Device (Home Service 1965), What Shall We Tell Caroline? (Third Programme 1966) and Hampton Court (Home Service 1967).   

In 1964 the Features Department was closed, squeezed out by the growing importance of current affairs, at the time attached to Talks. By November that year the producers had been reallocated with Nesta Pain transferred to Drama. Her productions included portraits of various royal and historical figures (William I, Mary Tudor, Cromwell, Nelson, Wellington, Palmerston etc.), the serials Stay of Execution (Light Programme 1965) with another one of her favoured actors, Barry Foster,  Host Planet Earth (Light Programme 1967) and Games Without Rules (Radio 2 1968). Another actor often employed by Pain was Joan Miller, BBC tv’s switchboard operator on the pre-war programme Picture Page. Amongst Miller’s credits were Richard’s Gordon’s Women in Medicine (Home Service 1954), Philip Levine’s story of a store detective Light Fingers (Home Service 1956), an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s There Will Come Soft Rains (Third Programme 1962) and Angus Wilson’s Crazy Crowd (Radio 3 1967).

In 1970 Nesta directed the mammoth 20-part dramatisation of War and Peace. In 1973 she was the producer of the story of Queen Victoria starring Peggy Ashcroft in the 13-part Dear and Honoured Lady. 

Her final radio credits included Letters from a Governess (Radio 4 1980) and Smallbone Deceased based on Michael Gilbert’s novel. This was originally broadcast on Radio 4 in 1971 with Nesta producing and then reworked in 1987 from her adaptation with Glyn Dearman directing.

In her later years Nesta had problems with her sight but surgery did help restore it. She continued writing for the press, wrote tapes for the Science Museum and completed her (unpublished) autobiography On First Sighting. She died in London in 1995.

Further reading:

The book BBC Features (1950, Evans Bothers Ltd) edited by Laurence Gilliam is available to borrow on the Internet Archive. You’ll also find Nesta Pain’s books Grassblade Jungle, The King and Becket, Science and Slimming and Louis Pasteur.

I’ve concentrated on Nesta Pain’s radio work but she was also involved in television production. For more on this search for Translating Radio Productions into Television Programmes: The Post-War Career of BBC Writer/Producer Nesta Pain by Kate Terkanian in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (October 2024)  

Further listening:

I reckon that under 10% of Nesta Pain’s work has been retained in the BBC Sound Archives; many of the early programmes would’ve been broadcast live. Sadly few have been repeated but the major exceptions are, of course, The Dock Brief, most recently repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra in 2017, Host Planet Earth, last heard in 2022 (a copy is on YouTube), and There Will Come Soft Rains, last repeated in 2025 (a copy is on Internet Archive). The drama Smallbone Deceased is on YouTube and Internet Archive, as is the Transcription Service issue of A Tune on the Old Tax Fiddle (Home Service 1960) with Michael Hordern and John Slater. Also on Internet Archive is another Michael Gilbert collaboration, The Last Chapter (Radio 4 1970) and the 1977 revised repeat of Beetles.  

The Lively Lounge

The much respected Scottish broadcaster Tony Currie died at the weekend at his home in Port Ramsey on the Inner Hebridean island of Lismore. His was the first voice on Radio Clyde when it went on-air on Hogmanay 1973. He was the voice of STV as their chief announcer and later a network controller at BBC Scotland. But what kept Tony occupied for most of his life was his not-for-profit radio station that he ran from his various homes for over sixty years, Radio Six International.

Since 2007 one of the main music programmes he devoted himself to was The Lively Lounge, an hour –long weekly show that was heard not just on Radio Six International but on 54 affiliate stations around the world. It’s hard to describe exactly what The Lively Lounge was about. It was certainly on the easy listening end of the musical spectrum. Think radio, tv and film themes, library music and test cards. It was Music for Pleasure, orchestral versions of popular hits from the 60s and 70s and familiar classical tunes. If you remember the days of the Light Programme or the early years of Radio 2 then this was for you.

Here are a three examples of The Lively Lounge. This is a typical show from 12 December 2012.

In this second programme Tony is really in his element talking to the pianist and song-writer Les Reed in this edition from 25 October 2013. Les died in 2019.

From 14 March 2014 it's a delightful hour in the company of singer, composer and arranger Barbara Moore. Barbara died in 2021.

Tony was also a collector of the Radio Times and wrote the history of the magazine in The Radio Times Story (Kelly Publications 2001). He kindly dipped into his archive to help me with some radio enquiries in the days before BBC Genome came online. He also had a deep interest in broadcasting history, especially from a Scottish perspective, and willingly shared this in publications, podcasts and on the Digital Spy and other forums.

