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

So Long, Long Wave

After 102 years of broadcasting on the long wave and after forty-eight years of Radio 4’s presence on long wave the service closes on 27 June 2026. This now leaves just five countries in the world still broadcasting on long wave, that’s Romania, Poland, Morocco, Algeria and Mongolia. Other major broadcasters who have recently shut down their long wave transmitters include Europe 1 (December 2019) and RTÉ Radio 1 (April 2023). 

The closure of Radio 4 long wave has been a long time coming. In 2011 the then Director-General  Mark Thompson suggested it may end as part of  yet another round of cuts citing that it was only used by about 90,000 homes. The transmitter equipment was reaching the end of its life and the stock of valves dwindling as they are no longer manufactured. There were a couple of stumbling blocks. Firstly, what to do with the programmes that went out on long wave only. These were Yesterday in Parliament, the Daily Service and some of the Shipping Forecast bulletins. The answer was to shift the first two over to Radio 4 Extra. As for the Shipping Forecast the number of readings was cut down from four to two (three on weekends) and the final long wave only forecast was read at noon on 31 March 2024.

The second issue is that of RTS, the radio teleswitching system that piggy-backs on the radio signal and controls electricity meters, switching on Economy 7 storage heating and the like. As of this time last year over 300,000 homes still had RTS meters waiting to be converted to smart meters but I’ve not seen anything more recent that suggests how this rollout programme is progressing and what happens after June if households haven’t been switched over. For the technically minded RTS, which started in 1985, uses something called Phase Shift Keying to send messages over the airwaves via a Central Teleswitching Control Unit in Edinburgh onto the BBC Message Assembler at Crystal Palace and then on to the three long wave transmitters.

There will be a knock-on impact outside the UK as well where the long wave signal reaches a large expanse of northern Europe. For anyone still relying on old tech, or like myself still able to pick up Radio 4 on their car radio here in France, albeit with some interference everytime I pass a telegraph pole or pylon, it will be a sad loss, coming as it does a year after the lockdown of BBC Sounds for international listeners. I first remember hearing the BBC on long wave on a school trip to the Brittany coast in 1973. On a rainy day at Cancale our coach driver switched on the radio and picked up Radio 2. It was the Jimmy Young show in case you’re wondering.

Let’s also hope that Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet don’t rely on long wave broadcasts. There is the oft-repeated story that one of the signs that the UK still ‘exists’ is the monitoring of the broadcast of the Today programme on Radio 4, though quite what they do on Sunday when Today is not on air remains a mystery.          

Long wave transmissions haven’t gone down without a fight. In the summer of 2023 the Campaign to Keep Longwave and a online petition was set-up, though it has only reached about 7,600 signatures. In October 2025 an Early Day Motion was tabled in Parliament stating that ‘the House notes with concern the BBC’s intentions to cease broadcasting BBC Radio 4 on long wave’ and that it ‘remains a vital part of the UK’s broadcasting infrastructure, providing reliable analogue coverage during emergencies and in remote parts’. This was all to no avail and this year that the BBC announced that it would be closing ‘later this year’ and that ‘listeners will receive at least two months notice’. On-air announcements were broadcast at intervals during the day on long wave advising of the planned switch-off but on 11 May a date was finally given, that of 27 June.

I opened this post by saying that long wave broadcasting has been in existence for 102 years, at least in the UK. The Dutch had started using it in 1919 and Radio Eiffel Tower started in 1922. This is my timeline of long wave broadcasts from the BBC. For a far more detailed history can I point you in the direction of this excellent blog post by Chris Greenway.

I've condensed the UK long wave history into just under four minutes in this video:

Some more detail: 

July 1924 - long wave broadcasts start on 187.5kHz from a transmitter at the Marconi works in Chelmsford. Using the callsign 5XX it is also known as the High-Power Station. It mainly broadcasts London’s 2LO programmes.

27 July 1925 – a new 25kW transmitter opens at Daventry in Northamptonshire also using the callsign 5XX.

9 March 1930 - station callsigns are no longer used and the BBC offers the Regional Programme or the National Programme which comes from Daventry on 193kHz. The signal is supplemented by a number of medium wave transmitters.

6 September 1934 – a new 150kW long wave transmitter opens at Droitwich in Worcestershire carrying the National Programme on 200kHz. This 1500m wavelength will become familiar to listeners for the next half century. Daventry remained is use by the BBC until it closed on 29 March 1992. The Droitwich transmitters are replaced in 1962 and again in 1987.

