The programme's popularity (1) was wholly due to the rapport
that presenter Wilfred Pickles had with contestants young and old as he inevitably
asked "What was yer most embarrassin' moment, loov?" Over time the
chat with members of the public took precedence over the quiz element, though
they were always encouraged and cajoled to win the full prize pot of
"Thirty-seven and six!".
Wilfred Pickles had been born in Halifax in 1904 and from an
early age was fascinated by showbusiness and went on to join a local amateur
dramatic society, the Halifax Thespians.
On one occasion, by which time his family had moved over the Pennines to
Southport, Wilfred went across to visit them and ran into theatrical producer
Arthur Belt. Would Wilfred care to read-through a part in his production of The Jeffersons he enquired? The part was
playing opposite the young actress Mabel Mysercough. Wilfred and Mabel would
marry in 1930 and would later work together on Have a Go! "How much money on the table, Mabel?".
In 1931 Wilfred successfully auditioned as an actor for the
BBC's Northern region service in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester. He would
appear on programmes such as Children's
Hour, Songs That Father Sang, King Pins of Comedy and Billy Welcome. Controversially in 1941
he also joined the rota of Home Service newsreaders where his non-BBC accent
shocked some listeners. At the end of the day's broadcasting he'd sign off
with: "Goodnight everybody, and to all you Northerners wherever you are -
good neet".
The idea to use Pickles on the wartime bulletins came not
from within the BBC but from the Ministry of Information. They felt that the
"southerner" was having too much say over the airwaves for the
northern listeners' liking. More intriguingly they also cited security reasons
as his accent "might not so easily be copied by the Germans." To
accommodate this the BBC moved Wilfred down to London and Bruce Belfrage up to
Manchester and almost doubled his salary from £480 to £800. Apparently after
his first bulletin there was a short interlude and announcer Franklin Engelmann
cued in the record On Ilkey Moor Baht'At.
In the event the news-reading experiment failed not only because of the
listener complaints but, by Wilfred's own admission, the news bulletins were
written "by a southerner for a southerner to read, which could make a lot
of difference in the actual choice or order of words". (2)
Have a Go! was the
brainchild of Philip Robinson, a Programme Assistant based in Leeds, in
response to a request from the North Regional Programme Director, John Salt,
for ideas for a "quiz programme with audience participation". The
titles of Quiz Bang (3) and then Have a Go, Joe were rejected in favour
of Have a Go!, though the name
"Joe" didn't disappear entirely. There was an opening and closing bit
of community singing for the audience to heartily join in with: "That's
the show, Joe, tha's been and 'ad a go; Now tha can tell thi friends as well,
Tha's been on't Radio". As you can tell, to quote Russell Davies, the show
was a "festival of ee bah gummery". (4)
The series was initially broadcast to listeners to the
Northern Home Service. The first trial recording of Have a Go! was made in Bradford on 11 February 1946 and the first
actual broadcast in nearby Bingley five days later. According to Asa Briggs "the sense of
popular participation was immediate and warm. Very quickly the original idea of
a light-hearted quiz had been extended, for Pickles knew how to bring out the
personality of each contestant and to reveal the human stories". (5)
In the early editions the producer was Philip Robinson but
by 1947 he was replaced by Barney Colehan (6) giving rise to another
catchphrase: "Give 'im the money, Barney". Musical accompaniment was
initially provided by Jack Jordan but the following year Violet Carson joined
the programme. Violet, a fine soprano as well as a pianist, had previously worked
with Wilfred on many editions of Children's
Hour and would, of course, go on to play the hair-netted harridan Ena
Sharples in Coronation Street. By 1953 the programme was broadcast live
rather than pre-recorded and production
moved to London under the guidance of Stephen Williams with Harry Hudson at the
piano. This was also the year that Mrs Pickles was roped in as "Mabel at
the Table".
And here is a recording of that first live edition as
broadcast on the Light Programme on 17 November 1953 coming from the town of
Ramsbottom:
Have a Go!
trundled on around the country - apparently they never re-visited a location -
until the final edition on 10 January 1967. By now the quiz element had totally gone and
Wilfred would ask Mabel to pass over some unspecified pot of money to the best
anecdote from some (usually) elderly resident of the town.
On the radio at least, Wilfred Pickles' easy-going, man of
the people style meant he seemed destined to travel the highways and byways meeting
the folk of Britain in series such as Pleasant
Journey (1950) , Can I Come In?
(1952-3) and Afternoon Out (1956-61). On
BBC TV there was Ask Pickles
(1954-56) in which he asks "for the things you'd like to see on your
television screen", it was a kind of Wilf'll
Fix It.
Alongside all this the acting continued. His stage successes
included The Gay Dog with Pickles as
greyhound owner Jim Gay, a role he'd revisit on TV, radio and in the 1954 film
version. There was also a long run at Blackpool in Hobson's Choice, again a play he'd star in on BBC TV and
radio. For the Home Service he appeared
in Arnold Bennett's plays The Card
and The Regent. Later there were
roles in films such as Billy Liar and
The Family Way and a starring role as
ageing widower Walter Bingley with Irene Handel as Ada Cresswell in Thames TV's
For the Love of Ada.
Wilfred Pickles died aged 73 on 27 March 1978, Mabel passed
away aged 82 on 28 March 1989.
1 - The BBC Year Book for 1948 quotes that the
audience for Have a Go! topped 15
million. By 1958 it was still garnering 4.5 million.
2 - Quoted in Those
Vintage Years of Radio by John Snagge and Michael Barsley (Pitman 1972).
3 - Quiz Bang had been its original title in the USA
4 - Let's Get
Quizzical - Part 2 broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra on 9 April 2011.
5- The History of
Broadcasting in the United Kingdom - Volume IV by Asa Briggs (OUP 1979)
6- Robinson became Head of Outside Broadcasts for the
Northern region.
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