A Happy New Year to all the readers and supporters of the
blog. As a special treat I'm taking you back exactly forty years and the
overnight show on BBC Radio 2, seeing out 1977 and welcoming in 1978.
This was the third year that both Ray Moore and Jean Challis
had hosted an all-night late show at a time when overnight broadcasting on the
station was restricted to New Year's Eve, occasional overseas sports coverage
and US elections. In 1977 Ray was coming to the end of a stint presenting the
weekend late shows before moving into the early show seat vacated by his mate
Colin Berry. Jean Challis was usually to be found linking families around the
world on Family Favourites.
Live from Broadcasting House the programme also included a
visit to the Hilton Hotel to hear Joe Loss and his Orchestra with Ray making
the dash over to the hotel to introduce proceedings. Sadly that bit of the show
is missing. But there's still just over an hour's worth of audio to savour.
Musically speaking we're still in the period when needletime restrictions means that records - from the likes of Roger Whittaker and Peters
and Lee so nothing too raucous for a party night - were interspersed with the
BBC Radio Orchestra, the BBC Big Band and the Don Lusher Quartet.
Such was the rarity of overnights on Radio 2 that Jean
mentions that listeners to BBC Radio Oxford have just joined and there's a
hello to BBC staff working over in the Bush House newsroom.
John Ireland's illustration for the Radio Times. Whilst Ray and Jean were on Radio 2 over on
Radio 1 it was Pop Into 78 with Kid Jensen and Peter Powell
This recording comes from two sources. The bulk of it was
recorded by Martin Ward, running from about 12.50 am to 1.50 am on New Year's
Day 1978, so all the midnight shenanigans aren't here. Jimmy Kingsbury is heard
reading the 1.00 am news bulletin. As Presentation Editor Jimmy often took
these unsocial hours shifts and he would also have read the 12.33 am shipping
forecast on 1500m long wave - not heard on this VHF recording.
Topping and tailing Martin's recording is my own off-air
snippets of the show opening and then winding-up at 6.30 am.
The original All-Night
Late Show ran at just under seven-and-a-half hours kicking off after 11.00
pm news read by Paddy O'Byrne and Sports
Desk with Tony Adamson. Sarah Kennedy was on continuity duty that evening.
So here's a taste of how Radio 2 sounded four decades ago.
Cue Count Basie with Nice 'n' Easy.
On 14 October 1977 Bing Crosby had just completed a round of
golf. Par for the course, if you'll pardon the pun, as most days the old
crooner could be found hitting it 'straight down the middle'. After all this was the man that had invested
in early tape recoding technology to allow his hugely popular radio shows to be
pre-recorded so he could spend more time out on the course.
Having played the 18th hole at Spain's La Morajela course
Bing was heading back to the clubhouse when he was felled by a massive heart
attack. It was a shocking, if fitting, end to the life of one of the century's
most popular singers whose career had spanned the jazz age to the arrival of
rock 'n' roll and beyond.
Just four days earlier he'd sung in what was to be his last
public performance in concert at the Brighton Centre at the end of a short UK
tour. The following day, Tuesday 11 October 1977, he was at the BBC's studios
in Maida Vale to record some songs with the Gordon Rose Orchestra for a
programme introduced by Alan Dell. That session was Bing's last recording.
The songs committed to tape that October were finally
broadcast on Tuesday 27 December on BBC Radio 2 in an hour long special that
also included songs, recorded at a separate session, by Rosemary Clooney
who'd accompanied Bing on the UK tour.
Here's the full broadcast of Bing's radio swansong as heard
on Radio 2 that holiday Tuesday complete with continuity announcer David
Bellan. This isn't my recording and I don't recall how I came to be in
possession of it, so I can't pass on the usual thanks. I've prefaced the show
with the voice of Gordon Rose explaining how the BBC recording session came
about, this extract is taken from the recent Bing Crosby in The Road to Rock and Roll broadcast earlier this
year.
This year sees the 50th anniversary of that radio perennial Just a Minute. There are some special
programmes this month marking the golden anniversary but on Christmas Day last
year Radio 4 broadcast this extended version of the game with some added, if rather
flimsy, panto elements. Joining the regulars of Paul Merton, Sheila Hancock and
Gyles Brandreth are Tony Hawks, Tom Allen, Rufus Hound, Pippa Evans and Julian
Clary. As ever the chairman is Nicholas Parsons.
