The juxtaposition of punk and disco makes fascinating
viewing for those of us watching the 1977 Top
of the Pops repeats (Thursday nights BBC Four).It remains uncertain whether 1978
re-broadcasts will go ahead, sans Savile-fronted editions, next year. Here’s
hoping they do. Anyhow, before we leave 1977 here’s a chance to hear Alan
Freeman counting down the hits from July of that year in a Pick of the Pops show on Radio 1 in 1991. Music from Barbra
Streisand, Carole Bayer Sager, The Stranglers, Kenny Rogers, ONJ, Boney M,
Gladys Knight & the Pips, ELP, The Jacksons and Hot Chocolate.
Right is the Radio
Times billing for the edition shown last week. The unnamed “Radio 1 DJ”
turned out to be Peter Powell’s first show.
The piazza
outside the New Broadcasting House has been pressed into service quite a bit of
late; mainly news crews filming BBC management and talking to other journalists.
It’s the new extension of the existing Broadcasting House, the art deco edifice
that was completed in 1932. Variously described at the time as a ‘petrified
dreadnought’, ‘a profane cathedral’, this ‘temple of the arts and muses’ was
celebrating its 50th anniversary when this programme, The Second Tower of Babel, was broadcast.
Here Wynford
Vaughan-Thomas “takes us back in time – down the endless corridors to
investigate the many worlds of sound created within this ‘tower within a tower’
– this ‘Second Tower of Babel’.”
The Second Tower of Babel was broadcast
on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 19 December 1982. The producer is Dilly Barlow.
Hear more about the early days of BH on The BBC and all Thatthis afternoon (and next week) on BBC Radio 4.
The place: Marconi House, London. The
date: Tuesday 14 November 1922. The occasion: the first ever broadcast by the
newly-formed British Broadcasting Company.
Behind the microphone Arthur Burrows,
the BBC’s Programme Director. At 6 p.m. he read the first news bulletin – twice
– once at normal speed and then again more slowly. Items were punctuated with a
chiming clock, actually Burrows at the tubular bells.
This week the BBC has a number of
on-air celebrations to mark the 90 years since that inaugural broadcast.
Here’s my own contribution to the
event, 90 years of radio in 90 minutes, or thereabouts. It’s in rough
chronological order but I sometimes dart around the years to make up some of
the individual sequences. There was plenty I wanted to include but either
didn’t have the recordings or they just didn’t fit. There’s plenty missing too,
nothing to represent Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales for instance. It
reflects my own radio interests and, of course, my own recordings over the
years.
Some material is sourced from the CD
75 Years of the BBC and the LP 50 Years of Broadcasting kindly
digitised by Andy Howells. Thanks also to David Lloyd for a couple of items from
his Radio Moments collection.
Here are some of the BBC90 programmes
to listen out for:
Well how did
you do? Last month I posted The Radio Game, a Radio 4 quiz about broadcasting history that was part of the BBC’s 60th
anniversary celebrations.
I’d like to
say I was inundated with emails in response to the quiz but that would be stretching
a point! Anyway here’s Barry Took with The Radio Game – All the Answers, a programme that was broadcast on Sunday 7
November 1982.
When first researching
this post I attempted the quiz back in September 2011 and scored 43 out of 60.
If
Radio 1 wanted comedy that was edgy and subversive, they got it with Chris
Morris. Though best known for his TV series The
Day Today (“slamming the wasps from the pure apple of truth”) and, most
controversially, Brass Eye (“one
young kiddie on Cake cried all the water out of his body”) Morris enjoyed a
brief, but equally controversial, spell on the nation’s favourite during the 1990s.
Chris
Morris was a radio obsessive and first got into broadcasting whilst still at
university as the student reporter on Radio West. After graduating he joined
the trainee scheme at BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, learning the ropes of
production and presentation.
It
was back to Bristol, on the BBC local station, with a show called No Known Cure that he developed his style
of broadcasting that was put into effect at GLR and on national radio: the
cutting up of news headlines and vox pops, bizarre phone calls, made-up names, portentous
voiceovers and so on.
At
the same time as his Radio Bristol programmes, Morris ended up on the revamped
Greater London Radio. One of his comic creations on this show was the inept
spoof DJ Wayne Carr (pictured above) – sounding not a million miles away from Mike Smash or Dave
Doubledecks.