In August this year Tony announced that, due to his cancer diagnosis, The Lively Lounge had ended its run. Some other stations have continued to broadcast archive editions and it is possible that Radio Six International will repeat some shows in the future.

Tony Currie 1951-2026   

Making the First Impression

Before Dead Ringers there was The Impressionists. Whilst Dead Ringers adopted the sketch format, and since its 2014 reboot, has been more in tune with current affairs, The Impressionists was simply an excuse for that week’s guests to let rip with their well-worn impressions in a series of comedic challenges. Remarkably there’s an edition of the show coming up this Sunday on BBC Radio 4 Extra as part of their All Request Weekend, only the third time one has been repeated since it ended 38 years ago. [1]

The 1970s saw something of a resurgence in comedy impressions. Mike Yarwood was a star on television and even had his own radio series Yarwood Weekly and then Listen-Mike Yarwood. Impressionists usually fared well on Opportunity Knocks. Radio programmes that poked fun at the week’s news included impressions, however approximate, such as Listen to this Space, Week Ending and The News Huddlines.

Then in 1972 came The Impressionists, a BBC Radio 2 comedy panel show that would run for 15 series until 1988, clocking up over 150 episodes. The programme was originally chaired by Barry Took and was always billed as ‘a game of voices and noises’, which gives us a clue that it started a little differently to how it developed. Talking to the Radio Times, Peter Goodwright said “the programme’s all about guessing accents and noises”. [2]

By 1979 Barry Took was now chairing The News Quiz so from the following year, and for the remainder of its run, proceedings were introduced by Ray Alan. Ray was no mean impressionist himself – he began his career taking off Eric Barker, Kenneth Horne and Richard Murdoch - and performed in many of the shows and also wrote some of the sketches, full of hoary old jokes as they were.  [3]. Richard Willcox devised and produced all the programmes. Richard had been a producer with the Light Entertainment department since 1963, working on shows such as Roundabout, The Billy Cotton Band Show, Late Night Extra, Beat the Record, Pop Score, Jazz Score, The Frankie Howerd Variety Show and dozens of others.

The Impressionists was surely inspired by London Weekend’s Who Do You Do? that had started in 1972 (it ran until 1976). Indeed many of those who appeared on that programme, and its successor Copy Cats, also turned up on The Impressionists.

Of the 35 or so impressionists that appeared throughout the series many would’ve been familiar names in the variety shows that were a feature of seaside resorts and clubs. Those that appeared most often were:   

Peter Goodwright was by this time the elder statesman of impressionists having appeared on the radio, starting with Workers’ Playtime, in 1957. He could always switch voices at great speed, much like the man who was his greatest influence Peter Cavanagh (see blog post The Voice of Them All). Goodwright’s go-to voices included Frankie Howerd, Arthur Askey and Robb Wilton

Johnny More could always be relied on to provide brilliant musical impressions, his take on Frank Sinatra was spot on. He’s started out as a singer on the club circuit and only later added impressions when one night an act failed to appear and he filled in. He was a three times winner on Opportunity Knocks.

Roger Kitter was another Opportunity Knocks winner in the 1969 series. He has the distinction of getting a hit record with an impression in his 1982 single as The Brat, heavily borrowing from John McEnroe. He adopted a dodgy Italian accent as Captain Bertorelli in ‘Allo ‘Allo. 

Ray Fell hit the big time with the 1967 BBC2 comedy sketch series Three of a Kind, co-starring Mike Yarwood and Lulu. He’d already made a number of radio appearances singing with the BBC Northern Dance Orchestra. He was also a regular comic on Radio 2’s The Gag-Cracker’s Ball (1973-76). He spent many years working in Las Vegas.

Clive Lea was the vocalist with The Rockin’ Berries who incorporated comedy routines and impressions in their act. He left the group in 1970 and in 1980 became part of the comedy band The Black Abbotts. Replacing Lea in The Rockin’ Berries was Terry Webster who also appeared in The Impressionists.

Janet Brown would of course be best known for impersonating Mrs T but she’d already been in the business for over 20 years by the time The Impressionists started. Her first radio appearance was in 1951 in Derek Roy’s Happy-Go-Lucky. The previous year she’d performed impressions of Jessie Matthews, Gracie Fields and the like in the film A Ray of Sunshine starring Ted Ray.

Faith Brown was another singer turned impersonator who found fame on Who Do You Do?

Chris Emmett had been appearing in Week Ending since 1973 and would be part of The News Huddlines throughout its 26-year run. He also provided a number of voices including that of Eric Pode of Croydon in The Burkiss Way.  

