Questions on
sport are always a part of any general knowledge quiz but radio has, with just
a couple of minor exceptions, pretty much stayed away sports-based quiz shows
for the last 30 years. Meanwhile, on the telly you could watch, at least until
recently, A Question of Sport or A League of their Own, though the BBC
offering had long since strayed from anything approaching a serious quiz and
Sky’s show was likened to A Question of
Sport without sports questions.
From the
1960s through to the 1990s radio regularly posed sports questions in Sporting Chance, Brain of Sport, Games People Play and a pre-tv version of They Thinks It’s All Over. Of more
recent vintage, and those minor exceptions I mentioned above, are a talkSPORT Sports Quiz and even some radio editions
of A Question of Sport, both
broadcast during the Covid pandemic.
In the 1940s
and 50s there were occasional sports quizzes on BBC radio such as the wartime Captain Cuttle’s Sports Quiz during Ack-Ack, Beer-Beer (the magazine for the
Anti-Aircraft, Balloon Barrage and Searchlight Units), youngsters competing in Children’s Hour quizzes or The Younger Generation Under 20 Parade,
this with Rex Alston as question master. The Welsh Home Service put sporting
questions to teams in Sports Forum
(1953-54) and although the Scottish Home Service also broadcast what was billed
as Sport Quiz (1950-52) this turns
out to be a “weekly feature in which experts answer questions on sport put to
them by members of a studio audience”.
Some serious
sports quizzing starts to appear in the autumn of 1957 when Sports Report (Light Programme)
broadcasts an Inter-Regional Quiz; this
pits a team of BBC national sports commentators against regional sports
reporter colleagues. But it was Welsh broadcasting legend and producer Alun
Williams who developed the idea of sports clubs competing in a knockout quiz. Going
out on the Welsh Home Service in late 1957/early 1958 was Top of the League. This saw football supporters clubs talking part
in a Top of the Form fashion, with
the recording made at two venues and the team and a quizmaster at each. Posing
the questions were Alun himself and Ifor Rees. This was followed by another
Welsh Home Service series, again devised by Alun, called Make Your Mark. For the first series in 1958 the slant was towards
the game of rugby with members of rugby clubs answering questions ‘on the laws
of the game, its personalities, their own club and general sport.’ For the second
1959-60 series both rugby and football clubs competed, this time dealing with
‘questions of a general sporting nature’. Joining Alun as question master for Make Your Mark was Cliff Morgan.Cliff also hosted a TV version of the quiz in
1959/60 as part of the weekly Welsh
Sports Parade.
Sporting Chance 24 June 1968
On national
radio the first regular sports quiz was the Light Programme show Sporting Chance (1960-74). The original
chairperson was Brian Johnston and it was devised by Michael Tuke-Hastings (who
later would also come up with the Treble
Chance quiz). Initially an inter-town quiz, later series were also
inter-services and from 1963 invited teams played against a resident team made
up of commentators and sports journalists.Setting the questions was cricketer and scorer Roy Webber who, following
his death in 1962, was succeeded in the role by two more Test Match Special statisticians: Arthur Wrigley and, from 1967, Bill Frindall.
The 1964
series of Sporting Chance had the
resident team of Maurice Edelston, Peter West and Alun Williams playing against
a team of four boys representing a school (with the supposition, no doubt, that
no girls would be interested in sport). Rounds included ‘I’ll Always Remember’
in which well-known sports persons recalls a highlight of their career, a ‘Guess
the Year Round’ and a ‘Spot the Mistake’ in which a commentator makes one
deliberate mistake. The questions were in the main confined to ‘Rugger, Soccer,
Cricket, Athletics, Swimming, Boxing and Lawn Tennis’ but apparently, according
to Frindall, horse racing was ‘‘for some unfathomable reason considered
unsuitable”.
Both Sporting Chance, and Brain of Sport that followed, took their
quizzing seriously probably because both were produced by the Sport and OB department.
Michael Tuke-Hastings was, from 1957 to 1972, the producer of Test Match Special which may explain the
reason he approached cricket scorers to set the questions. Other producers of Sporting Chance included Geoff Dobson
and John Fenton who both directed the Sports
Service on Network Three (later Radio 3) and Sport on 2.
A question from the Brain of Sport 1980 quiz book
Sporting Chance was followed by Brain of Sport (1975-89) with heats and a grand final and questions
split between general and specialist rounds. The programmes were recorded at
sports clubs and social clubs around the country. Again devised by Michael
Tuke-Hastings it was chaired by Peter Jones and this time writing the questions
was Chris Rhys. Chris was a rugby player turned freelance journalist who wrote
over 20 books on sport, including some Brain
of Sport quiz books, and also researched ITV’s response to A Question of Sport, Sporting Triangles. After Tuke-Hastings
stepped aside from production duties it fell to Paul Garside, Patricia Ewing,
Richard Maddock, Caroline Elliott, Joanne Watson, Pat Thornton and Gill
Pulsford.
The 13
champions of Brain of Sport are
listed on the UK Game Shows website and there’s a rare recording of a 1984
edition on the Ye Olde Sports Videos channel on YouTube. There were also
occasional Brain of Sport Challenge
specials were, much like the Sporting
Chance days, finalists would take on three sports commentators
Games People Play (Radio 2 1975-78) was a more
light-hearted affair, produced by Richard Willcox of the Light Entertainment
department, It was billed as testing the knowledge of ‘well-known stars of
entertainment and sport’. So, for instance, on the first show it was Mike and
Bernie Winters, Graham Hill and Bob Wilson. Other appearing in the first series
included Eric Morecambe, Bernard Cribbins, David Hamilton, Pete Murray, Chris
Brasher, Henry Cooper, Graham Hill, Fred Trueman and Barry John. Asking the
questions this time was Peter West.
Before its
went over to BBC1 They Think It’s All
Over enjoyed a short life on BBC Radio 5 (1992-4). It was created by comedy
writers Bill Matthews and Simon Bullivant, both of whom had started writing for
Week Ending. Chairing proceedings was
Des Lynam and as team captains were Rory McGrath, who went on to be a regular
on the TV version, and, getting the opportunity to try out his commentator
impressions, Rory Bremner.
From the second series comes this edition that was broadcast on Radio 5 on 21 February 1993, though my recording is of the Radio 4 repeat on 17 July. Des gets the first big laugh of the show with “Meet a man whose rich vocal talents are adored by millions. (short pause) Good evening”. The guest players in this edition are Steve Davis and Roger Black.