The
first appearance on Radio 1 was tucked away, out of harm’s way, in the middle
of the afternoon on Christmas Day 1990, at a time when most of the nation is
slumped in front of the telly. The show was not without controversy when Morris
suggested that the Pet Shop Boys next collaboration should be with Myra
Hindley. It was more than three years before he returned to the station.
Meanwhile,
working with Armando Iannucci, he went onto launch Radio 4’s On the Hour, the big break that led to the
TV work. Morris continued with occasional shows on GLR but made it back to Radio
1 in 1994 with The Chris Morris Music
Show – the emphasis was as much on the music as it was the comedy. This
series notoriously got Morris and Radio 1 into trouble, especially the infamous
‘obituaries’ for Michael Heseltine and, prophetically, Jimmy Savile.
Morris
was back at Radio 1 between 1997 and 1999 with the post-midnight black comedy
series Blue Jam. A couple of
appearances in 2000 on Mary Anne Hobbs’s The
Breezeblock was his last radio work.
You
can read more about Chris Morris and download many of his radio shows on the
@cookdandbombd website. In the meantime, back to that first show on Radio 1.
Apparently the BBC don’t have a copy of the two-hour show and I can’t find one
online. I’d like to say I’ve uncovered a copy but unfortunately all I have is
the first twenty minutes. So here is part of The Chris Morris Christmas Show first heard on 25 December 1990.
“This is London” they would intone,
then it was a quick blast of Lillibullero,
the pips and into the World News. But
what of the faces behind the voices of those BBC World Service announcers? Well
every now and again the London Calling
magazine used to publish their mug shots, in fact it was almost an annual
event.
For this post I’m recalling the names
from 1975 when we got a potted biography for most members of the team. All
you’ll see they range from the very detailed (Pam Creighton) to the lightweight
(Peter King). I’m presenting them as written with no indication as to what has
happened to these ladies and gentlemen since.
Brian Ashen
Born in London and educated in
Colchester, he worked briefly for a merchant bank before joining the BBC as a
finance assistant in 1964. He became a studio manager, and then switched to
announcing. His interests include music, reading and archaeology. He also likes
walking, particularly when he can look at a village church and a country pub
along the way. In London he spends much of his time visiting galleries and
museum, and he collects furniture, china, glass and books.
Michael Ashbee
After Cambridge (where he was a choral
scholar) and war service in the Army (which took him to the Far East) he joined
the BBC as an announcer in 1949 and has had a spell in Nigeria coaching
newsreaders and teaching English. This year, incidentally, he plans to holiday
in Nigeria resuming contact with many old friends. His family and his garden
keep him busy, he says, but he finds time to play the tuba in a brass band on
Sundays and sings in a choir occasionally. His hobby is collecting old
photographs.
Ashley Hodgson
Born in Claygate, Surrey, his father
was a dentist. Ashley was commissioned in the Royal Signals, serving in Greece
and the Middle East. After demobilisation tried several jobs including stock
controller for a large chain of stores and a spell with British Rail. Joined
the BBC on the engineering side in 1956, worked in control room and on
transmitters, then became a studio manager and finally an announcer in 1969.
Twice wed, he has a grown-up son by his first marriage and now a young family-a
6-year old boy and twin boys of 4 years. His wife is a teacher. Likes putting
on amateur plays, writing children’s stories, walking, sailing and sketching.
Leslie Tucker
Born in Ramsgate, Kent, he has spent
all his working life in the BBC External Services, entering as a very junior
transmitter engineer in 1942. After 10 years in studio operations, he took up
announcing. He became Chief Assistant (Presentation) in 1973, is in charge of
newsreading and announcing in the World Service and is responsible for all
presentation matters in London and in relay bases overseas. His great interests
are his family, European church architecture, Hollywood musicals, Mozart,
Billie Holliday, and cooking for his friends.
John Touhey
Born in London in 1937, and educated
at Alleyn’s School, Dulwich. After National Service, he joined the BBC as a
studio manager. His interests include music, reading theatre, and food and
drink. He lives in a book-lined flat near Battersea Park and pays frequent visits
to plays, ballet, recitals and the local pub. Says he makes futile attempts to
keep fit by unconvincing appearances on the tennis court.
Ian Gordon
Born in 1924 in New York of Scots
father, American mother. Lived in New York and Paris until he was 15. Says he
feels politically neutral in Britain but is a fervent Democrat-by-adoption in
the United States: his grandmother and Franklin Roosevelt’s mother were
sisters. Ian went to Milton Academy, USA, and then to Harrow in England. Spent
nine years in the British army, including service in Burma, and worked for two
years for ABC in Perth, Western Australia, before joining the BBC in 1952. Has
written 12 books mostly under his full name of Ian Fellowes-Gordon.