David Jason was also on Week Ending at the time of his appearances on The Impressionists. The rest of his career is well documented elsewhere.

Aiden J. Harvey had won the final of New Faces in 1974

Dave Evans was another comedian whose act included many musical impersonations such as Tom Jones, although being a fellow Welshman probably helped. In later years he did variety shows on cruise ships. His son is Lee Evans.

Brian Coshall came to comedy via the Forces. He was a Lt-Commander in charge of the Radar Group as HMS Collingwood when he won the South West round of Pub Entertainer of the Year in 1975.

Bobby Davro made his bid for stardom in a 1979 talent show and by the following year made an appearance on ATV’s Up for the Cup. In 1981 two comedy generations collided with his first national radio appearance on Radio 2’s The Arthur Askey Variety Show.

Les Dennis appeared in the programme with his comedy partner Dustin Gee from series four. He’d had a go at breaking into the big time on Opportunity Knocks in 1971 but did better on New Faces in 1973 and 1974.   

Peter Hudson had show business in his blood as his great uncle was the comedian Harry Helmsley. He was spotted by Cyril Fletcher who gave him a job in one of his summer shows. In the 1960s he appeared with Ken Dodd on his radio shows and was a regular performer on the cabaret circuit.

Hilary O’Neil was a dancer, singer and impersonator who in the early 1980s was appearing in summer variety shows and would be part of the vocal harmony group Stutz Bear Cats. She was in a couple of series of Copy Cats.

Here’s all the information you’ll need about the series interspersed with some recordings of the show uploaded to YouTube.

Chaired by Barry Took (series 1 to 6) and Ray Alan (series 7 to 15)

All produced by Richard Willcox and broadcast on BBC Radio 2.

Musical impressions by The Ronnie Price Trio, in most cases, but also The Max Harris Trio and Gordon Langford.

Series 1:  25 March to 23 September 1974 (24 episodes)

Peter Goodwright, Alan Clive, Roger Kitter, Peter Cavanagh, Janet Brown, David Jason, June Whitfield, Ray Fell, Clive Lea, Johnny More, Margo Henderson, Terry Webster, Chris Emmett, Tony Brandon, Graeme Garden and Lance Percival. Although not billed in the Radio Times some episodes had special guests including Ray Alan, Ray Barrett and Mike Neville.

Series 2: 31 March to 23 June 1975 (13 episodes)

Peter Goodwright, Clive Lea, Roger Kitter, Janet Brown, Peter Hudson, Ray Fell, Chris Emmett, Johnny More, David Jason, Dave Evans, Aiden J. Harvey, Graeme Garden, Dailey and Wayne

Series 3: 29 September to 22 December 1975 (13)

Roger Kitter, Aiden J. Harvey, Dailey and Wayne, Chris Emmett, Lance Percival, Peter Hudson, Clive Lea, Peter Goodwright, Dave Evans, Johnny More, David Jason, Janet Brown, Ray Fell

Series 4: 1 May to 31 July 1977 (14)

Roger Kitter, Mike Goddard, Chris Emmett, Johnny More, Dave Evans, Peter Hudson, Peter Goodwright, Clive Lea, Ray Fell, Les Dennis, Dustin Gee, David Jason, Janet Brown

Series 5: 6 August to 2 November 1978 (13)

Peter Goodwright, Les Dennis, Roger Kitter, Clive Lea, Janet Brown, Johnny More, Brian Coshall, Dave Evans, Aiden J. Harvey, Peter Hudson, Faith Brown, David Jason

Series 6: 20 June to 5 September 1979 (12)

Peter Goodwright, Brian Coshall, Roger Kitter, Dave Evans, Les Dennis, Aiden J. Harvey, Chris Emmett, Maxton G. Beesley, Faith Brown, Johnny More, Janet Brown, David Jason

Series 7: 2 July to 20 August 1980 (8)

Johnny More, Les Dennis, Dave Evans, Aiden J. Harvey, The Jay Jays, Peter Hudson, Janet Brown, Brian Coshall, Kristine, Clive Lea

Series 8: 4 June to 23 July 1981 (8)

Johnny More, Aiden J. Harvey, David Jason, Dave Evans, The Jay Jays, Les Dennis, Ray Fell, Brian Coshall, Dustin Gee

I first posted this recording of the first episode of series 8 back in 2011. Taking part are Johnny More, Aiden J. Harvey, David Jason and Dave Evans.