The format reverts to a team effort, even if it does
sometimes get undermined, a throwback to Just
a Minute's predecessor One Minute,
Please and there's a lovely nod to the days of Kenneth Williams.
A Christmas treat from Classic FM from this day last year
with a retelling of the Raymond Briggs story narrated by Aled Jones with music
written by Howard Blake.
The Sky EPG had this to say about the last hour of Shaun
Keaveny's BBC 6 Music show on this day last year: "Style icon and fan of
the show Kate Moss co-presents her very own 'Kate Moss Hour' and chooses some
brilliant Christmas tunes. She also tells the 'dancing with James Brown'
story."
When I recorded the BBC local radio evening show on this day
last year it had already been announced that Mark Forrest was stepping down, to
be replaced in February 2017 by Georgey Spanswick. Since then the DG has recently
announced that the networked evening show will be dropped from next summer and
local shows will return.
Little has been heard of Mark since he left the show though
I did catch him read the news on Radio 3 in September.
It was a special edition of Gillham's Gold on BBC Radio
Jersey this time last year as Tony Gillham celebrated 50 years on the radio. Remarkably
Tony had kept the tape of his first appearance behind the microphone, aged just
15, on hospital radio in Colchester.
On this date last year the day's news was dominated by the
aftermath of a terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin. But the story
I've selected from Adrian's 5 live Daily
covers the events from five decades ago, the sinking of the TSMS Lakonia (above) which
saw the greatest loss of British lives on a cruise ship since the Titanic. Eyewitness
stories mixed with some contemporary archive material create a compelling and
moving story of the events of December 1963.
To South Wales for the Capital Breakfast show from a trio
rather than the usual duo of Matt Lissack, Polly James and Geraint Hardy. Goodness
me, all this talk of Christmas parties, Snapchat and members of the Kardashian clan makes me feel old. This is
how it all sounded a year ago today.
It's Father Christmas with a stetson as Northern Ireland's Downtown Country airs a year ago on a
Sunday night. To my knowledge Trevor Campbell, aka Big T, is the only DJ from
the original 19 ILR stations that is still working on the same station some
four decades later. This is the first hour of the show in full.
Little did I know that when I recorded this last year that
Alex's days on Radio 2 were numbered, with just another few weeks of overnights
before an automated Radio 2 Playlist
kicked in. On this Best Time of the Day show the Virtual Musical Map
concentrates on High Wycombe.
Alex can now be heard presenting the weekday breakfast show
on BBC WM 95.6
Great fun with Joel Ross and Lorna Bancroft on Heart North
West a year ago today. On this show Lorna's feeling under the weather, producer
Jordan Hemingway has been on a date but Joel has some upsetting news about his
cat. Tomorrow the Dark Lord.
I've not heard JK and Joel since their days on Radio 1,
apart from once catching Joel on Yorkshire Coast Radio. So on this day last
year I dipped into Heart London's drivetime show with Jason King and Lucy
Horobin. This was a very slick affair: no talkie bit seemed to last more than
a minute, it was mostly two or three record segues and editing out the ads,
news and all but one traffic report I've reduced a three-hour show to just 18
minutes! Tomorrow Joel & Lorna.
Welcome to Just a Minute! For five decades it's been a case
of speaking without hesitation, deviation or repetition. A simple yet
frustratingly difficult task that has led to some great comic moments over the
900+ editions that have been heard since Just
a Minute first appeared on 22 December 1967.
The programme, devised by Ian Messiter, had had an earlier
1950s radio incarnation under the title One
Minute, Please with Roy Plomley, and later Michael Jackson, chairing,
though here it was a team game rather than pitting four individual players
against each other.
In 1967 Nicholas Parsons was enjoying radio success in the
topical satirical comedy series Listen to this Space. Seeking some new challenges he spoke to Ian Messiter who
suggested Just a Minute. Getting the
green light for the pilot producer David Hatch was called in - David would
guide and help shape the programme for its first decade or so - and with
Nicholas as one of the panellists it was Jimmy Edwards who was lined up as
chairman. In the event Edwards couldn't commit to the show so Nicholas Parsons
reluctantly agreed to step in as master of ceremonies, a role he's maintained,
apart from some role swapping in early editions, ever since.
The pilot episode was recorded on 16 July 1967 and
eventually scheduled as the first edition of a new series to start on Radio 4
that December, thus becoming the newly re-badged network's first bona fide hit.