Which brings
me to Game, Set and Match and yet
another series with Chris Rhys setting the questions. If this one usually slips
under the sports quiz radar that’s because it aired on the BBC World Service.
Chairing this was World Service sports stalwart Paddy Feeny (so I find myself
writing about Paddy for the second time this year). I’ve little information
about the programme other than it ran for 20 editions over three series in
1993, 1994 and 1995. This recording comes from the third series (I can’t date
it precisely) and facing the questions are hurdler Kriss Akabusi (you’ll
recognise the laugh), hockey player Simon Mason, rower Steve Redgrave and
squash player Peter Nicol. Keeping the score is Louise Friend, extracts are
read by announcer John Stone and the producer is Gillian Grey.
Game, Set and Match
Series 1: 7
episodes August and September 1993
Series 2: 6
episodes August and September 1994
Series 3: 7
episodes in April and May 1995.
Sporting Chance with Brian Johnston, then John
Snagge, John Arlott , Alun Williams, Max Robertson and Peter Jones . BBC Light
Programme (with repeats on the Sports
Service of Network Three) and BBC Radio2 from 16 January 1960 to 16 June
1969 over 10 series. It returned as Quiz
on 2 as part of Sport on 2
November 1973 to January 1974 with Peter Jones as questionmaster. Reverted back
to Sporting Chance November to
December 1974 again with Peter Jones and again during Saturday afternoon’s Sport on 2.
Brain of Sport with Peter Jones. BBC Radio 2
November 1975 to December 1989 over 13 series. The first series was broadcast
as part of Sport on 2.
Games People Play chaired by Peter West. 39 programmes
over four series on BBC Radio 2 between 4 September 1975 and 22 September 1978.
They Think It’s All
Over with
Desmond Lynam and team captains Rory Bremner and Rory McGrath. BBC Radio 5 6
episodes 21 February to 27 March 1992 then 8 episodes 14 February to 4 April
1993 plus two Christmas specials with guests Brian Johnston and John Motson
December 1993/January 1994.
talkSPORT Sports Quiz March to September 2020 with Darren
Bent and Laura Woods or Faye Carruthers or Lynsay Hipgrave
A Question of Sport with Mark Chapman, Matt Dawson and
Phil Tufnell 4 April to 13 June 2020 plus 24 December 2020.
If you have
any recordings of the other quizzes I’ve mentioned that you’d like to donate
I’d love to hear from you. Also if you happen to have any copies of London Calling orBBC Worldwide from the mid-90s please do get in touch.
And the answers to the Brain of Sport 'Who are they?' questions are: Sebastian Coe, Hallamshire Harriers, Alberto Jantuorena (Cuba) and Zurich
He was Mr
Radio 2 for four decades, the warm, trusted ever-present voice who read
thousands of news bulletins and presented hundreds of music programmes. He
deputised for many of the other DJs on the network. His technical
skills and perfectionism meant he was often the link back at Broadcasting House
through dozens of OBs, playing in the records and filling when the line went
down. He spoke for the UK jury for 25 years of Eurovision Song Contests. His
music knowledge and vast collection of LPs and singles informed his later local
radio shows. He was Colin Berry, whose death was announced earlier this month.
All the many
tributes to Colin mention his long service on BBC Radio 2 and his Eurovision
connection but his radio career started in the days of the offshore pirates.
Here’s a look back at Colin’s radio career.
Colin Berry
was born on 29 January 1946 (sharing his birthday with his long-time friend
Tony Blackburn who was born three years earlier) in Welwyn Garden City, one of the 'Brocket babies' born at Brocket Hall, and
educated at the Wembley Grammar School. His first ‘broadcasts’ had an audience
of just two, his mum and dad. Young Colin fixed up the Ferguson
radiogram at the family home in Kenton so that he could play in the discs and whatever he’d taped off the
Light Programme and introduce them.
His first
job was working at one of the stores supplied by his father’s company – Cecil Berry
was a director of Allied Suppliers – but young Colin was desperate to get into
radio or television. Through a family friend he got his break at the London
offices of Granada TV slotting adverts into commercial breaks when he was
just 17. He then joined Westward TV also working on commercials and selling
airtime when an opportunity came up to work on the admin side at Radio
Caroline.
Colin joined
Radio Caroline in 1964 as an Assistant Traffic Manager but after a few months
he was asked to make a tape recording ‘for fun’ that led to him compiling (by
recording the Light Programme news) and reading news bulletins and joining some
DJs on their shows. He appeared on air as Robin Berry as fellow DJ Colin Nicol
was also on the station at that time and management didn’t want two Colin’s on
air.
In 1965 he
started recording commercials, such as the Weetabix Partners in Profit
promotions, and made some personal appearances around Britain to “get better
known”. “I used to get a lot of fan mail which rather surprised me, and even
had a few proposals of marriage.”
With the
closure of most of the pirates in 1967 Colin joined Yorkshire Television as an admin
assistant at their London office in Portland Place, though it was not a happy
time for him as he was sacked for some mistake he’d apparently made but which
management refused to tell him exactly what it was.
Colin in his club DJ days (Surrey Mirror 1 May 1970)
In the late
1960s he was juggling a number of roles: volunteering at the Radio Harrow hospital radio and working
one or two nights a week as a DJ at the Starlite Ballroom, Greenford and the
100 Club on Oxford Street. He would also DJ at Crawley’s Starlight Ballroom and the Birds
Nest in Harrow, where a fellow DJ was Tony Barnfield who, a few years later,
was also a BBC broadcaster and would present features on some of Colin’s
overnight Radio 2 shows.
At the same
time he’d also made the acquaintance of some folk in the radio and music
business and it was thanks to BBC broadcaster Roger Moffat that he got a job as
a music plugger. His employer was the music publishing firm of Campbell
Connelly (started by the song writing partnership of James Campbell and
Reginald Connelly) and apparently he was responsible for getting Mouldy Old Dough to the top of the
charts. So now you know who to blame!
Whilst still
working for Campbell Connelly he freelanced as a summer relief announcer at HTV
in 1971 and in 1972 at BBC Radio Medway (now Radio Kent). At Medway he took
over the Saturday afternoon show Out and
About from Simon Dee. Colin covered the music side whilst sports editor
George Pixley looked after the sport. Due to his weekday work at a music publisher
he had access to all the new releases which helped him build the show for which
he had complete musical freedom. (It also gave him access to both commercial
and non-commercial records that would help build up his home library that he
would often dip into for his BBC Three Counties radio shows). He even had his
own custom jingles recorded with the help of Rod Lucas, who at the time was
producer of Medway’s Teen Scene. Rod
would later provide some drop-ins for Colin at Radio 2.