Series 9: 27 May to 15 July 1982 (8)

Johnny More, Bobby Davro, Dave Evans, Brian Coshall, Dustin Gee, Joe Longthorne, Clive Lea, Peter Goodwright, Alan Clive, Aiden J. Harvey

The fourth show from this series was uploaded in December 2019. This time we hear the voices of Johnny More, Dustin Gee, Joe Longthorne and Clive Lea.

Series 10: 3 March to 21 April 1983 (8)

Peter Goodwright, Johnny More, Brian Coshall, Dave Evans, Jeremy Hitchen, Les Dennis, Dustin Gee, Bobby Davro, David Cocker

The first programme in this series is repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra on Sunday 30 August 2026. Taking part are Peter Goodwright, Johnny More, Brain Coshall and Dave Evans.   

Series 11: 9 August to 13 September 1983 (6)

Peter Goodwright, Johnny More, Dave Evans, Bobby Davro, Brian Coshall, Aiden J. Harvey

Series 12: 9 November to 21 December 1983 (7)

Peter Goodwright, Johnny More, Brian Coshall, Dave Evans, Bobby Davro, Aiden J. Harvey

The Impressionists at Christmas 24 December 1984

Peter Goodwright, Johnny More, Dave Evans, Brian Coshall, Aiden J. Harvey, Jeremy Hitchen

Series 13: 3 January to 21 March 1985 (12)

Peter Goodwright, Johnny More, Brian Coshall, Clive Lea, Bobby Davro, Clive Lea, Caroline Turner, Terry Webster, Jeremy Hitchen, Jessica Martin, Dave Evans

From Thursday 17 January 1985 this is the third episode with Peter Goodwright, Johnny More, Bobby Davro and Clive Lea. As usual I post these shows just as I recorded them (yes, that is John Marsh’s voice saying “and that’s after this") which means it 'contains attitudes of the time'. No stereotypical stone is left unturned and if listening to Bobby Davro impersonate Jim Davidson doing his Chalky White character is too much you’ll need to skip forward at 9 minutes. Mind you Johnny More as Kermit the Frog and Ray Alan as Miss Piggy is just as painful on the ears.   

Moving to Thursday 7 March 1985 and the tenth episode with Peter Goodwright, Brain Coshall, Dave Evans and Jessica Martin. Jessica had been performing at the Edinburgh Fringe where her act included an impersonation of Judy Garland, which she performs at the end of this show. As far as I can tell this is her first BBC radio appearance, certainly her first billed one.      

Series 14: 13 May to 29 July 1986 (12)

Peter Goodwright, Dave Evans, Brian Coshall, Hilary O’Neil, Jenny Maynard

The final offering is the first programme from this series and the first appearance for Hilary O’Neil with the regulars Peter Goodwright, Dave Evans and Brain Coshall. This is the edition repeated as part of The Great Pretenders, a programme about comedy impressions with Jan Ravens that has aired on BBC Radio 7 and Radio 4 Extra.

Series 15: 2 February to 22 March 1988 (8)

Peter Goodwright, Dave Evans, Brian Coshall, Johnny More, Hilary O’Neil

[Note 1] An edition from September 1978 was repeated on Radio 2 in October 1995 as part of the Panel Beaters series. As noted above s14e01 was first repeated as part of The Great Pretenders on BBC Radio 7 on 18 June 2005. That programme has been aired several times on Radio 4 Extra, most recently in February 2013. 

[Note 2] I don’t remember listening to the programme in the Barry Took era and no shows from that time have ever been repeated though recordings have been retained by BBC Sound Archives. According to a Radio Times article the first series was due to run for 13 weeks but in the event ran for 24.

[Note 3] For the last series staff writer Alan Whiting was drafted in to help with the sketches. Alan also had Week Ending and Huddlines in his credits

The Long Wave Goodbye

It is now just over a month since BBC Radio 4 stopped broadcasting on long wave. In this post I’ll be picking up on one or two pieces about what happened at the end of June.

Firstly I want to thank all those folk that commented on my social media posts about this news, I don’t think I’ve had some an overwhelming response for some years. It amply demonstrated that there’s a sense of nostalgia not only about what we listen to but about how we listen. It was also clear that some people still listened on long wave, both at home and abroad. In the case of UK listeners it was usually because of the patchy FM or internet coverage and in some cases just because they preferred the rich sound of long wave.

As to the last Radio 4 long wave closedown, that fell to continuity announcer Al Ryan to give it a lovely send-off just before 0100 BST on Saturday 27 June 2026. Al marked “the end of an era”. He went on say “for almost a century the long wave transmitters have carried the BBC across the airwaves, from the iconic Droitwich transmitting station in Worcestershire to Westerglen and Burghead in Scotland. Although the long wave signal is fading into history this morning the memories and the connection it created will endure forever. We shall miss your warmth and crackle”.