Bob Berry
Born in 1943 in South London and now
lives on the Essex coast. He joined the BBC in 1965 as a studio manager and has
been announcing since 1967. He has been married for four years and says he
supports as aging sports car, two demanding cats, and a healthy crop of weeds,
sometimes described as a garden. Likes the guitar, both classical and
folk/rock, and enjoys Baroque organ music. His other hobby is sailing and he is
particularly interested in the history of working sail of the 19th
and early 20th century in Britain and Northern Europe. He presents Strike Up the Band on World Service
every week.
Pippa Harben, Pam Creighton, Ann Every and Meryl O'Keefe
Pippa Harben was born at Bath,
educated in Bristol, and read history at Cambridge. She worked for a time as a
trainee buyer at a big West End store in London and decided it was not the life
for her. So she came to the BBC as a researcher and found it fascinating to
find out the facts and figures of all kinds of situations for the News and
other programmes. Then she moved to programme operations before finally to
announcing. She reads a lot, loves films, makes beer and wine and says she
really works to support two vast cats!
Pam Creighton was born in New Delhi
and lived all over India and Pakistan for 18 years except for five years at
Cheltenham Ladies College. Her father worked for the North Western Railway and
for the governments of India and Pakistan. Pam joined the BBC as a studio
manager 20 years ago and started announcing in 1957. Now she lives in a large
old house in Twickenham, a stone’s throw from the River Thames where she has
designed her own furniture and fireplaces. She comes from a musical family, has
studied the piano and ballet, and has a collection of over 1,000 LP records
(personal favourites: Beethoven, Mahler, Shostakovich, Sibelius,
Vaughan-Williams and Britten) and discs of Dixieland jazz and the big bands.
She has extensive hi-fi equipment as her home, runs the local music club and
presents a 20-minute programme on new classical releases each week in the World
Service (New Records). She is an
expert on gardening, travels widely, reads science fiction and loves cricket
and rowing. And all that seems a very full life for anyone!
Ann Every says she had a sheltered
English boarding school education before becoming a speech therapist. Then she
decided to see what other people did, and tried being an au pair in
Scandinavia, a van driver in London and a scientific worker in a government
office, before joining the BBC as a studio manager with the intention of
staying one year. Sixteen years later she is still with the BBC and lives with
her cat in a little Victorian terrace house in London near the River Thames.
Her hobby is sculpture.
Meryl O’Keefe was born in Nairobi,
Kenya, and educated in South Africa where she began her radio career in the
South African Broadcasting Corporation in Johannesburg and Cape Town (she was
the first woman newsreader). She says she left to join the BBC in London to
gain wider experience and she has certainly done that. She has worked in radio
and television in Britain for 20 years… as a reported, presenter, disc jockey
and newsreader. During her career she has been thrown from a bolting horse in
Brighton’s traffic; washed ashore at Southsea in a Navy diver’s suit two sizes
too big; strapped to a dock harbour; hauled to the top of a TV mast and
photographed among the passing clouds. She considers travel a vital part of
life and perhaps that is why she finds the international atmosphere of the
World Service so enjoyable. She likes music, theatre, ski-ing and camping
around Europe in an old motor caravan.
Peter King
Born on April the First, 1921, and
says that things have never really improved! Grew up in the Isle of Thanet on
the Kent coast and contends that at least this was lucky, for it gave him a
love of fishing and cricket. It is a matter of great pride to him that his son,
after coaching from Knott and Underwood, smashed the blade of his size three
cricket bat with a gigantic hit before his 12th birthday had dawned.
Unfortunately it was from his own father’s bowling. Peter says that he likes
Peggy Lee, Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald, the Restoration period, old books,
furniture, pictures and silver. Dislikes waste, greenfly, and people who do
stupid things because they have pieces of paper which say they should.
Chris Chaplin
Educated at Watford and London
University, he gave up a short career in veterinary research to join the BBC
engineering division in 1963. Five years later he left the BBC to work for a
year on a schools radio programme for the4 Malawi government, returning to the
BBC as a World Service announcer. Like to travel and says that he is rapidly
developing talents as a gardener and general home handy-man to help eke out the
household budget. Also enjoys the theatre and cinema, chess and oil painting.
