Happy 70th Birthday to Peter Waters Dingley, better known to
the world as Johnnie Walker.
With a radio career spanning nearly half a century – his
first broadcast was in May 1966 – I’ve chosen this show from 1995 when he left
Radio 1 … for the third time!
Johnnie first said goodbye to Radio 1 in the summer of 1976 when
he said farewell to the UK and followed
his radio dreams in America. Back with the Beeb in the eighties, on The Stereo Sequence, he left again in
1988 for Branson’s Radio Radio, aka The Super Station.Three years later controller Johnny Beerling invited
him back to Radio 1 to resume his Saturday afternoon shows.
But changes were afoot at Radio 1. Johnnie and producer Phil
Ward-Large set up their own independent company, Wizard Radio, to secure the
Saturday afternoon slot under new controller Matthew Bannister. They were
awarded a one-year contract. Come year two there were verbal assurances that
Walker was still safe at the station but within weeks he was given his marching
orders. According to Walker’s
autobiography he maintains he was dropped as Bannister was desperately looking
of savings to fund Chris Evans’s move from GLR to the Breakfast Show.
Here is that full show from Saturday 21 October 1995, but
missing the concert featuring Hole. So there is, you might say, a hole in this
recording! Packed full of guests you’ll hear Nick Cave, Neil and Tim Finn, Emmylou
Harris, Chrissie Hynde, Nanci Griffith, and Bruce Springsteen.
Parky’s career is pretty well-known: cub reporter on the South Yorkshire Times, National Service
(Private Parkinson RAPC, army number 23131269), back to Civvy street and
reporting for the Barnsley Chronicle,
Yorkshire Evening Post, Manchester Guardian, ABC Television (at
their Didsbury studios), down to Fleet Street to work on the Daily Express, back north to Granada TV
(Scene at 6.30 and Cinema), a stint with the Beeb on 24 Hours, sports
column in the Sunday Times and a daytime show for Thames, Tea Break. And all this was before the start of his
eponymously-titled chat show.
As Michael recalled in his autobiography; “Tony Preston was
head of variety at the BBC. One day in the spring of 1971 he called and said he
wanted to suggest me as the host for a new late-night talk show the BBC was
contemplating, Would I be interested?” By then he was thirty-six and “never
imagined the show I was about to do would define my working life for the next
thirty-six years”.
Meanwhile over on BBC radio Michael was fast becoming ‘Parky
the DJ’ on Radio 2. In 1969 he was one of the presenters of Late Night Extra and a couple of years
later on the rota for the daily magazine show After Seven. There were also stints deputising for Pete Murray on Open House.
On Radio 4 he was an occasional panellist on Any Questions and teamed up with wife
Mary on the talk show Mr and Mrs
Parkinson. In 1971 and 1972 he was an occasional presenter on Today. In late 1985 there was a six-part series titled Michael Parkinson, though you didn’t
hear that much of him. Instead it was merely a vehicle for clips from the BBC’s
Sound Archives. In this, the first edition from 12 November, you’ll hear
Malcolm Muggeridge, Jonathan Miller, Round the Horne, Robb Wilton, Arthur
Marshall, Peter Sellers and a classic interview about the delights of living in
Tunbridge Wells that you’ll have probably heard before.
When Parkinson himself had appeared on Desert Island Discs in 1972 he’d found it “a profoundly depressing
experience.” So when some thirteen year later Radio 4 controller David Hatch
asked him to take over the show following the death of its creator Roy Plomley
he had “reservations”.
“The problem”, opined Parky, “was Plomley himself. He seemed
bored with the show, not the slightest bit interested in the guest’s story,
more in favour of a long lunch at the Garrick with a bottle of wine before the
interview took place in what seemed like a broom cupboard at Broadcasting
House.” Plomley’s widow, Diana Wong,
didn’t think much of the appointment, favouring either John Mortimer or Richard
Baker, and thought Michael not “civilised enough”.
With his journalistic background the interview part of Desert Island Discs became more probing
and enquiring, perhaps a little intrusive at times, but this was to become the
template of the show ever since. Michael’s first guest when DID returned to the airwaves in January
1986 was the film director Alan Parker. This is my recording of the full show.
Parky’s tenure on Desert
Island Discs lasted until March 1988. Two years he was one of the re-launched
LBC Newstalk team, along with his old TV-AM colleague Angela Rippon. His daily
mid-morning show ran for a couple of years.