I was away from home when all this happened so I’m grateful to Peter Cunningham for this recording. The looped announcement that followed, cutting off the end of the last long pip, was voiced by Ron Brown and continued until Tuesday 30 June when it was abruptly stopped mid sentence at 1203 BST. I’ve tagged that audio onto the end of this recording.       

There was some media coverage of the closure including television and radio reports by the BBC’s Media Correspondent David Sillito and features on BBC One’s Breakfast and Midlands Today which you can find online. On the Friday Malcolm Boyden was sitting in on the BBC Hereford and Worcester breakfast show and he talked about the ‘Wychbold Masts’, as the Droitwich transmitting station is also known. Here’s a report from Lindsay Alder who interview Alastair Moseley of the Bromsgrove Society. Malcolm then talks to Nick Todderhill of the Radio Society of Great Britain.

That day’s edition of PM also had a report about the end of long wave. I had been alerted to this some time before as I’d provided audio I’d recorded at the time Radio 4 switched over to long wave on 23 November 1978. In the final edit the clip of David Symonds welcoming listeners to Radio 4 UK was included. This is the extended version of Gabriel O’Regan’s report.

And finally a recording of a Jingle Time sequence from Jon Wolfert’s Rewound Radio show on 21 June 2026. Jon is the man behind JAM Creative Productions. I’d mentioned the long wave closure which gave rise to this part of the show. Jon continued to then talk about some of the international shortwave stations that are no longer on air, though I’ve not included that here.     

With thanks to Peter Cunningham  

Jazz Riots on a Summer’s Day

It was a warm summer evening in 1960. Lord Montague, he of the Vintage Car Museum fame, was hosting the fifth jazz festival at Beaulieu Palace House in Hampshire. Over three nights jazz enthusiasts could enjoy the sounds of Acker Bilk, Johnny Dankworth, Humphrey Lyttelton, Tubby Hayes, Ronnie Scott and others. A television relay of some of the performances on the Saturday opening night was due to be broadcast by the BBC. Fatefully, just days before the event, Lord Montague had told the press that those who throng to the festival do not cause much damage: “They are extremely well-behaved inside the ground, I find. The grass suffers a little, but it soon recovers. My only reason for doing it is to provide for serious jazz in this country”.     

But on that opening evening on 30 July there were some less than well-behaved elements in the crowd and trouble was brewing. It was, as a Daily Mirror headline would proclaim, a ‘Beatnik Beat-Up’. What happened, according to one press report was that ‘screaming teenagers dragged down scaffolding holding TV cameras, climbed onto the bandstand, littered the estate with broken bottles – and then slept rough in the fields while firemen battled with a blaze in a building housing part of Lord Montague’s Vintage Car Museum’.

Most of the rioting occurred during a live BBC television outside broadcast and, thanks to a home taper, we now have the audio of that incident. The broadcast was scheduled to start at 22.45 and run for just 40 minutes until the late news and weather at 23.25. The recovered recording runs for just over 10 minutes. A few seconds in commentator Derek Jones reminds us that we are listening to the sound of Acker Bilk and the Paramount Jazz Band. At 1 min 35 secs we hear a bang and Derek comments that he can see smoke. At 2.15 the ‘jazz fans’ have climbed onto the lighting tower. At 6.15 by the end of Acker’s second number, Lord Montague has been on stage and talked to Acker about carrying on. At 7.00 Derek informs viewers that the “entire scaffolding holding our lighting equipment has collapsed to the ground” but still the band played on. At 9.00 Acker finally admits “we can’t see, we can’t play...it’s very sad thing, but what can you do.” At 9.30 Derek comes in “Well this is certainly not the way it was intended that this year’s jazz festival at Beaulieu should go. It got completely out of hand. No doubt about that at all.” The recording ends at 10 min 30 secs and it was about a minute later that the broadcast ended, some six minutes earlier than scheduled.

As well as the damage to BBC equipment (plus seven or eight microphones which ‘vanished’) and some musical instruments, the trail of destruction also included fire damage to a 1921 14-seater bus, an old car, two tons of straw, roundabout horses and vehicle parts. Apparently Humphrey Lyttelton’s trumpet was found in the car park and some of George Melly’s clothing halfway up a tree.  In the aftermath of the incident three people were taken to Lymington Hospital and treated for minor injuries. Later in August two men were found guilty of assaulting police officers and sentenced to one month’s imprisonment.