In 1973 an
opportunity came along to join the BBC at Broadcasting House in the Trailer
Unit for Radios 1 and 2 under Presentation Editor Jimmy Kingsbury. Kingsbury
was looking for a new voice following the loss of Tony Myatt to Capital Radio. As
well as writing and recording trailers the job also offered a position on the
rota of presenters of Night Ride
(midnight to 2 a.m. on both Radio 2 and Radio 1). It was Noel Edmonds that mentioned the vacancy to Colin over lunch one day, and encouraged him to audition; Noel had started at the BBC doing a similar job.
Colin’s
first Night Ride was scheduled for
Saturday 29 September 1973 but when his boss, Jimmy Kingsbury, phoned in sick
for his shift on the Wednesday night/Thursday morning show he ended up been
thrown in at the deep end and doing that one first.
Shortly
after, Colin left the Trailer Unit to become a full-time announcer and
newsreader. During the 1970s and 1980s the work of the Radio 2 announcers was
quite varied. There was the reading of news bulletins on both stations, where
Colin would develop a more punchier approach to reading for the Radio 1
bulletins on the half-hour. Evenings and weekends meant live continuity links
between programmes as well as recording trailers and attending comedy show and
panel game recordings to provide the opening and closing announcements.
Posing with way too many cups of BBC tea for Night Ride 17 May 1974
Many
announcers would also host live shows such as Night Ride,Music Through
Midnight and The Late Show as
well as programmes featuring one of the radio orchestras. Colin was
particularly adept at the live shows, so much so, that when Simon Bates left
the Early Show it was Colin that took
over (for two years) from January 1976, so starting a long association with
that time of day. These 6 to 7 a.m. Early Shows were carried on both Radio 1
and Radio 2, with Colin being the warm-up man for either Noel Edmonds or Terry
Wogan (who was wont to refer to Colin as 'Wallace Beery'), depending on who you switched over to after the 7 o’clock pips. Most of
the BBC local radio stations also carried part of the show so the audience ran
into millions.
There’s a
flavour of what these Early Shows sounded like in this sequence.
It was in
1977 that Colin also started his long association with all things European.
That was the year he first acted as spokesman for the UK jury at the Eurovision Song Contest, a role he held,
apart from in 1980 and 1998, through until 2002. Based down at Television
Centre he would start off with the usual “London Calling, here are the results
of the United Kingdom jury”, though it wouldn’t be until the 1994 contest that
the world eventually saw the Berry visage when results were first delivered to
camera.
His first in-vision appearance as UK jury spokesperson in 1994. Colin's favourite Eurovision song was Take Me to You Heaven, the winning Swedish entry by Charlotte Nilsson in 1999
In 2012
Colin told me how things were organised behind the scenes for the song
contest:“On the day of broadcast the
jury were assembled at Television Centre were they would watch the afternoon
full dress rehearsal and there was a chance for them to hear any of the songs
again if they wished. In the 70s and 80s the London end was under the control
of Light Entertainment Organiser Tony James ...[who] was a great ambassador for
the BBC and did everything with great finesse. He made sure that the jury
members were well looked after, that all the introductions were made, providing
a waitress-service dinner and having studio tours during breaks. When Tony’s
team left in the 90s it was all clipboards and vouchers for the BBC canteen.”
During the
contest itself Colin also had a monitor and a lip-microphone should “Wogan’s
line vanish and there was a need for me to continue commentary. It never
happened, but got within thirty seconds of it one year.”
He went on
to say that “when it came to announcing the UK decision there was an agreed
script but as the years passed I deviated a bit to make it less formal. Others
did too eventually, but they tended to overdo it sometimes, building up the
part”.
The BBC did
acknowledge Colin’s 25 years in the spokesperson role and so threw him a lunch
and presented him with a BBC inscribed microphone but at the same time they let
it be known that changes were planned for the following year (as it transpired
in the form of Lorraine Kelly) and that he’d no longer be required. This was
despite supportive words from the King of Eurovision Terry Wogan who started
his after-lunch speech by saying "I don't know why you’re getting rid of
yer man....if it ain't broke why mend it?"
YouTube user
ESC Clarinet Moon has compiled this video of Colin’s appearances in the Song
Contest voting.
Meanwhile,
back on Radio 2 Colin maintained the European link by presenting the Europe
music programmes (Europe 78, Europe 79 etc. ending in 1982) and
taking over as main host of European Pop
Jury. European Pop Jury, which
had been running at intervals since 1965, featured pop juries in several
countries passing verdict on the latest pop releases from each nation in a
Europe-wide hook-up. David Gell presented the London end (pre-recorded at the Paris
Theatre, Lower Regent Street and later the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House)
until he went back to his native Canada in 1977 when Andy Cartledge, Nick Page
and Don Durbridge all had a go at it. Producer Mel House auditioned them plus
David Allan and Colin to permanently take over the job with Colin getting the
gig until it all ended in December 1983.
Radio 2 had
planned to switch over to 24 hours broadcasting in November 1978 but in the
event, due to industrial action, it was postponed until the following January.
By then it was Colin who was going to kick things off in the early hours of
Sunday 28 January with a four hour stint. He’d spent the previous week popping
into other people’s shows to promote the new service and during Ray Moore’s
Saturday night show was on hand to chat to Ray and link up with BBC2 viewers.
You and the Night and the Music was run on a shoestring. All the
presenters were staff announcers on a daily presenting rota and there was,
according to Colin “a mere ten minutes of commercial needletime. The shows were
full of foreign recordings and studio sessions. Musicians Union restrictions
were hard on music lovers in them there days!” To further pad out the shows
pre-recorded features were also dropped in. Colin presented YATNAM, as it became known, at intervals
until November 1983.
All this
time Colin continued to read news bulletins as he felt he didn’t want to lose
the skill. He was also recording a weekly Golden
Days show for BFBS radio and music shows for Inflight Prodcutions Ltd. At
Radio 2 he was the backstop during many outside broadcasts, playing in the
discs, reading any traffic reports and just been on standby if the line went
down, whether it was an afternoon at the races or the JY prog coming from
Rhodesia or Toyko. This was also the time when if a main Radio 2 presenter was
off they could often call on one of the announcers to cover, which he did for
Terry Wogan, Ray Moore, David Hamilton, Charlie Chester and others. The only
bit of broadcasting he regretted not doing was reading the classified football
results on a Saturday afternoon.