Show producer David Hatch writes a humourous introduction
for the Radio Times of 22 December 1967
Here is that first outing of Just a Minute. The panel consists of two participants who would
become regular players and two who never
appeared again. Chef, restaurateur, writer and nightclub owner Clement Freud
would eventually clock up 544 editions between 1967 and 2009. His game play
tactics were running off lists to fill the time, no mean feat without pausing,
and buzzing in with a challenge with a second or two to go, though players
couldn't see the clock. With him was actor Derek Nimmo (309 editions until
1999) whose regular foreign travels gave him plenty of material to talk for a
minute. The third member was actress Beryl Reid who struggled with the concept,
proving that actors used to performing from a script don't always make the best
exponents of Just a Minute. I've
always wondered who exactly the fourth panellists was as I've never heard the
name before. In fact it turns out that Wilma Ewart was one of Nicholas's
neighbours who had no experience of performing but who he found "witty and
entertaining". Wilma makes a decent job on the show but was never asked
back as her and husband had to move back to the USA.
The game as played in the early series is not what we now
know. The rules took some time to bed in; repetition was counted as repetition
of an idea as well as words. For a while you couldn't even repeat the words in
the subject title and there were penalty rounds such as speaking on a subject
without using certain words but these proved inhibiting.
The third major player of the game joined for the second
series when Derek Nimmo couldn't make the recordings due to filming
commitments. Producer David Hatch had been convinced of Kenneth Williams'
suitability for the game after seeing him on the panel of BBC TV's Call My Bluff and he asked Williams to
initially do six programmes. According to Kenneth's diary it seems it was a
somewhat reluctant agreement: "unfortunately it means working with that
Parsons fellow, but I said yes, 'cos it will be a nice fill-in". His attitude
to the chairman had mellowed somewhat by the time of the recording and it also
touches on the fact that Hatch would have to had to continually keep Kenneth
happy and praise his contributions: "... when we came to the performance I
just about managed and scraped through. But Nicholas was a great help and so
was Clemet Freud. David Hatch was very nice to me before (when I was actually
v. nervous) and afterwards. I like him very much - always have
actually".
Parsons, Williams, Nimmo and Jones. Radio Times 7 February 1985
With Williams on board the show was increasingly played for
laughs rather than just been a rules-based parlour game. His flamboyant style,
his appeals to the audience, those elongated vowels and then rattling along at
top speed became his game trademarks. Williams even unwittingly introduced some
catchphrases that are remembered to this day and only recently were referenced
by Paul Merton and Sheila Hancock: "I'm a cult figure". "I
haven't come all the way from Great Portland Street...". "It's a
disgrace" when, unreasonably to him, challenged or losing an appeal. And
"we shouldn't have women on this show", initially aimed at the 'lovely
Aimi Macdonald'. Kenny appeared on 346 radio episodes between 1968 and 1988.
In 1992 the programme celebrated its silver anniversary with
a 2-part retrospective, Silver Minutes.
This is part one from 20 July 1992 (though this is the commercially released
version).
The fourth member of what was seen for many years as the
'classic line-up' - was Peter Jones, who joined the show in 1971, again to fill
a gap left by a busy Nimmo. He had a more laid back approach to the game and
was often willing to sit back whilst the other fought it out only to buzz in
with a very funny or acerbic comment. His talks always seemed to start with
"well..." I recall. Peter made 326 appearances until 2000.
That so-called classic line-up appeared together in just 38
episodes so there were always guest slots to fill. Some became semi-regulars
and the longest-serving of these is Sheila Hancock who, like Nicholas Parsons
spans the five decades, appearing on the second edition of the first series in
December 1967 through to a couple of shows in the latest series, the 79th, this
autumn.
This is the second of the Silver Minutes programmes originally broadcast on 27 July 1992.
With the gradual loss of Kenneth Williams in 1988 there was
a vacancy for a regular player. Comedian Paul Merton had been an avid fan of
the show for years and had recorded and constantly replayed episodes to
himself. Convinced that he could contribute to the show he wrote to the then
producer Edward Taylor. At the same time he'd appeared as a panellist on the TV
game show Scruples on which Nick also
appeared (BBC Genome would suggest this was the 30 October 1988 edition) and he
mentioned how much he loved Just a Minute.
Paul's flights of surrealist fancy and running gags opened up the show and in
recent years, alongside that other semi-regular Gyles Brandreth, it has tended
to be comedians on the panel.