As to what triggered the violence, that remains a mystery.  According to one chap who attended and spoke to BBC reporters at the time it was the trad jazz versus modern jazz argument: “Most of the trouble-makers were traditional jazz fans. I think when the modern jazz was playing they didn’t like it”. The press saw it as indicative of a wider social dilemma and that it was ‘part and parcel of a general trend ...of juvenile delinquency’ and even calling to ‘ban everyone who even looks a little like a supporter of the beatnik cult’. Others suggested that it ‘should not surprise anyone who ..recalls the recent rioting as at jazz festival at Newport, Rhode Island.’ A week later The People was quite clear where the problem lay and that the ‘outbreak of beatnik violence ...must be blamed on the cult of despair preached by four strange men’. Those men were Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso.          

As for the jazz festival, Lord Montague announced that it would continue as planned but that he wouldn’t host another one. “We cannot possibly have a festival of this form again. I think I owe that to local people and to my staff who are not trained pugilists”. On the second night 30 uniformed police were drafted in, where normally there was just one, and CID officers mingled with the crowd.

Despite the violence, jazz fans were able to descend on Beaulieu the following year (Montagu having changed his mind in January 1961) when there was tighter security, restrictions on ticket sales and a no-alcohol policy. The only problem this time was that trouble-makers rioted in the village instead with reports of brawls between trads and moderns, 100 casualties, smashed beer and wine bottle and three arrests. Lord Montagu was forced to admit that “I can no longer run the risk of further damage to property nor allow Beaulieu residents to suffer from the undesirable crowd the festival attracts to the neighbourhood”. It was to be that last Beaulieu Jazz Festival.   

The recording of the television soundtrack was kindly donated to me by Duncan Lockhart, to whom I extend my thanks. Duncan obtained the tape from Mike Bailey in New Zealand. It had been recorded by his father who had emigrated to the country in the early 60s. 

My name is Roger Cook. Leave the microphone alone.

The sound of Roger Cook confronting yet another cowboy builder who lunges towards him to grab his microphone and stop the recording seems to be the abiding memory of Checkpoint. I’m not sure just how many cowboy builders the intrepid Cook did encounter but his pioneering investigative programme exposing con-men, injustice and cock-ups was a BBC Radio 4 fixture for twelve years. Roger Cook's death was announced today. 

The genesis of Checkpoint was a report that Cook had made for The World this Weekend about the activities of a loan-sharking company. It was the story that set him on ‘the uninsurable path’ that he subsequently followed. But first, how did Roger Cook come to be working for the BBC?

Roger Cook was born in 1943 in New Zealand but raised in Sydney, Australia, his father reckoning that “we’ll be safer in Australia because their armed forces are much bigger than ours”. He had ambitions to be a vet and enrolled at the agricultural college in Wagga Wagga followed by veterinary medicine at Sydney University. To help pay for his studies he answered an advert for a job as a cadet announcer at the commercial radio station 2GB. Within weeks he’d abandoned university and was working full-time for the station. He briefly left radio to work at an animation studio for a couple of years before taking up a reporting job with the Australian Broadcasting Commission, Australia’s version of the BBC. In time he was shipped out to the ABC outpost in Perth where he worked on both the radio and television service as a newsreader and continuity announcer. Feeling stifled by the work he was given at ABC, and being something of a self-confessed loose cannon, Roger saved-up to make the journey back to ‘the old country’ and, in May 1968, was working for the BBC at Broadcasting House. He’d been given the name of Andrew Boyle, the editor of The World at One (known within the BBC as WATO), and he joined the team of reporters that included Nick Ross, Jonathan Dimbleby and David Jessel. Also on the team with Cook was Sue McGregor, who’d worked in South Africa, and New Zealand-born Nancy Wise, leading to Boyle nick-naming them the Colonial Contingent. He loved the ‘brisk, challenging style of The World at One’ which at the time was presented by the formidable William Hardcastle.

Bill Hardcastle and WATO producer Andrew Boyle

Cook recalled the WATO production meetings: ‘Every morning we reporters would sit around that big, untidy editorial table, which was usually covered in a layer of newspapers, scripts, coffee cups and overflowing Bakelite ashtrays. We would tentatively offer out own story ideas or compete for those already decided upon if what we proposed wasn’t considered interesting enough. If the latter was the verdict, Bill (Hardcastle) would usually announce it by muttering WGAS. I later leant that WGAS was an acronym ... it was short for who give a shit?’

As well as reporting for WATO he worked on The World this Weekend and PM and, throughout 1971, was a regular co-presenter on PM.