In this
montage we hear Colin across the years on Radio 2 (and Radio 1).
One of
Colin’s best mates was fellow broadcaster Ray Moore, whose shows often followed
Colin’s or who would cover each other programmes in what Ray termed as a ‘Box
and Cox’ arrangement.In his
autobiography Ray recalls that he first met Colin in the late 60s “when he was
a young record plugger who regularly turned up at The George at lunchtime
wearing a baggy pink suit, a very daring number even for those liberated
times.”
Colin and Ray
When Colin
married Sandra Barker in the summer of 1981 their honeymoon was in Corfu. Ray
takes up the story: “Our good friend Colin Berry had married, inappropriately
enough on Independence Day, and had invited the two of us to go on honeymoon
with him and his wife Sandra. It seemed a bizarre idea at first but, given that
the four of us were far from strangers, it began to look quite logical. The
episode took on a rather less rosy dimension when, after five days away, I
became semi-housebound thanks to a boating accident”.
The Face behind the Voice in 2009
According to
the 1983 edition of Who’s Who in Radio
Colin’s likes were motoring, walking and a good pint of real ale. His dislikes:
traffic jams, bad timekeepers and pressurised beer. In later editions the real
ale was still there but now with added likes of the Isle of Wight, Victoria
Wood and oysters with ‘most folk music’ and cricket on the negative side.
On a
personal note I’d been listening to Colin since the days when I first started
recording programmes and clips off the radio in early 1976. Tuning in to Radio
1 or Radio 2 before 6 a.m. it was either dead air or test tones until he came
on with the early show. When I started writing this blog in late 2010 Colin was
one of the people I contacted and, fortunately, he responded. He was always
very helpful in assisting me to identify voices from the past and freely
answered questions on programmes and broadcasters. We swapped airchecks and I
was only too pleased to provide audio for one of his local radio specials on
pirate radio. I was fortunate to meet Colin back in 2015 for a long lunch at
the Bree Louise pub (since demolished). He was concerned that I’d spot him (of
course I did) saying “hopefully you will recognise me.. a good bit more hair missing
since the last photo”. I joked that I’d carry a rolled-up issue of the Radio Times, and I did indeed pop into
WH Smiths at Euston for a copy. We enjoyed a long chat over a pie and several
pints of real ale (naturally). We’d planned to meet up again in 2018 but for
one reason or another it didn’t happen.
As the Daily Telegraph obituary says: ‘Switching
between the soothing, unforced tones of a presenter, and then the authoritative
ones of a newsreader, Berry was skilled at creating the necessary intimate
connection with the listener.’ As someone has commented to me “he had his own
built-in compression”. Apparently amongst Colin’s regular listeners were the
Kray twins with Reggie telling the News
of the World: “We both love to listen to Radio 2. We’ve learned to
appreciate another side of life. One of my favourites is Colin Berry of Radio 2...he’s
a nice fellah.”
Away from
the radio studio Colin made only occasional forays onto television. Aside from
those Eurovision duties he appeared on The
Generation Game, Blankety Blank, Bargain Hunt and Supermarket Sweep, both of these with Tony Blackburn, and just one
appearance on Top of the Pops
alongside Peter Powell on 30 October 1980.
Colin in the Radio 2 studio sometime in the 1980s. He claimed to able to work those faders and knobs blindfold so frequently was he on air
Colin
continued to present shows on Radio 2 throughout the 80s and 90s, mostly late
night or early morning shifts. “The only trouble with early shows”, he said,
“is that they get earlier!” He hosted the weekday early show, with a 4 a.m.
start, from 1984 to May 1988 and the weekend version in 1993 and 1994.
Meanwhile, overnight, he was one of the presenters of Night Ride between 1989 and 1995. Colin’s last billed Radio 2 show
was on 31 March 1995, but it wasn’t actually the last. Fast forward to 2012
when Richard Allinson was doing a weekend 3 to 6 am slot and Colin was on late
news-reading duty when one weekend Richard doesn’t make it to the studio and it
ends up with Colin doing an impromptu fill-in.
Enjoying a real ale with Dave Cash
Colin
retired from the BBC in 2006 but remained on the books as a freelance
newsreader on Radio 2 until September 2012. By this time the plan was for
broadcast journalists to read the news on the station, as they did on 6 Music
and increasingly overnight on Radio 2. Colin’s final bulletin was at 3 a.m. on
8 September 2012 and with “and that is likely to be it from me” he signed off
for the last time, just shy of 39 years of news-reading.
Meanwhile,
over on BBC Three Counties Radio Colin was settling in for some regular weekend
music programmes. He’d already appeared on 3CR in 2004 and in 2008 until early 2009
he was on the Saturday night late show. From April 2009 until July 2010 he presented
a three-hour early evening show known as The
Saturday Club. Both these programmes were also carried on other stations
across the eastern counties to give a fairly substantial audience. From 2011
until 2019 Colin continued to work for the station covering for Richard
Spendlove on his Saturday night programme many times as well as occasional
specials he called A Little Light Music,
one on Eurovision songs (of course), one on pirate radio and, in the last
couple of years, mining a seam of one hit wonders.
From 26
December 2014 here’s Colin remembering the days of the offshore pirates.
Those 3CR
shows were a real mix of musical genres and styles. Colin had a penchant for
light music and library music so often his only source for these, and some rare
pop 45s that he played, were from his own vinyl collection. He was concerned
that the BBC would, in a computerised ViLoR studio setting, still support the
use of record players and his liking for dubbing stuff off onto mini-disc (I
once sent him a pack of blanks MDs to keep him stocked up), especially after
the move to new studios in Dunstable in 2015.
Colin’s
final radio programme, again on one hit wonders, was broadcast on BBC Three
Counties Radio on 25 December 2019. The pandemic the following year, and
changes to BBC local schedules as a result, greatly decreased the opportunity
for further occasional shows.
For about
three years Colin had been unwell and was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. He
died on Wednesday 16 April. He is survived by Sandra and their children
Marina and Jonathan.
In 2012 I
edited together this short sequence of Colin on the radio over 50 years.