Aside from the cinema and the Great American songbook Michael’s
other passion was sport. Between 1994 and 1997 he presented the weekly Radio 5
Live show Parkinson on Sport.
Parkinson’s Sunday
Supplement first aired on 31 March 1996 as part of a number of schedule
changes implemented by controller Jim Moir, who’d joined the station the
previous November. Moir’s objective was “to gain listeners, especially among
the group that every radio station in the country is fighting for – the
fortysomethings. My first changes are to signal to them that Radio 2 is on the
move on Saturdays and for two hours on Sunday. We want to share our music with
a generation that feels a bit dispossessed and give them a radio station that
doesn’t just play hits in a repetitive way.” For listeners to the Sunday Supplement this inevitably led to
plenty of plays for Sinatra, Jamie Cullum and Diana Krall.
This is a full show from late in the programmes run and was
broadcast on Radio 2 on 4 November 2007. Michael’s guests are John Dankworth
and Cleo Laine. Helping to review the Sunday papers is Gillian Reynolds and the
entertainment guide is provided by Hilary Oliver.
By 2007 Michael had announced his retirement from regular
broadcasting, signing off from both the Sunday
Supplement and his TV chat show, now over on ITV. Of course he never quite
said goodbye. In the interim he’s spent much of the time popping on TV in perfecting
his role as an old curmudgeon remarking how TV production at the BBC isn’t what
it was and meantime offering daytime viewers of a certain age a free Parker
pen. On Radio 2 there have been two series of My Favourite Things.
Alan Dedicoat - aka Deadly for any TOGs reading this - the
voice of BBC Radio 2, completes his last news-reading shift this Friday.
His is the voice of the daytime bulletins, delivered with
such clarity and assurance. He’s also the first voice you hear when that emergency
tape kicks in, an increasingly common experience of late.But after 28 years with the station Alan is,
as they inevitably say, ‘hanging up his headphones’. At least as far as Radio 2
is concerned that is. His ‘Voice of the Balls’, Strictly and Children in Need
work continues as before.
Alan joined the station in 1987 from BBC local radio, Birmingham
(later WM) and then Devon, as a newsreader and continuity announcer. Back then
newsreaders were also expected to take a turn on some of Radio 2’s music shows
such as Nightride and The Early Show. As the presenting and continuity
work was phased out Alan would become the station’s senior newsreader but
continued to provide some of the pre-recorded station links and announcements.
In late 2012 a number of long-serving newsreaders left Radio 2 and Alan became the
last survivor of the old-school newsreader/announcers.
In this montage you’ll hear Alan reading the news, providing
station information, hosting The Early
Show, enjoying some banter with Terry Wogan and Paul Walters and confessing
all (well not quite) on Simon Mayo Drivetime.
Image a world in which you could get “all your music and
videos online without ever leaving your home”. I know. It’ll never happen!!
This vast explosion of change in cyberspace and
interactivity was on the horizon when BBC Radio 1 presented their Interactive Radio Night in March 1995.Twenty years ago cutting edge was a CD-ROM and
the concept on sending an email was still a novelty.
Guiding listeners through the technology are Evening Session presenters Jo Whiley and
Steve Lamacq, with help from “space cadet” William Franklyn.
The three-hour show, that went out on Sunday 26 March 1995,
is here condensed into a 45-minute slice.
Incidentally the web address of “http://www.bbcnc.org.uk/online/radiointeract/”
no longer works.
In the wake of the early 60s satire boom you’d have been
hard pressed to find anything on BBC radio that poked fun at the establishment
or, Radio Newsreel apart, dissected
the week’s news.
The saviour came in the unlikely guise of Nicholas Parsons.
In 1964 Parsons and writer Alistair Foot, who’d worked with Nicholas on The Arthur Haynes Show, worked up a
format for a show they called Listen to
this Space. “We were going to quote from named newspapers, send up the
politicians of the day with impersonations”, recalls Nicholas.
The idea got the green light from Roy Rich, Head of Radio
Light Entertainment, and was assigned to established BBC producer Bill Worsley.
The pilot was co-written with Anthony Marriott with a cast comprising Denise
Bryer (aka Mrs Parsons) and Roger Delgado with songs by Libby Morris and music
from the Tony Osborne Trio.
The story goes that the pilot was not a resounding success,
even the producer thought a full series unlikely. Apparently a tape of the show
found its way to Director General Hugh Carleton-Greene who, seeing its
potential, gave it the nod.