The World this Weekend enabled reporters to prepare longer, more in-depth reports and one story that came his way were the activities of the Turret Mortgage Company in Bristol. Cook decided to challenge the boss of the company, taking along his Uher tape recorder. Questioning his qualifications to run a finance company, apart from being a former heavyweight wrestler, did not go down well and Cook was thrown down the stairs. Retrieving his battered recorder and tape spool the whole encounter went out on air. The public response was very favourable and listeners started to send in letters about other crooked businesses and inefficient government departments which led to a number of WATO reports.  

Together with Andrew Boyle, Cook put together a pilot programme examining ‘injustice, criminality and bureaucratic bungling’. Eventually Radio 4 Controller Tony Whitby gave it the go-ahead, though it was to be produced by the Current Affairs Magazines Programme unit, also responsible for You and Yours, rather than News. They chose the title Checkpoint and, at first, the meagre budget didn’t provide for a researcher or secretary. Cook recalls he wasn’t given an office, “just the corner of someone else’s desk.”

In the first series the programme tackled exploited au pairs, cowboy estate agents, toxic waste, fairground safety, pyramid selling, computer crime and, in the first edition, opticians over-pricing spectacles. He would also continue to work for The World at One for another five years and in 1973 and 1974 was a regular presenter on You and Yours.   

The Radio Times heralds the start of 
Checkpoint on Friday 6 July 1973

The first edition of Checkpoint was broadcast on Radio 4 on 6 July 1973 and it continued pretty much every week until March 1980 apart from small breaks in the summer and over Christmas. From May 1980 onwards there were more distinct series which eventually settled down to blocks of nine programmes. Cook presented virtually every edition but in the early days Nigel Murphy (in 1974), Dick Tracey (1975) and Gordon Clough (1976) occasionally took the reins. Between May 1979 and December 1980 Vincent Kane would present a monthly ‘Action Desk Edition’ with the team taking on ‘bureaucracy and business to solve listeners’ problem.’

Programme ideas were usually sparked by listener’s letters; there was a weekly postbag of 400, of which 40% might offer potential stories. Cook and the team saw the broad aims of the programme as illustrating ‘how a system fails to provide redress’ and a way of ‘teaching how people are caught in traps or unpleasant situations of various kinds...to bring out reasons why the problems have arisen and warn the public at large of the dangers.’ They were, to quote one of the producers “the department of last resort.”

Of course this kind of campaigning journalism was not without its risks. Cook was assaulted 16 times during the run suffering broken ribs, concussion, fractures, lacerations and bruises. On one occasion, in August 1975, whilst investigating property shark Robert Miller, he was knocked down by a hit-and-run driver in Frome, Somerset and ended up in hospital. Cook remembers an Australian doctor who attended to him remarking that “Jeez mate, put it this way, if you weren’t built like a brick privy, you’d probably be dead.”  

Added to these physical dangers were the internal battles within the BBC as nervous managers and governors feared legal reprisals and lawsuits. The production team developed new practices to ensure they were fire-proof such as retaining unedited master tapes of interviews and offering the accused to make written statements before door-stepping them. Scripts and interviews were vetted by BBC lawyers prior to transmission. In the first ten years there were just three successful challenges, two settled out of court and one going to the Broadcasting Complaints Committee (this was not upheld, see BBC Handbook 1984).

Checkpoint returns for its ninth series on
14 May 1980

Over the years the Checkpoint team included producer John Smithson, an award-winning reporter from Piccadilly Radio who went on to producer BBC tv’s Rough Justice series, John Stoneborough, who then became Head of Features at Capital Radio and presented their Checkpoint-like show PDQ, and ex-Sunday Times Insight team member Andrew Jennings who would later work for World in Action and Panorama. There was also Dina Gold, who’d come from Investors’ Chronicle, former press journalist Malcolm Stacey who’d also worked at Radio Leeds, BBC tv in Bristol and the Today programme as well as Paul Calverley and Tim Tate who joined Cook when he moved to Central TV. The programme won a Broadcasting Press Guild award in 1979 whilst the same year Cook won the Radio Personality of the Year Award at the Pye Radio Awards. 

Of course Checkpoint wasn’t the only programme fighting the consumer’s corner. That’s Life with Esther and her boys and its bizarre mix of journalism and light entertainment had started just a couple of months before, in May 1973. That had been born out of Braden’s Week (1968-72) which launched the careers of Esther Rantzen and John Pitman. Channel 4 offered 4 What’s It’s Worth (1982-89) fronted by Penny Junor with a team that included John Stoneborough, ex-You and Yours presenter Bill Breckon and David Stafford.  