1 September 1939 – ahead of the declaration of World War II the National Programme closes and is replaced by the Home Service on medium wave. The Regional Programme also closes. Droitwich is converted to medium wave and the power upped to 200kW.

16 November 1941 - long wave broadcasts resume from Droitwich carrying the BBC expanding European Service.

12 February 1943 -  regular broadcast start from a new high-power station built at Ottringham (station OSE5) near Hull. It’s east coast site means its ideally placed to carry broadcasts on behalf by the exiled Dutch government as Radio Oranje. It also carries BBC foreign language services including Dutch and Danish. After the war it continues to b broadcast European Services and eventually closes in 1953. 

29 July 1945 – the BBC Light Programme launches on 200kHz (1500m)

22 April 1956 – from this date the Shipping Forecast moves from the Home Service medium wave to the Light Programme long wave.

30 September 1967 - BBC Radio 2 replaces the Light Programme

23 November 1978 - Radio 2 moves from long wave to medium wave (plus VHF/FM) with Radio 4 UK taking over on long wave. The final Radio 2 long wave shipping forecast is read at 17.55 by chief announcer Jimmy Kinsgbury. At midnight Brian Matthew, on Radio 2, hands over to Radio 4 where announcer David Symonds is on air. To help provide coverage for what was now called Radio 4 UK the transmitters at Westerglen and Burghead in Scotland also carried the long wave signal on 200kHz. Westerglen had been in use since 1932 and Burghead since 1936 both carrying medium wave signals for the Regional Programme and later the Home Service and Light Programme.

1 February 1988 – the long wave frequency changes from 200kHzto 198kHz or 1500m to  1515m.

31 March 2024 - separate Radio 4 long wave programmes end.  The last long wave only Shipping Forecast is read by Ron Brown. From the following week the Daily Service and Yesterday in Parliament move to Radio 4 Extra. As of 24 March 2025 Yesterday in Parliament moved back to Radio 4, this time at 5.04am when the broadcasting hours were extended slightly.

May 2026 - announcement made about the closure of long wave transmissions.

27 June 2026 - Radio 4 long wave is due to close at 00.00 GMT (01.00 BST).

BBC on long wave 1924-2026 

With thanks to Chris Greenway. Droitwich site image credit (c) David Martyn Hughes 

Radio Lives - Judith Chalmers

‘You take more holidays than Judith Chalmers’ or a sarcastic ‘does Judith Chalmers have a passport?’ was a reflection as to just how hard wired Judith was into the public consciousness through her globe-trotting reports for Wish You Were Here...? When she started to front the new ITV show in 1974 Judith had already been broadcasting for over twenty years. Starting as a child actor on radio in the 1950s by the following decade she was a ubiquitous presence on radio and television switching from announcing, presenting, commentating and interviewing with consummate ease. She would enjoy a broadcasting career that spanned seven decades but sadly her death, at the age of 90, was announced last month.    

Judith’s break into radio came about thanks to her elocution teacher who suggested that her parents write in for an audition with the BBC.  “I had been to speech training classes to iron out my accent and had appeared in school plays but I never had any burning desire to be an actress.” Her audition in front of the Children’s Hour organiser in Manchester, Nan Macdonald, was on 1 April 1949. She passed it with one panel member noting her ‘excellent quality of voice, with a firm, responsive range, rather elocuted.’  

So it was that, at a mere 13-years of age, young Judith started to be cast in Children’s Hour plays. Her first appearance was in June 1949 in an adaptation of one of the Brydon family books written by Kathleen Fidler. Judith played the daughter Susan, a character name she’d get used to as she also played Susan in the 1951 stories about the Small family and in 1957 was cast as Jimmy’s sister Susan in the first series of The Clitheroe Kid. Mind you, just to confuse things she also played Jimmy’s sister Judith Clitheroe in Call Boy, another radio series with the diminutive star.  