Peter Reynolds
Born in Scotland but has lived in
Rhodesia and South Africa. After Cambridge, became a captain in the Royal Engineers.
Joined the BBC in 1947 and became entitle to an extended holiday in 1972. ‘Do
something useful’ everyone told him. So he sailed the Atlantic in a small
yacht. His next holiday is a week’s gliding. He is intensely proud of his
family – his wife was formerly with the BBC – and lives in a Victorian house
near the Royal Botanical gardens at Kew. Other interests are music, languages
and mathematics.
Barry Moss
Born in Wellington, New Zealand (where
his father still lives). Came to Britain in 1950 to study musical composition,
and stayed. Drifted out of music and joined the BBC as an announcer in 1966;
now lives in London with two daughters who share many of his interests. He is a
Buddhist and is interested in oriental philosophy and religion. Says that he
questions the principle of a consumer society, as accepted in the West and as
spreading to the East, and describes his hobbies as music of all kinds… and
silence.
Peter Shoesmith
Born in 1936 and grew up in the south
coast town of Bexhill-on-Sea. He went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, had
two years in the army, and then had his first professional engagement as an
actor in his hometown. During the next seven years he appeared in theatre all
over Britain, in addition to several radio and TV plays. In 1965 he presented
three schools series for commercial TV, and since 1970 has worked for the BBC
in TV, domestic radio and the World Service where, in addition to newsreading,
he has contributed 20 talks to Letter
from London. He lives in Wimbledon and enjoys driving, gardening and
reading … he says he’d like to own a bookshop one day.
Roger Collinge
Born in 1924 in Birmingham. Spent some
time with an amateur acting company before joining the RAF. Served in India and
became interested in broadcasting when he linked up with Radio SEAC in Colombo.
Returned to Birmingham to join the BBC and then to London as a newsreader for
the World Service. Lives at Biggin Hill in Kent, a stone’s throw from the aerodrome,
so it is not surprising to find that he is still very interested in aero
affairs. He is married and has one daughter, a lawyer. He likes early Italian
music.
Lindsay MacDonald
Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in
1928, he read music and modern languages at University of New Zealand,
supporting himself by periodic announcing in Wellington. After graduating, he
joined the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, and finally left for England
in 1956 to continue with his studies of the organ. He had a short spell as a
school teacher and then came an offer to join the BBC. Apart from playing the
organ (and searching out interesting instruments in Britain and in Europe
generally); he travels a great deal, particularly in France, and collects
books. He is married to a New Zealander and they have a nine-year-old daughter.
Keith Bosley
Lives with his singer wife, son,
foster-daughter and cat in a house which needs a coat of paint, he says, and a
garden which badly needs attention. He spends much of his time writing,
translating, reviewing poetry or playing keyboard instruments for his wife. His
favourite pastimes are entertaining friends and exploring the countryside on a
cycle. He likes Indian food, Hungarian wine and Japanese crackers.
George Eason
Born in Berkshire in 1938, grew up in
the English countryside, and went to Oxford University. Married with three
children. Passionately interested in music, ranging from Palestrina to Duke
Ellington, Charlie Parker and beyond. Likes reading, English literature and modern
European history.
John Gordon
He was an announcer in the 1950s but
had an ambition to become an actor and went to drama school. He had several
years in repertory around Britain and was seen on television. The he became a
TV announcer in Southampton before rejoining the BBC and producing plays and
arts programmes for the African Service. After several years, which included
two spells in East Africa, he returned to newsreading.
John Wing
Was born in Cardiff in 1928 and
appeared as the boy hero in serial plays at the age of 14. He has worked in
Forces broadcasting and in BBC radio and television. Between his periods of
duty at the World Service microphones, he retreats rapidly to his home in
Hertfordshire where he relaxes with his rose garden, his antique furniture and
a vast collection of records.
In addition Peter Lewis, Tony
Szeleynski and John Stone were pictured (below) but no information was provided.
The above was all taken from the
February, March and April editions of London
Calling from 1975 very kindly loaned to me by Chrissy Brand.
I suspect
that many of you reading this post will, in your teenage years, have spent
Sunday afternoons with your finger poised over the pause button as you taped the
chart hits of the day. A pastime denied todays download generation.
This month
sixty years ago the New Musical Express
published the first weekly 'Record Hit Parade' chart based on record sales – 78 r.p.m. discs at the
time of course – with Al Martino’sHere
in My Heart being the first chart-topper.
Chart shows
based on sheet music sales had been broadcast on Radio Luxembourg since 1948.
