Trooping the Colour

 

The annual Trooping of the Colour has been a part of British life for a little over 260 years and from the accession of King George in 1820 it’s been an annual event to mark the Official Birthday of the Sovereign. Radio coverage of the ceremony dates back 95 years to 1927 and it resumed again in 1930 continuing until 1994. Only the war years and cancellations for bad weather (1948) and a national rail strike (1955) stopped the Trooping.

That first broadcast on 5 June 1926 carries no detail in the Radio Times, indeed it is only listed as a simultaneous broadcast with London for stations 2ZY Manchester, 5PY Plymouth and 5SX Swansea. However, 2LO in London makes no mention of it but the BBC and the listings magazine were slowly recovering from the General Strike so this may account for it.

Throughout the thirties the Trooping of the Colour was narrated for BBC radio by the wonderfully named Major James Bourne Seaburne Bourne-May, late of the Coldstream Guards where he saw 20 years service and took part in the ceremony himself on five occasions.    

When it returned after the war in 1947 Wynford Vaughan-Thomas commentated. In 1949 and 1950 Brian Johnston was at the microphone and from 1951 to 1960 the master himself Richard Dimbleby. The post-war radio coverage, usually midweek or on Saturdays – it didn’t become a Saturday only fixture until 1966 – was on the Light Programme, shifting to the Home Service (later Radio 4) in 1959.

From 1961 to 1981 Robert Hudson (pictured above) was the radio commentator, also taking over the Remembrance Sunday service from the Cenotaph the following year. Preparations for the broadcast took Hudson two weeks and “included visits to the Regiment trooping the colour to the Household Cavalry at Knightsbridge Barracks and to the band rehearsals at Chelsea Barracks. In the course of these I would interview all the key figures in the parade and submit myself to the lavish hospitality of the Officers’ Mess. A Guard’s gin and tonic is quite unlike any other”.

For his final broadcast in 1981 he had amassed “sixteen pages of notes, pasted on cardboard” on an upturned box on the window ledge of his vantage point in the Horse Guards Building. “I plan to give fifty-two separate pieces of commentary during the ninety-minute broadcast. Each will be preceded by a cue-light signal to our engineers in a small room behind. Instantly they lower the volume of the sound behind my voice; a split-second operation”.

When Robert Hudson stepped down the commentary in 1982 and 1983 was provided by former cricketer turned commentator Neil Durden-Smith. The cricket connection was perhaps no coincidence as Hudson had been the producer of Test Match Special for many years. From 1984 to 1990 sports commentator (mainly golf, tennis and skiing) Julian Tutt covered the ceremony. He would go on to provide the Trooping the Colour commentary for BBC television. Finally between 1991 and 1994 it was the turn of Tom Fleming. BBC radio then dropped their coverage, but it continues as a tv event.

For this recording of Robert Hudson’s first commentary on the Trooping of the Colour we go back to 10.55 am on Saturday 10 June 1961 when listeners to the BBC Home Service heard this.

Once again this recording was made by the late Eric Bartington and I extend my thanks to Gerad de Roo who rescued it and passed it to me.