Checkpoint artwork by Bill Prosser for 
Radio Times 12 November 1980

Here’s a typical example of Checkpoint from 27 August 1980 with the “continuing saga of the brothers Hedmanski, kings of the cowboy plumbers”. After the usual litany of missed appointments, shoddy work and general fobbing-off Cook introduces a segment in which a hidden microphone records a plumber over-charging for a job that anyone could fix for themselves for a matter of a few pence. He then returns to Brixton to confront the Leon Hedmanski about the business. “Mr Hedmanski my name is Roger Cook from the BBC Checkpoint programme. I am here to record an interview with you now about your plumbing activities. Ah, ah, leave the microphone alone...there are a lot of unanswered questions about people who have had really appalling service...leave the microphone alone”. Hedmanski proceeds to hit the microphone with Cook responding “technically that was an assault”. The face-off ends with twin brother Stanley and office manager Mike approaching with “a length of four by two timber and a cosh”.

Despite the impression given, Cook wasn’t alone during these encounters. As Dina Gold explained “one of us must always be there to bear witness when Roger accosts a villain, to be able to swear on oath, if need be, what actually happened. “

Aside from Checkpoint, Roger Cook presented some other programme for Radio 4 such as Time for Action (1977-78) in which Cook and Nick Ross would champion opposite sides of an issue on behalf of those involved. A second series followed in 1978-79 co-presented with Moyra Bremner and Bill Breckon. A series of eight programmes called Roger Cook Reports aired in 1979, one episode of which, Rock Bottom, investigated the so-called Al Capone of Pop, Don Arden. This expose of exploitation in the pop world was repeated on Radio 1 and the transcript of the programme reprinted in the New Musical Express. In 1980 there was Reel Evidence which took a deeper look at national and international matters such as the collapsing sewage system, immigration controls and the holding of personal data by government and commercial institutions.

In January 1984 Checkpoint finally made it to the cover of the Radio Times. But what listeners didn’t know is that the programme had only just over a year to run. Roger Cook was wooed by commercial television companies who wanted to put a version of Checkpoint on screen for about a year before he quit Radio 4. In fact he’d already been making some appearances on the BBC television including reports on Nationwide in the mid-70s as part of what they called the ‘Cause for Concern Unit’ and later making investigative reports for Newsnight. Eventually, in the autumn of 1984, BBC1 did offer him and his team a four-week trial run of Checkpoint. With audiences of 8 million it was judged a success but not extended to a full series. The reason was probably that BBC1 already had the Watchdog Unit which had been part of Nationwide and then Sixty Minutes since 1980. Sure enough the following July, just a couple of months after the final radio edition of Checkpoint, Watchdog became a stand-alone programme with Nick Ross, and later, of course, with Lynn Faulds Wood and John Stapleton.   

Cook's style was spoofed in the Radio 4 comedy series Delve Special (1984-87, all available on BBC Sounds) with Stephen Fry as the investigative reporter David Lander. These led to a couple of follow-up television versions: This is David Lander (1988) with Stephen Fry and This is David Harper (1990) with Tony Slattery, both on Channel 4.     

The last edition of Checkpoint went out on 29 May 1985. Roger was leaving the BBC to join Central Television to present the live Friday night debate show Central Weekend. But the plan had been to put together a Checkpoint-inspired show and this became The Cook Report, which started in July 1987 and would run for 12 years.  Roger at least acknowledges his move to Central in the opening of the programme. He also says it’s not the last you’ll hear of him on Radio 4, which was true as he was back for a one-off investigation into drug companies, Kill or Cure?, that September, but after that he didn’t return. He also says that another investigative programme will be along later. That actually was a year away when Face the Facts started in June 1986, initially presented by Margo MacDonald but mostly associated with John Waite who presented it from 1987 until it was axed in 2015.    

When The Cook Report ended Roger pretty much bowed out of regular broadcasting. In 2007 he returned for a one-off Roger Cook’s Greatest Hits on ITV1 and in 2011 he revisted a case he’d first investigated some 30 years earlier, that of serial child abuser Derek Slade, in BBC One’s An Abuse of Trust. Finally in 2016 he was on the case of the murder of notorious gangster, John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer, for the regional documentary strand Inside Out West. Palmer, who was part of the Brink’s-Mat robbery operation that inspired the BBC drama series The Gold, had previously been investigated by Cook in a 1994 edition of The Cook Report.    

When a leaving party was thrown for Roger as he left The World at One he was presented with a T-shirt with the legend ‘Stand clear. I’m an accident waiting to happen. The engineers, who had repaired many a piece of recording equipment gave him a Uher microphone bent in half and mounted on a mahogany presentation plinth.  

Roger Cook 1943-2026