On the BBC Pick of the Pops was still
three years off, and it didn’t feature the hit parade until 1958.
Celebrating
all things chart-related is this BBC Radio 2 documentary, Carry On Up the Charts, presented by the king of the countdown Alan
Freeman. It was broadcast on 19 August 2000 and also features Paul Gambaccini,
Dr Fox, Pete Murray, Johnny Beerling, Andy Parfitt, Billboard journalist Fred Bronson and David Roberts, the editor
of the now defunct Guinness British Hit
Singles book. (I've edited out most of the music).
This
Saturday (10th) and next (17th) Tony Blackburn will be counting down the
best-selling songs of each year from 1952 to 2012 on Pick of the Pops.
As Americans head to the polls this
week for the Presidential election I take a look back at some of the radio
coverage of the 1980 election when Reagan first came to power.
That election took place at a time of
low economic growth and the foreign policy entanglements of the US hostages
held in Iran. Shortly before the election diplomatic moves were underway to
secure the release of the hostages. The first clip is the news headlines from Radio
Luxembourg on 3 November 1980 read by Rob Jones. Clip two is the BBC’s Washington Correspondent at the time was Clive Small, here reporting on the hostage situation and its impact on the election outcome on 4 November 1980.
Election Day itself was 4 November and
the BBC’s coverage started just after midnight on the 5th with Brian Redhead
introducing Countdown to the White House. Than over on Radio 2 broadcasting through
the night from 1 a.m. to 7.30 a.m. was the American
Election Special co-hosted by Sarah Kennedy, taking care of the music, and the
ever-versatile John Dunn, looking after the politics. In this clip John is
joined by Clark Todd.
There's a dip into the international
coverage with William McCrory on Voice of America. The in the early hours of the morning (UK
time) Carter conceded defeat to Reagan. The IRN news bulletin at 3 a.m. is read by Carol Allen.
At 6 a.m. Radio 4 carried an extended
edition of Today with John Timpson in
New York and Libby Purves in London. In this recording you’ll also hear from
BBC correspondents Paul Reynolds, Clive Small and Peter Ruff. Reflecting on the result later that
day is Clive Small.
Finally from that evening Radio Moscow’s
World Service seemed to emphasise the low turnout of 53% as against the Soviet
Union’s 100%.
Journalist, broadcaster,
socio-historian or consummate story-teller, take your pick. For 58 years Letter from America provided listeners
with an insight into American politics, culture and history mixed with a little
homespun philosophy, not to mention reveries on New England in the fall and his
beloved golf.
Letter
from America ran on
the BBC Home Service and Radio 4 between 1946 until Alistair Cooke’s death in
2004. Initially the BBC seemed reluctant to commission the series but
eventually it came to be seen as a broadcasting institution; and anyway
Alistair was never going to relinquish it, even recording the occasional letter
from his hospital bed with the BBC in London not realising anything was amiss.
The series had its genesis in the
broadcasts that Cooke made both before and during the Second World War, and the
love affair that he developed with all things American during his childhood.
Composing those letters, pounded out
on his faithful Royal typewriter, from his New York apartment was a world away
from his Methodist upbringing in Salford and Blackpool. At school the young
Alfred Cooke (in 1930 he changed his name by deed poll to Alistair) flourished
at matters both academic and sporting and, on a scholarship, he progressed to
Jesus College in Cambridge. His extra-curricular activities were devoted to the
theatre – he founded the Mummers drama group – music, especially American jazz
– “America called the tune of our leisure” he said – and literary - he drew
cartoons and wrote film and theatre criticisms for Granta. But his two main ambitions were to write for The Manchester Guardian and work for the
BBC. He more than fulfilled both of these, his association with the newspaper
lasting 26 years and that with the Corporation over a 70 year period.
Cooke’s first connection with the
United States came about quite by chance in 1932 through the auspices of the
Commonwealth Fund which invited graduate applicants for two years study; he
chose to study theatre production at Yale. One of the obligations of the fund
was to travel for three months within the States, thus giving Cooke what was to
be the first of many tours across the country that would later do so much to
inform his weekly letters.
That first tour also allowed Alistair
to follow one of his other passions, the cinema, and provided an excuse to
visit Hollywood. He arranged introductions to film-makers and actors on the
basis of sending interviews back to the Observer
newspaper. Remarkably he struck up a friendship with Charlie Chaplin; he
even invited him to be his best man at his wedding. It was the first of many
starry friendships and acquaintances over his lifetime that Cooke would drop
into his letters – Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Bing Crosby, Groucho Marx and
so on.