Before the
Archers, before the Nashs and Tysons, and even before the Dales, there was one
radio family that had millions of listeners tuning into their wireless sets
each day – and that was the Robinson family. To find out who they were and why
they came to be on air we have to go back to the Second World War.
As part of
the war effort the BBC had split its Overseas Services into five divisions, one
of which was the North American Service (NAS). Seconded to that service were a
number of American and Canadian broadcasters. Heading the service was Maurice
Gorham, who’d transferred over after editing the Radio Times for eight years, and had spent some time Stateside
studying their broadcasting experience.
To appeal to
their North American audience the service had “so far as radio technique is
concerned [be]...presented in a different way”. A drama serial was seen as one
way of providing a distinctive schedule as well as aiming to generate North
American support for the British war effort.
It was Ernie
Bushnell, seconded to the BBC from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who
first floated the idea of having what he termed “a family life serial” (the
term ‘soap opera’ was not used) and that it would “have to be a specially written
script dealing with the daily doings of the average British family, particularly
in war time”.
Hearing of
the proposed serial it was writer Alan Melville (who’d been working as a BBC
producer in Aberdeen and Glasgow before joining the NAS in London) that
expressed an interest in developing and writing it. To help give him a steer on
what North American audiences were used to, Bushnell had brought over some
tapes of US soaps and by March 1941 the programme was ready to go into
production, its title Front Line Family.
The serial would be described, in the words of the London Calling billing as ‘the adventures of the British Family
Robinson in Wartime London’. A later press report explained further: ‘It tells
the adventures day by day of the London family Robinson, the father, the
mother, their grown-up children, friends, neighbours and tradesmen, and gives
overseas listeners a vivid idea of what a typical London family experiences
under war conditions’.
Front Line Family was broadcast six days a week (there
was no episode on Sundays and it was later reduced to five days a week) with
the first episode airing on 27 April 1941. Melville wrote all the episodes for
the first year and a half himself, just over 400 of them, writing one each
evening and then rehearsing and recording it the following morning. They were
recorded three weeks in advance of transmission with each episode airing twice
a day.
This rather
prosaic description of the programme’s genesis is at odds with the story that
Melville often told in that he had the idea for the drama whilst having dinner
with Bushnell during a heavy London air-raid. Apparently they had to duck for
cover under the dining table several times during the meal. In his
autobiography, Merely Melville he
takes full credit for the idea: “in an unguarded moment I suggested to the
Powers that Be that it might not be a bad idea to put on the North American
Service a daily soap opera about a London family Taking It. The Powers, after
some dithering, agreed and said I could have a go for six weeks only, and to
watch the budget.”
What
Melville doesn’t mention in his recollections was the earlier BBC series The English Family Robinson. First
broadcast in 1938, and again in 1940, it told the everyday story of Charles and
Clara Robinson and their three children Joan (20), Peter (19) and John (13). It
was written by comedy actress and writer Mabel Constanduros and her nephew
Denis, with Mabel taking the part of Clara and Ralph Truman as Charles. A Radio Times introductory article references
that this type of drama is typically American: ‘It is not often that British listeners
have the chance to really get acquainted with a set of characters on the air.
The serial feature, which is the backbone of American radio, has made few and
fleeting appearances here’. It goes on to say that The English Family Robinson ‘are as near to real people as you can
expect on the radio.’ However, with just six episodes in 1938 and three in 1940
it’s really more of an earlier sitcom than a radio soap. The Robinson family
continued their lives after the radio series when Mabel and Denis wrote the
characters into the 1943 stage play Acacia
Avenue (a name that would become synonymous with an everyday middle-class suburban
street) that toured throughout the 1940s and a 1945 film titled 29 Acacia Avenue.
The actors behind The Robinson Family are revealed in this photo from 4 May 1946 (Manchester Evening News)
The Robinson
family, Mum, Dad and their three offspring lived at 88 Ashleigh Road. The cast of
Front Line Family weren’t credited on
air but included Burnley-born variety singer and actor Ernest Butcher who played
Yorkshireman John Robinson and Scottish actress Nell Ballantyne was Helen
Robinson, whose exclamations of “what I’d give for a nice cup of tea” became
something of a catchphrase. Then there was Paul Martin (later John Dodsworth) as
elder son Dick who served with the Auxiliary Fire Service, Tony Halfpenny as the
younger son Andy, Nancy Nevison as the daughter Kay (a part later played by
Gabrielle Blunt) and Dulcie Gray as the daughter-in-law who, when she wanted to
leave the programme for a theatre engagement, was written out as being pregnant.
The part of Mary, Andy’s wife, was eventually taken by Margaret Long. Others in
the cast included Wilfrid Fletcher as Mr Bowker, Beatrice Varley as Mrs
Williams, Charles Lamb as Freddy Williams, Dorothy Smith as Maggie Mackenzie, Gladys
Young as a family friend plus Judith Fellows, John McLaren and Alec Ross.
Others who
appeared in Front Line Family and
found post-war acting fame were Harry Fowler who played a young lad called
Charlie Williams who was always getting into trouble and worrying that the war
would end before he was old enough to fly a bomber; Joy Shelton, co-starring as
PC Archibald Berkeley-Willoughby’s girlfriend Joan in The Adventures of PC 49, and Jean Anderson, best remembered as Mary
Hammond in BBC tv’s The Brothers.
Each episode
would end with a cliff-hanger explained Melville: “usually a bomb coming down
on what was obviously going to be a direct hit (it wasn’t) or the news that Mrs
Robinson’s sister’s semi-detached had been hit by an incendiary and was a raging
inferno with Mrs Robinson’s sister trapped in the upstairs bedroom or that
young Andy Robinson in Fighter Command had been reported shot down over enemy
territory.”
The serial
was proving so successful that by late 1941 it was also carried by the Pacific
and African Services as well as on the General Overseas Service (now the World
Service) itself. It was possible for short-wave listeners in the UK to tune in,
which many did. It was also re-broadcast by radio stations in Canada though
not, it seems, by any in the USA.
By May 1942
the BBC noted that Front Line Family
“seems to have created more general interest than any other programme except
the news, the talks by Priestley and Wickham Steed and possibly Newsreel”. There’s a story that when a
BBC official visited Field Marshall Montgomery’s caravan, Monty’s first words
were: “I’ve a bone to pick with you. Why have you changed the time of The
Robinsons so that we can’t hear them?”