Many of the Children’s Hour plays from Manchester were directed by Trevor Hill and it was Trevor that was instrumental in spotting Judith’s potential and offering her presenting roles on radio and eventually on television. In 1956 Judith was involved with the new BBC tv venture Children’s Television Club, seen as a forerunner to Blue Peter. Presented by Wilfred Pickles and Trevor Hill the first edition featured the Royal Iris steamer at Wallasey. Judith was on hand to greet viewers from the foot of the gangway and later introduced musical items played by the Merseyside Youth Orchestra. That same year she was posing questions to youth club teams competing for Brainiest Club in the North for the Home Service teenage magazine show Out of School.  In November she was in the cast for Collision by Vernon Sproxton. Other young actors in that production included Alan Rothwell, who also died last month, and Bryan Martin, who would go on to be a Radio 4 announcer and newsreader.  Rothwell would appear as David Barlow in Coronation Street and he was one of a number of future stars of the soap that Judith worked with. At the amateur dramatic group The Unnamed Society she met Doris Speed and for many Children’s Hour productions the resident pianist in Manchester was Violet Carson.  

1956 was also a significant year for Judith as she became a television continuity announcer. Again it was Trevor Hill’s doing and involved the children’s television programme Let’s Get Weaving. At that time all children’s programmes were introduced by announcers based in London but it was proposed that Judith perform this role from Manchester. The only problem was that a vision circuit couldn’t be booked with the Post Office to allow for an audition with the head of TV Presentation Rex Moorefoot, so her first live link became her audition. The Presentation Department liked her style and she became the first regional television announcer. The only problem they had with her was that her dress and set of pearls ‘made her look as if she had left her teens years ago.’ 1956 was also the year that Judith married salesman Arthur Lea but by June 1962 they were divorced, “I was far too young” she said in 1998.

l-r Kenneth Kendall, Judith Chalmers, 
Nan Winton and Michael; Aspel

Eventually the Manchester-based gig led to national television appearances between the programmes, she was the announcer on duty for Boxing Day in 1959 for example. The BBC had decided to re-introduce in-vision announcers and Judith was amongst a small group of woman employed for this role but Polly Elwes, Pauline Tooth, Vera McKechnie and Judith were usually only seen in the afternoons. However, from October 1960 Judith was promoted to be one of the evening announcers alongside Nan Winton, Kenneth Kendall and Michael Aspel. At the same time she was also occasionally presenting the regional news magazine for south-east England Town and Around.

BBC in-vision women announcers 'the charm team' 
Daily Mirror 7 July 1961

Although Judith was working freelance she was pretty much associated with the BBC until Thames signed her up in the early 1970s. However, in 1958 she had appeared for three months as one of the interviewers on Granada’s People and Places working with that broadcasting titan Bill Grundy. That had happened after Judith had been interviewed for the programme about being selected as one of the duty announcers for the Earls Court Radio Show. They liked her that much that she was invited back to join the presenting team. She would also appear on Tyne-Tees with Don Spencer in Gangway (1966) and was David Hamilton’s co-host on the quiz Pop the Question (1968). Also for Tyne-Tees she co-presented the programme aimed at under-sevens called Play with a Purpose with Jimmy Hanley and later Don Spencer (1969-70 & 74).  

Meanwhile back on the radio Judith was working with Morecambe and Wise in their return to BBC radio after three years in the series Laughter Incorporated (1958) and with ex-Goon Michael Bentine for series two and three of Round the Bend (1959-60). She would also start what would be nearly a decade long association with Ken Dodd appearing first in It’s Great to Be Young (1958-60) and then returning in The Ken Dodd Show (1963-67).   

In The Ken Dodd Show there was much fun at Judith’s expense as in this example from the start of the fourth series on 12 June 1966.

Scriptwriter Eddie Braden, or perhaps it was Doddy himself, concocted some increasingly fiendish tongue-twisting opening announcements for Judith to read. Here are a selection from the second and third series. 

Judith wasn’t the only broadcaster in the family. Her younger sister Sandra (together they were known as ‘a couple of Chalmers’) also started on Children’s Hour and would also go on to be an announcer, radio presenter, station manager, programme editor and executive.  Her second husband, they’d married in 1964, was Neil Durden-Smith a radio producer (they met in September 1963 while he was compiling Pick of the Week) who would commentate on cricket on the radio and for both the BBC and ITV, provide hockey commentary for both networks and was one of the resident team on music and general knowledge quiz Treble Chance (BBC Radio 1967-75). Their son Mark is also a television presenter.

Jean Metcalfe and Judith Chalmers in May 1965

In the 1960s Judith really was everywhere, no wonder on Round the Horne J. Peasemold Gruntfuttock wanted to “go up the BBC and get your ‘ands on Judith Chalmers”. She was a DJ on Light Programme shows with titles like Anything Goes, Put Out the Lights and After Midnight plus a rather longer stint co-hosting Records Around the World with Paddy Feeny, a joint World Service/Light Programme request show. On the subject of worldwide hook-ups she took over Jean Metcalfe’s chair, when Jean was on holiday, at the London end of Family Favourites, radio’s most-listened to show, between 1964 and 1967. She was one of the regular presenters of Woman’s Hour and later Weekend Woman’s Hour from 1967 to 1974. She’s first appeared on the programme as early as 1957.

