This coming Saturday (28 December) BBC Radio 4 Extra is going to party like its 1964. For day only, all the programmes between 6am and 10pm are what you would’ve heard on the BBC Home Service in December 1964. Most are getting their first repeat broadcast in sixty years.
Guiding listeners through the day will be Wes Butters. Of the Home Service Day he says:
“It’s an extraordinary privilege to take the helm of BBC Radio 4 Extra for Home Service Day! This is not just any regular Saturday; it’s an opportunity to step back in time and relive the magic of Christmas 1964. The schedule is a treasure trove of radio history, featuring a comic operetta that includes an early performance from Dame Patricia Routledge, a drama starring the acclaimed Shakespearean actor Sir Donald Wolfit, and an anarchic comedy by my hero Spike Milligan, alongside an up-and-coming Barry Humphries! We’ve rooted around in all the nooks and crannies in the BBC Archive to uncover lots of hidden gems, and pieced together a day that will truly capture the spirit of Christmas exactly 60 years ago."
The day starts with the comic operetta The Duenna. The three part operetta by Richard Brinsley Sheridan was first performed in 1775 and had been revived in 1924. It was updated and adapted in the 1950s by musical theatre writer Julian Slade, best known for Salad Days (1954), and theatre director Lionel Harris and it’s their version that’s used here. Producer Peter Bryant thought that rather than perform it in the studio it would be best recorded before an invited audience at the Camden Theatre. Amongst the cast are Patricia Routledge, Andrew Sachs and Denis Quilley. Music is performed by the Sinfonia of London conducted by Marcus Dods with the John McCarthy Singers (stalwarts of many Friday Night is Music Night concerts). The Duenna was broadcast at 8pm on Christmas Eve 1964.
The Silver King is based on the 1882 Victorian melodrama by Henry Arthur Jones and Henry Herman that tells of a gambler who, after losing all his money, escapes to America. The play had been broadcast on BBC radio three times previously: in December 1930, June 1945 and in December 1954. That ’54 production had starred the actor-manager Donald Wolfit in the lead as Wilfred Denver, a role he reprised in this 1964 production. The play was produced for radio again in December 1991 with John Duttine as Denver. The Silver King was broadcast in the Afternoon Theatre slot at 3.15pm on Monday 28 December 1964.
Next up is comedy from Spike Milligan in The GPO Show. This has been repeated before in December 2014 as part of a lost comedy gems season on 4 Extra. As I wrote then:
the Radio Times unhelpfully describes it as follows: “Spike Milligan takes a benevolent but distinctly Milligoonish look at the work of that mighty institution the British Post Office. In fact he braves the hallowed precincts of Mount Pleasant itself, to report the merry, festive scene. With the stalwart shape of Harry Secombe and John Bluthal, to name but six, he will be giving listeners a seasonal view of Operation Mailbag in full swing.” The GPO Show was recorded just five days before transmission and by then the Post Office had objected to the title on the grounds that GPO was a registered trademark so it was hastily changed to The Grand Piano Orchestra Show. The script, in part, was a re-working of an earlier Goon Show from 1954 titled The History of Communications.
We Don’t Often Lose a Boffin was a comedy written by actor and writer John Graham. John was in 100s of radio plays and series including the role of Roddy MacKenzie in The Dales. You’ll likely hear him in repeats of The Men from the Ministry. The ‘boffin’ in question is top government scientist Dr Grebe played by Patrick Barr. Playing the ‘top brass’ at M.I.5 is Frederick Treves and at Whitehall its John Graham himself. This play was an Afternoon Theatre production broadcast at 3.00pm on 23 December 1964.
Radio 4 Extra then schedules a couple of Sherlock Holmes mysteries starring Carleton Hobbs and Norman Shelley as Holmes and Watson. In 1964 both these stories, The Three Garridebs and The Norwood Builder, had first been heard on the Light Programme in September but did get a Home Service repeat in December. They’ve been heard on 4 Extra a number of times before.
For fans of Henry Cecil’s Brothers in Law – the 1970s radio versions starring Richard Briers have been aired many times on 4 Extra – there’s an adaptation of his 1961 novel Daughters in Law. The plot summary reads: ‘Major Claude Buttonstep has two sons who fall in love with a judge's attractive twin daughters - one is a barrister and the other a solicitor. But Major Buttonstep, normally a mild, kindly rural Squire, has a pathological aversion to lawyers’. It stars Cecil Parker as the major and Naunton Wayne as Mr Trotter. The daughters are played by Gudrun Ure (tv’s Super Gran) and Diana Olsson (a long term member of the BBC dram rep). This production of Daughters in Law was first broadcast in Saturday-Night Theatre on 2 September 1961 but qualifies for this repeat as it was heard again on the Home Service at 2.30pm on Sunday 27 December 1964.
Although we inevitably associate Johnny Morris with Animal Magic he had an even longer radio career of over four decades as a storyteller, narrator and panellist. His longest running series was the travelogue Johnny’s Jaunt that ran from 1954 to 1975. At first Johnny and his travelling companions George and Leslie would visit areas of Great Britain but by 1958 they were off around the world. These fifteen minute talks were produced by Brian Patten (a Bristol-based producer not to be confused with the Merseyside poet) and it is he that produced this Christmas broadcast of Knock Up Ginger. The unlikely subject is doors with “childhood memories of doors he has faced, knocked on – and swiftly run away from. Knock Up Ginger was first broadcast at 9.40pm on Tuesday 22 December 1964.
As well as these programmes Wes will also be playing other archive clips from 1964 including some from the daily afternoon magazine show Home this Afternoon which had started in March that year. There are also new interviews with Dame Patricia Routledge and Spike’s daughter Jane Milligan.
The Home Service Day programmes will be broadcast on Saturday between 6am and 2pm and then again between 2pm and 10pm. They will be available on BBC Sounds for 30 days, except for the Sherlock Holmes programmes that are available all the time.
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