It was also
reported that during the war two American women were interned in Italy and
wrote to the BBC: “As enemy aliens in an enemy land we risked the death penalty
over four years in order to listen to Front
Line Family. Even when bombs were falling and shells whistling overhead, we
never missed a single instalment.”
Remarkably
two episodes of Front Line Family
have survived (they were recorded on discs at the time). A clip from an episode
is on BBC Sounds under History of the BBC, however that full episode can be
found under the World Service Audio webpage maintained by Sean Saunders and
taken from tapes donated by former World Service broadcaster, the late Andrew
Piper. In the episode from 13 June 1941 (the BBC website is wrong on two
counts: the date is not 4 July 1941 and the station is not the National
Programme) a German fighter plane crash lands whilst John and Andy are on their
way home, there are some other domestic scenes in which we hear the rest of the
family and finally there’s one of the cliff-hangers that Melville mentions. In
a second episode, number 59, from 4 July 1941 the story is all about Andy who has
started his RAF training – he would later become a Squadron Leader.
The first Radio Times billing for the serial on the Light Programme 30 July 1945
The end of
hostilities could have also spelled the end of the Front Line Family, but it was to enjoy a post-war civilian
existence. This decision didn’t enjoy the full support of everyone in the BBC.
Famously the Head of Drama, Val Gielgud, was against such “ludicrous”’ American
style serials which he saw as ”the lowest common denominator” and that it
diverted production staff and time away from more worthy productions. In an
internal memo he wrote that: “Front Line
Family, as it stands, is not a programme fit for any home service” and
concluded that “we shall be creating a Frankenstein monster whose influence
upon programmes will be bad, though its popularity may be immediately good”.
But Gielgud
was overruled by the man who had originally commissioned it, Maurice Gorham,
who was now the controller of the new Light Programme and wanted a regular
drama serial in its schedules. So on Monday 30 July 1945, the second day of
broadcasting on the Light Programme, the drama continued in an early afternoon
slot five days a week with much the same cast as before and now billed as The Robinson Family. It would also
continue to be heard on the General Overseas Service.
Much like
the wartime broadcasts the cast of The
Robinson Family was not widely advertised on air or in print, the Radio Times, for instance, never
published a cast list. One can only assume this stems from Val Gielgud who
wrote in a memo to Gorham: “When you consider that the type of actors employed
will be those of about the third rank – for no-one above that would accept an
engagement of this kind – it is clear that they will see themselves provided
with a comfortable livelihood for which, ultimately, they will be able to
demand salaries equivalent, for example, to the best people in our Repertory.”
However, I
have traced a few names of those who appeared in the serial including Shelagh
Kennedy as the Irish maid Biddy Sullivan, Dick’s wife Connie was played by
Joyce Heron, Janet Barrow as Aunt Maud, Olwen Brookes as Mrs Blair plus Susan
Scott, Thea Wells and John Carol. The narrator of The Robinson Family was Douglas Burbidge and in later episodes
Ellis Powell appeared as Mrs Williams, both would go on to star in Mrs Dale’s Diary as Jim and Mary Dale.
By March
1946 Front Line Family and The Robinson Family had jointly clocked
up 1,300 episodes. On 23 July of that year the characters of Mr and Mrs
Robinson made an appearance on television in a broadcast from Alexandra Palace
in which a Ministry of Food official talked about bread rationing and ration
books. Mr and Mrs Robinson were there to ask the official about the food
coupons. In one episode Sir Malcolm Sargent is supposed to have made an
anonymous appearance
The
afternoon audience was over 3.5 million, with the loyal listeners welcoming the
Robinsons as friends: “A crisis in the family brings advice in the next post.
An injury to some member of the family brings sympathetic letters and telephone
calls. When Mrs Robinson was ill once, there were extremists who wired threats
of reprisals if she was allowed to die.” (Daily Express 29.4.46)
From 31 March
1947 the title was changed to just The
Robinsons by which time the drama department had created a separate
division to handle drama serials (Dick
Barton-Special Agent having started the previous October).
Very few
script writers, of which there were about 15 in total, get credited in the
pages of the Radio Times but they
included Ronald Gow, Adrian Thomas A.W. Colley, Lesley Wilson, Ted Willis and
Jonquli Antony. Both Willis and Antony would write for Mrs Dale’s Diary. Joan Littlewood, of Theatre Workshop fame,
provided scripts. In her autobiography it gets the briefest of mentions:
“Marjorie (BBC producer Marjorie Banks) managed to get me a temporary pass. We
wrote a series between us, Front Line
Family, precursor of today’ soaps.”
By October
1947 the BBC revealed that The Robinsons
would be coming off air at the end of the year. It appears that tensions
regarding the production – the continuing battle between Drama department and
the Light Programme management – rather than a drop in listeners led to its
demise. It was ironic then that its replacement, Mrs Dale’s Diary, was yet
another domestic drama that would ultimately run for 21 years.
And so,
after seven years, on Christmas Eve 1947, The
Robinsons were heard celebrating their last Christmas. There were protests,
if a little muted, with the BBC receiving just over 200 letters in the January
mourning the loss.
But that
wasn’t quite the end of the Robinson family saga as, in 1948, Jonquil Antony
and Lesley Wilson wrote a follow-up novel The
Robinson Family. Later that year Antony also wrote a stage version of The Robinson Family that had a short run
with Nell Ballantyne in the cast. It was revived in August 1949 in Belfast and
then toured English theatres through until the following January. This touring
version starred Hylton Allen and Renee Kelly as Mr and Mrs Richardson. And with
that the Robinsons disappeared into post-war oblivion.
Tomorrow
morning BBC Radio 4 will, for the last time, broadcast the early morning News Briefing. A fixture of Radio 4’s
schedule for nearly half a century it’s yet another victim of financial cuts.
News Briefing is a 13 minute round-up of
international and national news, a full weather forecast, sports news, review
of the newspapers, business news, sports news and ending with a on this day in
history feature.
The cuts in
the news division means not only the end of News
Briefing but also, from next month, that World Service bulletins will be
carried overnight on Radio 2, Radio 5 Live and BBC local stations.
Radio Times billing 3 July 1978
News Briefing, read by Eugene Fraser, was first broadcast as a 10-minute
bulletin at 6 am on Monday 3 July 1978 as part of a refresh which saw Today start at 6.30 am and the dropping
of the two editions of the notorious Up
to the Hour sequences.