Although Cooke aspired to obtain
American citizenship – it was a long process only completed in the early days
of the war and leading to accusations that he was turning his back on his home
nation in its darkest hour – he still made regular visits back to Britain. In
early 1934 he chanced upon a headline in an American paper that read “BBC Fires
Prime Minister’s Son”. It turned out that Oliver Baldwin, son of Stanley, had
parted company as its film critic. Cooke fired off a cable to the BBC and,
although initially told the position was not vacant, found himself back in
London shortly afterwards.
Cooke’s first Cinema Talk broadcast went out live on Monday 8 October 1934.
According to Nick Clarke’s biography of Cooke his first script showed a tone
that was “light and conversational”, “mildly self-deprecating”, and “humorous,
but with a clear and serious purpose. Cooke, the writer for radio, seems to
have arrived almost fully formed”.
With his Cinema Talk series continuing Cooke proposed a new programme on
American life that eventually became The
American Half-Hour, a 13-part series running from 6 April 1935. In that
week’s Radio Times he explained the premise of the show:
It will try each week to bring to
listeners, in an entertaining form, glimpses of American life, of American ways
of thinking, and of American ideas, snatches of American music and idiom,
recollections of famous incidents and crises in American history, topics of
current American news clarified by an American correspondent in London, short
readings from American poets and humorists, thumbnail biographies of Americans
in the news, and, wherever possible, the actual voices of Americans famous in
their professions.
Later the same year Cooke returned to
the air with a talk on “the differences in vocabulary and idiom” between the
States and Britain in English on Both
Sides of the Atlantic; a theme he would often revisit in Letter from America.
Spurred on by an extension to his Cinema Talk contract Alistair put
together a programme of American ‘hobo’ songs called New York City to the Golden Gate, he would return toAmerican folk music a couple of years later
and again in his 1970s series for BBC radio. At around the same time Fred Bate
from America’s NBC commissioned a talk for the centenary of Mark Twain’s birth
and a series of Sunday evening talks to New York called London Letter followed.
But Cooke’s major break in the States
came about in 1936 with the impending abdication crisis. News was breaking in
America but the deferential British press had yet to report it. Fred Bate asked
Cooke to broadcast live his perspective on the news using a circuit from
Broadcasting House. As events unfolded NBC installed a Post Office line into
Cooke’s home and he broadcast back to the States some 400,000 words over the
next ten days. Ironically in 1981 he would introduce the American PBS audience
to the ITV drama of the story as part of the Masterpiece Theatre series:
Tonight we are going to show for the first time in this country the whole version, seven episodes of Edward and Mrs. Simpson, the story of
one of the most dramatic crises in the history of the British monarchy. This
was the first voluntary abdication of an English king, which--it staggers me to
realize now since I was there and broadcast about it to this country seven,
eight, nine, a dozen times a day--occurred forty-five years ago in 1936.
Because it was nothing if not romantic, it was very simple then, and now, to
oversimplify it as a case of true love versus the establishment.
NBC was full a praise for Cooke’s
efforts whilst the atmosphere at the BBC had turned a little frosty as, the
Director of Talks claimed, he had “become increasingly difficult about sending
in scripts and conforming to normal procedure”. And anyway the NBC’s cheques
were considerably bigger. Prompted by this Cooke returned to America for good
in 1937.
Working freelance from his new base in
New York Cooke again approached the BBC but they were already in negotiations
with the journalist Raymond Gram Swing to become their main US commentator for
a series of talks under the title American
Commentary.NBC came to the rescue
with a weekly talk of “reviews, criticisms and personal musings, but eschewing
politics” and interval talks during relays from the Metropolitan Opera.
There was still the odd broadcast for
the BBC but his next series came to fruition in July 1938 with I Hear America Singing which used
popular songs to illustrate the social history of the United States.This series was broadcast live from London
but back in New York he was offered a new BBC programme Mainly About Manhattan – nineteen talks starting on 13 October.It was just ‘Manhattan’ to ensure he didn’t overstep the wider brief of Gram
Swing. In 1940 Alistair Cooke wrote to the
Deputy Director-General with a by now familiar suggestion:
A regular talk, a sort of diary of a
country at peace, in style and form like Mainly
About Manhattan but spanning a wider field: taking in two or three topics
each time, touching on life away from the East Coast; on democratic festivals
or celebrations it might be good for Britons to know about; on a new invention;
a great man dead; on a new writer; on American experiments in democracy – the
country teems with projects that are gallantly run. To be called, say, - A Letter from America.