The programmes longevity can be put down to the fact that
one, it is a simple concept and two, that it has slowly evolved. Nicholas
Parsons, with a long history in the business has, to be fair, be very astute in
recognising the fact that the show needed to change to survive. Indeed in his
book on the programme he is very honest about the run-ins he had with Clement
Freud who still wanted to play strictly by the rules as first laid down by Ian
Messiter. Parsons recognised that much of the laughter comes from the
challenges, whether valid or not.
The first series of Just
a Minute that I committed to tape was the 14th that aired between December
1979 and March 1980. Playing alongside Williams, Nimmo, Jones and Freud were
Sheila Hancock, Aimi Macdonald, Tim Rice, Patrick Moore, Lance Percival, Barry
Cryer and John Junkin. Making their only appearances in the programme's history
were Peter Cook, Bob Monkhouse, Rob Buckman and Kenny Everett.
This is the first episode from series 14 from 11 December
1979.
Of course the real star, and the one constant, throughout the run has been Nicholas Parsons, still sounding as strong, if a little less posh, as he did in 1967. "I enjoy the position of chairman so much", he says in next week's issue of the Radio Times. "It's the greatest effort of concentration of any job I have. I'm listening intently and can see the way people's minds are working when they have a subject. We, as professionals, make it look easy and sound fun, but it's an incredibly difficult game." I can't do justice to the programme's 50 year history in
such a short post so I can direct you to the superb Just a Minute website.
Nicholas Parson's own history of the programme Welcome to Just a Minute was first published in 2014 and is
available in hardback, paperback and Kindle editions
From the radio dynasty that is the Foster family here's John
on BBC Tees mid-mornings from this day last year. The self-confessed radio
anorak even name checks the old BBC HQ at Savoy Hill and can't resist a trip
down nostalgia lane towards the end of the show.
In 2017 John appeared infrequently on Tees and in November announced that he was leaving the station
for good due to the long commute.
Jon Holmes and team on Talk Radio's afternoon show
dissecting the news in haiku and W.H. Auden poetry. Plus loads of topical
Christmas cracker jokes from newsreader Victoria Bourne, old Now Show mate Pippa Evans,
celebrity-spotting, a work experience pundit, the diversity paper review and a
chance to win some meat.
Mid-mornings on LBC it's James O'Brien. Talking to Buzzfeed
in 2016 about his broadcasting style James had this to say: "I set out to
excite an emotional reaction, which I guess the shock jock does. But I would
distinguish myself from most shock jocks in America by saying I do it by a telling
the truth, speaking up for the people who don’t have a voice, rather than the
kind of traditional shock jock, which is pretending that you’re speaking up for
the people who haven’t got a voice whereas in fact you’re endorsing the
loudest, most privileged voices – usually angry white men, isn’t it – claiming
that they are somehow victims of circumstances when it’s never been a better
time in history to be an angry white man.”
A year ago James was picking up on the issues of the cost of
social care and the working conditions of Amazon employees. Some of those
lengthy O'Brien monologues (actually edited here) and some calls too.
If you've ever wondered what Deacon Blue's Ricky Ross is up
to well the band are still touring and Ricky can be heard on BBC Radio Scotland
as one of the presenters of the Sunday morning programme that is billed as
"two hours of music and stimulating conversation from a faith and ethical
perspective". The other presenters are Cathy Macdonald, Sally Magnusson
and Richard Holloway.
A year ago Ricky's main guest on Sunday Morning with... was actor Gregor Fisher. Best known, of
course, as street philosopher Rab C. Nesbitt but in December 2016 about to go
into panto as one of the Ugly Sisters in Cinderella
as Glasgow's King's Theatre. You'll hear that he now lives in France, just a
little over an hour from me as it happens.
I write most of these little bits of description about the
Christmas Countdown audio at the time I record or edit them. So as I drafted
this in December 2016 Mel, Sue and Mary have left GBBO apart from a BBC1 Christmas special yet to be screened. Whether
the Channel 4 version hits the mark will, I assume, have been revealed by the
time this all goes live.
Here's Mel with Andy Bush on her Saturday afternoon show
airing on Magic on this date last year.
One of the big radio news stories of 2016 was the
reappearance of the Virgin radio brand as part of the Sound Digital D2 launch. Joining
the team for the mid-morning show was Jamie East. Here's what he was up to a
year ago today.
2016 wasn't a great year for Tony. He was dropped by the BBC
in February, a sacrificial scalp following the Dame Janet Smith review into the
Savile scandal. But commercial radio stayed loyal and he continued to broadcast
on the Greatest Hits Network, KMFM and, from the summer, the new station Thames
Radio, run by the Welsh-based Nation Broadcasting.