The weekday
edition was dropped from 3 April 1998 leaving just the Saturday and Sunday
briefings. From that date on weekdays Radio 4 opened at 5.30 am with a World News bulletin followed by the Shipping Forecast. The World News is dropped at the end of
April 2000 and Radio 4 starts the day at 5.35 with the Shipping and Inshore Forecast. Meanwhile, from March 2003, the
Sunday edition, now reduced to 5 minutes, is just described as a news summary.
Radio Times billing 2 May 2006
On 2 May
2006 News Briefing returned as a
seven days a week programme of 13 minutes with a 5.30 start, after the Shipping Forecast, where it has, until
this week, remained. There was a brief hiatus during the Covid-19 pandemic when
it was dropped from 30 March 2020 and Radio 4 started to leave the World
Service at the slightly later time of 5.32 for the Shipping Forecast. News
Briefing returned on Monday 13 July 2020.
The last News Briefing airs tomorrow at 5.30 am.
From Monday (24th) Radio 4 will leave the World Service at 5.00 am
for a news bulletin followed by Yesterday
in Parliament which moves back over from Radio 4 Extra where it has been
for the last year. There’ll be repeats at times when Parliament isn’t in
session. The Shipping Forecast moves
to 5.34 am followed by, as usual on weekdays, Prayer for the Day and Farming
Today.
Some audio
now, and the earliest News Briefing I
can lay my hands on comes from Tuesday 3 February 1998 where the lead story
centres on the libel suit by Richard Branson against GTech in the bid to run
the National Lottery. The reader is Andrew Crawford and there are correspondent
reports from Torin Douglas, Jon Silverman and Paul Reynolds. The weather
forecast is delivered by Sarah Wilmshurst and with the sports news it’s Garry
Richardson.
The second
edition dates from Saturday 29 September 2012 and is read by Corrie Corfield.
The weather forecaster is Chris Fawkes and the sports news read by Seth Bennett
with a report from golf correspondent Ian Carter.
After News Briefing was dropped during the
2020 lockdown it was, in the world of announcer Jane Steel an “auspicious date”
when it returned on 13 July. Here’s how the full morning sequence panned out
with the World Service handover, the Shipping Forecast read by Ben Rich and
then Jane with News Briefing. The business
report is by Andrew Wood and the sports report by Paul Sarahs.
The final News Briefing on 23 March 2025 was read by Jane Steel.
Conch (noun) a thick heavy spiral shell occasionally bearing long
projections of various marine gastropod molluscs of the family Strombidae.
Give Us A Conch
(later The Conch Quiz) was a
light-hearted natural history quiz that ran on BBC Radio 2 between 1984 and
1987. Teams wrestled with “animal sounds, songs and riddles” in an attempt to
win the (virtual) “glittering Conch Shell”.
Given its subject matter it’s perhaps not surprising that it was
produced by the Bristol-based Natural History Unit, with programmes recorded at
the city’s Watershed Theatre.
Chairing every edition was Paddy Feeny (pictured with conch above), at the time
co-chairing Top of the Form and
presenter of the World Service sports service Saturday Special. Paddy told the Radio Times: “We’re so surrounded by scientific hardware these days
that I get the impression people just can’t hear enough about natural history”.
He later confessed that chairing the quiz has “turned me into a real enthusiast.
I now read books on the subject just so that I can suggest a few questions.”
The panellists were a mix of zoologists, botanists and so
on, and showbiz guests chosen for their particular interest in the subject such
as Frank Thornton, Eric Morecambe, Spike Milligan, Bill Oddie, Bernard Cribbins
and Andrew Sachs. (They had all previously appeared as guests on Sounds Natural with Derek Jones,
episodes of which have been repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra). Folk that regularly worked for the Natural
History Unit also popped up, names such as Derek Jones, Tony Soper and Johnny
Morris. For later episodes they split into two teams captained by Pam Ayres
(sometimes Don Maclean) and marine biologist Dr Sheila Anderson.
The questions were set by Kate Tiffin and later Tess Lemmon,
both of the Natural History Unit. Kate went on to write natural history books
and contribute to the BBC Wildlife
magazine. The producers were Melinda Barker (for series one and two) who also
produced Radio 4’s The Living World.
She later married wildlife film director and producer Alastair Fothergill.
Producing series three and four was John Harrison who was with the BBC in
Bristol for 18 years from 1973, working mainly on The Living World with Derek Jones
Give Us A Conch
ran for 20 episodes in 1984 and 1985 and came back in late 1985 for a further
18 episodes as The Conch Quiz. Other
than the last series being aired on the BBC World Service the quiz has never been
repeated, so this is a rare opportunity to hear what it was all about. From 1st
January 1985 this is the first programme in series two with Don Maclean, Derek
Jones, Sheila Anderson and zoologist Professor Mike Stoddart. The continuity
announcer is Jean Challis.
It’s a week later, 8th January 1985, for the
second episode with Pam Ayres, Johnny Morris, Sheila Anderson and Mike
Stoddart. The announcer at the end of the recording is Nick Page.
Give Us A Conch series details
Series 1: 25 January to 28 March 1984 (10 episodes)
Windsor Davies, Andrew Sachs, Pat Morris, Chris Mead, Frank
Windsor, David Shepherd, Mike Stoddart, Wilma George, Carol Drinkwater, Derek
Jones, Michael Clegg, Sheila Anderson, Bill Oddie, Tony Soper, Penny Anderson,
Malcolm Coe, Eric Morecambe, Pam Ayres and David Bellamy
Series 2: 1 January to 5 March 1985 (10)
Don Mclean, Derek Jones, Sheila Anderson, Mike Stoddart, Pam
Ayres, Johnny Morris, Tom Baker, Michael Clegg, Judy Geeson, Jeremy Cherfas,
Jeffrey Boswell, Frank Thornton and Andrew Sachs
Name changed to The Conch Quiz
Series 3: 25 November 1985 to 13 January 1986 (8)
Don Maclean, Sheila Anderson, Irene Christie, Malcolm Coe,
Pam Ayres, Bernard Cribbins, Michael Clegg, Roger Lovegrove, Bill Oddie, Johnny
Morris and Joe Henson
Series 4: 24 January to 28 March 1987 (10)
Pam Ayres, Sheila Anderson, Don Maclean, Roger Lovegrove,
Johnny Morris, Michael Clegg, Joe Henson, Bernard Cribbins, Peter France, Spike
Milligan and Lionel Kelleway
This series was repeated on the BBC World Service August to
October 1987
The answers to the picture quiz are (l-r) a slug, a North American salamander, a furry armadillo
When Winston Churchill died on 24 January 1965 the BBC went
into full obit mode, a special Radio
Times supplement printed and plans made to broadcast the state funeral on
Saturday 30th (1) But the relationship between the former Prime
Minister and the Corporation had always been problematic to say the least, even
during their ‘finest hour’ in World War II.