Listen to this Space
finally aired on the Home Service on 23 April 1965 with the only cast change
being the replacement of Delgado, who was unavailable for the series, for Bob
Todd. With Denise providing the female voices, Nicholas was more than adept at
covering the male impressions, though he was joined in later series by Peter
Goodwright and Barry Cryer, who put in a fine performance mimicking Harold
Wilson.
Other cast members in subsequent series were actor David
Cumming and former BBC announcer Ronald Fletcher who, being something of an old
ham, took part in the comedy proceedings much like he’d done on Breakfast with Braden and would go on to
do in Stop the World.
Though now largely forgotten and, of course, like all
topical shows never having had a repeat, Listen
to this Space proved popular and ran for four series, plus a 1968 follow-up
Follow this Space. By all accounts
the ‘Establishment’ loved it with Nicholas Parsons receiving invitations to
visit the House of Commons from MPs that followed the show. In 1967 the Variety
Club honoured him with the Radio
Personality of the Year award.
To give you a flavour of what Listen to this Space sounded like here are extracts from second and
fourth series together with an introduction by Nicholas taken from BBC Radio
7/4 Extra edition of the Comedy
Controller that contained the only known repeat (other than the in-series
repeats on the Light Programme/Radio 2) of the show. The combination of gags,
impersonations and comic songs is redolent of the later News Huddlines (more of which soon).
And before I leave the sixties there’s another
long-forgotten and, more than likely, completely wiped series that took a
sideways look at the week’s news: It’s
Saturday.Starting in June 1967 this
was a Home Service/Radio 4 programme that aired in the Northern region only on
Saturday morning between 8.15 and 8.45 (later 8.20 to 8.45 am) whilst the most
of the country enjoyed From Our Own
Correspondent.
The original host was James Hogg, at the time a Look North presenter and later on Nationwide. By 1969 he’d been succeeded
by Bill Grundy, who’d been mainly at Granada TV, though he had done some radio
work, on the North Home Service Sport
Spotlight and representing the North on Round
Britain Quiz for example.
It’s Saturday was
noted for its “irreverent attitude to the news and to public figures” and remained
a Radio 4 fixture until 1973. However it gained some notoriety in October 1970
during the Tory Party conference in Blackpool when it featured items that
angered BBC bosses and led to the ‘resignation’ of Grundy, singer-songwriter
Alex Glasgow, freelance producer/announcer Jim Walker and reporter David
Bean.
The man in charge of operations in Manchester, Grahame
Miller (Head of Programmes, North) was unhappy with an announcement that went
“Bill Grundy has just been to Blackpool, where apparently a group of people
have taken a week off to hold a conference to condemn absenteeism.” There was also reference to delegates “rolling
over like dogs waiting to be tickled” when Sir Alec Douglas-Home spoke. Finally
Alex Glasgow sang a satirical song about selling arms to South Africa: “I’m
going to sell a little bomb to South Africa. Just a teeny-weeny bomb to South
Africa…”
Programme producer Barbara MacDonald was told to “restrict
the political content”. Alex Glasgow was unhappy about being “pre-censored” and
Bill Grundy was “appalled”. “It’s
Saturday was”, he said, “acerbic about both main political parties. To try
to treat it in this way is to knock all the life out of an extra-ordinarily
lively programme”. It’s unclear why the Corporation chose that moment to
administer a rap over the knuckles but at the time the press noted a recent
letter in the Daily Telegraph from
Tory MP Harold Soref who described the programme as “sneering”, “vitriolic” and
a type of “public filth.”
It’s Saturday ran
for another three years with various presenters: Stuart Hall, Michael Winstanley,
the programmes’ former producer Bob Houlton, newspaper editor Barry Askew and
finally Tony Eccles.
Listen to the Space
All first broadcast on Friday night on the Home Service (later
Radio 4) with a repeat on Sunday on the Light Programme (later Radio 2)
Series 1: 11 episodes 23 April to 2 July 1965 (14 May edition
not broadcast though a LP edition was scheduled for 16 May and listed as a
repeat) Series 2: 13 episodes 26 November 1965 to 18 February 1966 Series 3: 20 episodes 23 September 1966 to 3 February 1967 Series 4: 13 episodes 22 September 1967 to 15 December 1967
Follow this Space Series 1: 13 episodes 11 October 1968 to 3 January 1969
(Radio 4)
With thanks to Dave Rhodes for alerting me to the existence
of It’s Saturday.
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