In December Tony spent a week broadcasting from Barbados, a
promotional event managed by Tim Jibson's Adventures in Radio company. These
broadcasts are all about plugging the competition -listeners were offered a
chance to win a week's holiday at the Sea Breeze Beach Hotel - but I've edited
out a dozen or so mentions of this. Tony speaks to a number of guests including
Eddy Grant.
The competition was won the following day by Jeff Paden of
North Wales. The programmes also wentout on Dragon Radio. In June 2017
Thames Radio dropped all its big name DJs in a station 'refresh' and started to
play non-stop hits.
Radio 3 was just coming to the end of a two-month
celebration of 70 years since the launch of its predecessor the Third Programme
when In Tune hosted this finale from
the Goonhilly Earth Station on this day last year.
Joining Sean Rafferty
are Will Gregory (of Goldfrapp) with his suitably space-aged Moog Orchestra,
members of the BBC Concert Orchestra, composer Graham Fitkin, boys and girls of
Truro Cathedral Choir, and award-winning Cornish folk group The Changing Room.
Sam Pinkham and Amy Voce had been keeping listeners
entertained at breakfast for over ten years on Heart and then GEM 106. The
award-winning duo were also 'in vision' on Notts TV. In September of this year
they left GAM for Virgin.
On 6 December last year our duo were organising a stealth
raid on the Christmas decorations, having a group hug and running an unusual
feature that Amy was sure wouldn't work.
At the 2016 Gillard Awards the station of the year went to
BBC Coventry & Warwickshire. The station's breakfast show claims (or
claimed) to be "the first fully female-fronted breakfast show in the UK".
Trish Adudu and Jo Tidman took over the slot at the beginning of 2016. From
March of this year it was just Trish presenting the show whilst Jo concentrated
on the news reports.
A year ago Coventry City had crashed out of the FA Cup and
June Brown, aka Dot Cotton off of EastEnders
was been asked to stay on soap until she was 90. Despite what you hear in this edited
version you'll have to trust me when I tell you that I cut out numerous
references to Dot Cotton "hanging up her tabard".
My Twitter feed normally gets quite busy on a Sunday evening
when Forgotten 80s airs on Absolute
80s. Presenter Matthew Rudd writes that the show "delves deeply into the
annals of 80s music, featuring the underplayed and the almost completely
forgotten, with the intention of rehabilitating the music of a decade that too
many people are quick to scorn".
This time last year Absolute 80s was celebrating its seventh
birthday. Unlike other posts in this series I've left all the music and adverts
intact.
You're either 'blues' or 'reds' as far as listeners to Radio
City's football show are concerned. Ian St John (Liverpool) and Ian Snodin
(Everton) get together to chew the fat and field listeners calls on Saturday
lunchtimes. I love the reaction to Everton manager Ronald Koeman having to
change his Christmas tree decorations because there was too much red (see photo below). Presenting
the programme this time last year was Alan Irwin sitting in for Mick Coyle.
Jack FM is an odd station. Multi-award winning yet
essentially it's just a breakfast show; the rest of the day it's a radio
jukebox. Mind you the breakfast show is a pretty lively affair with Trevor
Marshall, traffic reports from a guy who's so laid back he's positively
horizontal and sarcastic interjections from The Voice of Jack, Paul Darrow. Jack
FM assume you won't be listening all the way through so some features are
repeated such as the chat with Jack 2's Rich Smith. This is the sound of Jack's Morning Glory this time last
year.
Welcome to the first if this year's audio advent calendar
posts. Each day in the run-up to Christmas I'll be offering a slice of radio
from exactly one year ago.
When I last did this kind of thing in 2012 (with shows from
December 2011) Chris Moyles had just left his Radio 1 breakfast show. Since
then he's played Herod, lost weight, spent time in the radio wilderness and
then returned to launch Radio X in September 2015. Listening to this 1 December
2016 breakfast show it's as if we've gone back in time. The Cheesy Song intro,
Dom, requests for Dominic the Donkey
and even the old Music 4 Advent jingles. It either shows a degree of
consistency or a lack of imagination.
When I edit these programmes down I cut out the music and
retain most of the speech, but with Chris the first 40 minutes was all speech,
this despite him having a cold, so I've edited this quite a bit.
There's nod to Chris's radio pedigree with a mention of Carl
Kingston from his Radio Aire days, some seemingly off-the-cuff fun with Jose
Mourhino and Whigfield and a big plug for The
Grand Tour.