The antagonism stemmed from, on one hand, Churchill’s belief
that the Government should be able to commandeer the BBC to broadcast whatever
messages the Government decreed and, on the other, the BBC’s (both as a company
and a corporation) battle to retain its hard-won independence. A continuing
story of our times, of course.
During the war Churchill was intent on clipping the wings of
the BBC and issued a memo that stated that “the Ministry of Information will
take full day-to-day editorial control of the BBC and will be responsible for
both initiative and censorship.”Back in
1933 he told the Commons that “these well-meaning gentlemen of the British
Broadcasting Corporation have absolutely no qualification and no claim to
represent British public opinion.”
But the first run-in between the politician and the BBC was
during the nine-day General Strike of May 1926 when it fell to managing
director John Reith to ward off any takeover.
Baldwin had given the job of editing The British Gazette to his then Chancellor, Winston Churchill, a
former journalist himself, of course, as a war correspondent for a number of
newspapers around the turn of the century. Churchill viewed the strike as some
form of Bolshevik revolution and was “prepared to resort to extreme measures”
to put it down.
One positive outcome for the BBC was the dropping, albeit
temporary, of the requirement to only broadcast evening news bulletins, so as
not to adversely affect newspaper circulation. During the strike bulletins went
out at 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm, 7 pm and 9.30pm each day. (2) The news, put together
by a hastily formed team, was sourced from Reuters and from the Admiralty and
many of the bulletins were read by Reith himself, his deputy, Rear-Admiral
Charles Carpendale and chief engineer Peter Eckersley. It is claimed that
senior management went on air as the announcers sounded ‘nervous’, though
announcer Stuart Hibberd claims that is was just due to the increased frequency
and length of each bulletin. Reith himself was at the microphone both when the
strike was officially announced and when it was called off.
Whilst Churchill was keen to invoke the emergency provisions
on the BBC, this was not the opinion of the majority of the Government,
including Baldwin who was more emollient. In a meeting with the Reith, Baldwin
and John Davidson (Deputy Chief Civil Commissioner acting as vice-chairman of
the Emergency Committee and liaison between the PM, Churchill and the BBC)
Reith noted in his diary that the PM “said he entirely agreed with us that it
would be far better to leave the BBC with a considerable measure of autonomy and
independence. He was most pleasant.”
The General Strike and the battle lines between Churchill
and Reith have been explored in three dramas, one for the stage and two radio
productions. The most recent radio programme to explore the working
relationship between the two men is the 2022 Drama on 3 production Churchill
versus Reith. Aware that most of the main protagonists that lock horns are
male, writer Mike Harris decided to give Reith’s trusted secretary Isobel
Shields (played by Emily Pithon) a voice and make her the narrator, “because secretary’s
know everything”. This helps to lend lightness and humour to what would
otherwise be a dry subject. There is also focus on Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson,
‘Red Ellen’ (played by Helen O’Hara) who, writing in the Radio Times in late May 1926, accused the BBC of causing “pain and
indignation” and that she “felt like asking the Postmaster-General for my
licence fee back”. She might well have added #DefundtheBBC! Playing Reith is
Tom Goodman-Hill whilst Christian McKay is Churchill. That end sequence with
Reith quoting Blake’s Jerusalem is not poetic licence, this did happen on the
night of 12th May, Reith offered thanks to God for ending the strike
and, on the BBC’s role said “we hope your confidence in and goodwill to us have
not suffered. We have laboured under certain difficulties, the full story of
which may be told someday.”
Churchill versus Reith
can be found on BBC Sounds here.
Photo credit Manuel Harlan
At London’s Donmar Warehouse in the summer of 2023 there was
a production of Jack Thorne’s When
Winston Went to War with the Wireless. This starred Adrian Scarborough as
Churchill, Stephen Campbell Moore as Reith and, in a piece of gender-blind
casting, the late Haydn Gwynne as Baldwin. Much like Churchill versus Reith we get glimpses of the men behind the story
in scenes with their respective spouses and mention of Reith’s earlier
infatuation with the young Charlie Bowser. It’s mainly set at the BBC’s HQ at
Savoy Hill (and an impressive set by all accounts with various sound effects
and microphones visible at the back of the stage) with the drama and news
bulletins interspersed with variety acts of the day. No recordings exist but
you can hear the cast, crew and author speaking about When Winston Went to War with the Wireless on the Donmar Warehouse
YouTube channel.
The second radio offering is from the 1990 BBC Radio 4
six-part drama series The Churchill Years
written by David Wheeler. The series focused on “six turning points in his
career” and in this fourth episode it’s the General Strike. The emphasis is
more on events rather than personalities with the story starting with
discussions between Baldwin and the mineworkers - “Not a penny off the pay, not
a second on the day” – and rallying speeches from the likes of Labour leader
Ramsey MacDonald (Hugh Fraser). Churchill is charged with setting up The British Gazette which, in the eyes
of the PM “puts him in a corner and stops him doing worse things” whilst Reith
has a microphone set up at his Barton Street residence so that he can broadcast
at a moment’s notice. Baldwin’s speech for which Reith famously wrote the final
words about not compromising for “the safety and security of the British
constitution” were broadcast from Reith’s study.
Episode 4 of The
Churchill Years titled Class Wars was first broadcast on Wednesday 28 March
1990 and repeated on Sunday 1 April 1990. It was directed by Louise Purslow.
You can hear more about the BBC and the General Strike in
Nick Robinson’s series Battle for the Airwaves.
(1) The funeral was broadcast on BBC1, the Home Service, the
Light Programme, the Third Programme and the General Overseas Service. Read
more about the BBC tv coverage on the History of the BBC pages. The radio commentary for the funeral service is on the Internet Archive here.
(2) After the strike the bulletins returned to their normal
times for 7pm and 10pm. They were moved forward to 6.30 pm and 9.00 pm in early
1927 when the BBC was now Corporation. News was part of the Talks Department
until December 1929 and again between February 1932 and August 1934 when it
finally became a separate department under its first editor Professor John
Coatman.