The response from the BBC was as
follows, and one which Alistair loved to quote in later years, “Whilst I think there is need for the USA to
understand the British; and indeed the European situation, I do not feel that
at this stage there is an equivalent need for us to understand the American
point of view”.
Cooke’s work during the war years was
sporadic. He was given the opportunity to fill in on American Commentary for the 7 September 1940 talk and subsequently
did a few more. For the Empire Service there was Pacific News Reel. But overall the Corporation thought he showed a
“lack of considered political judgement”.
Following Pearl Harbour there were a
number of broadcasts on America’s entry into the war and later on more regular American Commentary talks. Away from
politics Alistair was the host of a transatlantic discussion programme Answering You. There was a similar
co-production from April 1944 with Transatlantic
Quiz in which two opposing teams tested each other’s knowledge of the
other’s country (clip below). Cooke was, of course, at the New York end and Lionel Hale
looked after the London team. Panel
members included Professor Denis Brogan, author Christopher Morley, critic John
Mason Brown and, at one time or another David Niven, Eric Ambler, Sir Thomas
Beecham and Peter Ustinov.The quiz
series was very successful and although it finished in 1947 there was a brief
TV version and a further radio series in 1951. It returned to the BBC in 1979
with question masters Louis Allen in the USA and Anthony Quinton (later Gordon
Clough) in the UK.It also spawned the
long-running Round Britain Quiz (1947
to date).
The cessation of hostilities also
brought American Commentary to a
close.It was former head of the BBC’s
American Operations and now Controller of Programmes Lindsay Wellington that
finally agreed to what was initially called American
Letter. At the time Cooke wrote that “it will be a weekly personal letter
to a Briton by a fireside about American life and people and places in the
American news”. The first talk was
broadcast on 24 March 1946, initially, as was the BBC way, on a 13 week
contract. In the event it lasted some 58 years, or 2,869 programmes.
From the start all the elements that
became Cooke’s trademark, his “applied artlessness”, are present: the
anecdotal, tangential approach to events in the news; the historical
perspectives; the measured, almost mesmeric pace.The voice, as he would later comment, had a pronunciation
that was British but “the tune, very often, is American”.
It was a talk on 24 February 1950 about
the reaction to the British General Election that saw, for reasons that nobody
can remember, the change of billing from American
Letter to Letter from America.Contrary to what you might read elsewhere
about the programme it did not strictly continue with the same title throughout
or, indeed, that Alistair read every letter. It is true that he guarded the
programme very closely, and indeed his BBC paymasters and producers eventually
gave him free reign and tinkered with it at their peril – as Radio 4 controller
Ian McIntyre discovered in October 1977.
Time and again Cooke was not prepared
to give up the weekly broadcast. In 1958, for example, a trip to Europe led to
a Letter from England, actually
written on board the Queen Mary on his return to the States.And so it was in early 1965 when he took a
break from writing for The Guardian
whilst he and his wife went on a world tour. From February to May the programme
was billed as Letter from the World.
The Radio Times for 28 February read:
Alistair Cooke is taking a leave of
absence for three months and is going on a holiday round the world. Happily for
listeners he confesses: ’I should feel bound and gagged if I were asked to
desert my first love – broadcasting – for even three months.’ So his weekly Letter from America has become Letter from the World, and may be
broadcast from anywhere along his route through Turkey, India, Thailand, Hong
Kong, the Philippines and Japan
Meanwhile the BBC Overseas Service was
also carrying the programme at the time and Head of Talks Gerard Mansell wanted
to make his own arrangements. As a consequence the overseas broadcasts of Letter from America were written and
read by the likes of Gerald Priestland, Leonard Parkin and Anthony Wigan.
The programme reached its 1000th edition in March 1968 and the BBC arranged a celebratory dinner back in London.
The 1960s saw considerable change in the States and Cooke was able to provide
an alternative perspective to the reports from the BBC’s foreign correspondents.
There was still some disdain that he could gloss over the turmoil of civil
rights and Vietnam and veteran BBC newsman Charles Wheeler accused him of often
“sitting on the fence”. But what he was able to do, in commenting on these major events – take his letters on Watergate for instance – is cut through the ‘noise’ and offer a breadth and depth of knowledge, and a clarity, that no other reporter could offer.