Over on BBC television Judith was the host of Come Dancing plus a few other dance-related shows (1961-65) and commentated on the ladies’ fashions at Royal Ascot (1963-69) as well as providing ‘the women’s viewpoint’ on Henley Royal Regatta coverage (1964-68). As for her own fashion tastes, if you are to believe the press adverts that she lent her face to in 1968, she had a preference for Clarks Casuals. ‘I’m for the soft life in shoes. I’m sure you’re the same.’      

In the 1970s Judith became a familiar face for ITV viewers. In September 1972 she joined the team of presenters for the daytime magazine show Good Afternoon (later re-titled Afternoon Plus). Clips of her on the programme surfaced recently (you can find some on YouTube) as part of the 90^th birthday celebrations for Dame Mary Berry as Mary was the resident cook on the show.

A little over a year, in January 1974, Judith launched a new series to ITV, Wish You Were Here... ? for which she is best remembered as the perma-tanned presenter reporting from exotic locations or maybe just a Butlin’s holiday camp. Filming would take up between six and nine months of the year though that didn’t necessarily mean she saw much of the places she reported from. “The trouble was it was very hard work. Only four days in a place at a time. Arriving in Britain from San Francisco one night and flying to St Tropez the next. The schedule was exhausting. I really needed a holiday afterwards.”  The programme was seen as a competitor to the well-established BBC series Holiday that had already been running for five years. Its main presenter was Cliff Michelmore who was, of course, married to Jean Metcalfe whose career had crossed with Judith’s at the BBC. Judith presented over 500 editions by the time she was replaced (by Anthea Turner) in 1996, though she continued to film reports for the programme until its demise in 2003.      

Also for ITV Judith was part of the commentary team for the wedding of Princess Anne (1973) and Charles and Diana (1981) as well as hosting the Miss World Contests (from 1980) after the BBC dropped their coverage.     

Radio 4's Weekend programme with
Norman Tozer 4 October 1975

Meanwhile, back on BBC radio Judith was still regularly employed by Radio 4 as presenter of the phone-in Tuesday Call (1973-86) and the Saturday afternoon magazine show Weekend which she co-hosted with Norman Tozer. Both programmes were produced by the Woman’s Hour Unit which, by 1983, would be headed by Judith’s sister Sandra.

On Radio 2 Judith made dozens of appearances before getting her own show in 1990. She was on hand to ‘mingle with the personalities’ for the Boat Race, the Grand National and the Derby and co-hosted OBs from race meetings with John Dunn and David Hamilton. She covered for the holidaying Gloria Hunniford and John Dunn and worked with Ken Bruce on a number of specials: Ken and Judith at the Paris Air Show, Ken and Judith’s Geordie Day (from Beamish) and Ken and Judith’s Worcester Sauce (from Worcester Cathedral).     

Part of a number of BBC Radio 2 schedule
changes in April 1990

A schedule re-shuffle in April 1990 meant that Ken Bruce was moved from his mid-morning show to a late-night slot. Coming in now at 9.30am was Judith Chalmers in a one and half show, between Derek Jameson and Jimmy Young, offering ‘requests and dedications with your choice of music for that special occasion.’ I can only assume that it was due to Wish You Were Here...? filming commitments that she wasn’t on Radio 2 every week. By October 1990 Katie Boyle was presenting the show before Judith returned again from April to September 1991.

Here’s a clip of Judith on her Radio 2 show from 2 July 1991 and it’s a world form today’s Radio 2 with “oh, jolly good indeed” and “here’s a good old song from the mid-60s” and special 90^th birthday messages for veteran commentator Rex Alston. And who should be singing the song from the mid-60s but the very same Dave Berry and the Cruisers that she introduces in the Ken Dodd show.

In September 2017 Judith returned to Radio 2 for a special week of Tracks of My Years to coincide with the 50^th anniversary of the station. Here she is taking to Ken Bruce about her start in radio, her admission that’s she not great at banter, her time on Radio 2, Radio Goes to Town and excitement at sitting next to Ken on her sofa.   

Judith Chalmers 1935-2026