Radio Times 16 May 1963
Although the letters often took their
cue from the week’s news there were times when events would overtake the
content, Cooke having to record each programme about 48 hours in advance of the
first broadcast. Such an event occurred in 1968 when President Johnson declared
he would not be running for re-election after the prepared talk had been
despatched on the subject of the presidential nominations. The broadcast went
ahead anyway but not before the Director of Radio asked Alistair if he might
see his way clear to preparing a standby tape for such occasions. “There’s no
evidence that the standby tape was ever made”, concluded Nick Clarke.
Whilst Alistair often undertook visits
around the States he would only sometimes ‘follow the story’ for his Guardian pieces. He covered America from
New York so that his America “was rich in politics, but politics seen as
ordinary Americans saw it, including from television”. It was something of a
fluke, “a casual chance in a thousand”, that meant he was an eyewitness to one
of the pivotal moments in 60s America, the fatal shooting of Robert Kennedy in
June 1968.
Some of his British audience
mistakenly mistook Cooke for American such was his close association with the
country. But to his American television audience he was the quintessential
Englishman introducing the arts magazine Omnibus
between 1952 and 1961 and doing the ‘tops and tails’ presenting the best of
British drama on the PBS show Masterpiece
Theatre (1971-1992). His 13-part TV series America: A Personal History of the United States was a hit on both
sides of the Atlantic; the book sold over 2 million copies and won him an
honorary knighthood.
Between 1974 and 1987 Alistair
established a fruitful relationship with producer Alan Owen in which, over a
number of series, they reviewed the history of American popular music, with an
emphasis on Cooke’s first love, jazz. These shows were variously broadcast on Radio
3 or Radio 4 and included The First Half
Century, Alistair Cooke’s American
Collection and George Gershwin: His
life and music. Writing about this latter series in the Radio Times of 6
June 1987 Cooke said:
Over the 13 years that Alan Owen, my
producer, and I have been working together on American popular music, the
conviction dawned slowly but surely on both of us that of all the very gifted
man who made the 1920s and 30s a golden age of American song, Gershwin more and
more looks like the truest original.
In the late 1970s three series ran on
Radio 3, the first of which titled Alistair
Cooke’s 1920s was followed by visits to the 1930s and 1940s. A final
round-up programme aired on 9 December 1979 – The Golden Age 1920-1950 – and although it rattles through the
tunes at a fair pace it provides a rare example of his work away from the
weekly letters.
With the passing years Cooke was
becoming something of a broadcasting legend, if only by dint of his longevity.
Although he was often drawing inspiration from what he read in the newspapers
or saw on the television the letters were infused his own recollections and
anecdotes, perfecting “the journalism of personal witness.” According
to a Sunday Times profile “a past Radio 4 controller had said, only half in
jest, that anyone who flew across the Atlantic to sack Cooke would be shot down
by his legions of fans on both shores. The decision was taken ‘at the highest
level’ to allow him to ‘to die at the microphone’ if he so wished.” That was
almost the case.
By 2004 with failing health Cooke was
now finding it more difficult to write and record his letters. Whereas before
he might have sat down at the typewriter and completed it in a couple of hours
it now took him three days. “I’ve had heart disease for a long time and I’m not
up to it” he told The Times in early March of that year. “I’ve been feeling low
now for about two months. When I’ve done my talk I used to collapse. I began to
wonder if I could go on and I can’t”.
His last Letter from America aired on 20 February 2004; there was no mention
of it being his last. During the following week he had intended to record a
couple of carefully crafted sentences announcing his retirement but, to
Alistair’s annoyance, the news leaked out in advance. As a result the next broadcast
just had a few words from the continuity announcer before a selected repeat
from December 2001. This is how it played out on the World Service:
Just a month later Alistair Cooke had
died, aged a venerable 95.
Alistair Cooke 1908-2004
This week the BBC launched (along
the lines of the Desert Island Discs
archive) an online collection of letters.
Next week there’s a re-assessment of Letter from America in a 4-part Radio
4 series from Alvin Hall called In Alistair Cooke’s Footsteps.
The Gary cartoon comes from The Sunday Times 7 March 2004
My sources include editions of Letter from America and documentaries
about the programme plus: Alistair
Cooke: The Biography
by Nick Clarke (Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1999) The
Americans by Alistair
Cooke (Penguin 1980) Letter
from America by Alistair
Cooke with introduction by Simon Jenkins (Penguin Books 2005)
