Radio Lives - Colin Berry

He was Mr Radio 2 for four decades, the warm, trusted ever-present voice who read thousands of news bulletins and presented hundreds of music programmes. He deputised for many of the other DJs on the network. His technical skills and perfectionism meant he was often the link back at Broadcasting House through dozens of OBs, playing in the records and filling when the line went down. He spoke for the UK jury for 25 years of Eurovision Song Contests. His music knowledge and vast collection of LPs and singles informed his later local radio shows. He was Colin Berry, whose death was announced earlier this month.

All the many tributes to Colin mention his long service on BBC Radio 2 and his Eurovision connection but his radio career started in the days of the offshore pirates. Here’s a look back at Colin’s radio career.

Colin Berry was born on 29 January 1946 (sharing his birthday with his long-time friend Tony Blackburn who was born three years earlier) in Welwyn Garden City, one of the 'Brocket babies' born at Brocket Hall, and educated at the Wembley Grammar School. His first ‘broadcasts’ had an audience of just two, his mum and dad. Young Colin fixed up the Ferguson radiogram at the family home in Kenton so that he could play in the discs and whatever he’d taped off the Light Programme and introduce them.

His first job was working at one of the stores supplied by his father’s company – Cecil Berry was a director of Allied Suppliers – but young Colin was desperate to get into radio or television. Through a family friend he got his break at the London offices of Granada TV slotting adverts into commercial breaks when he was just 17. He then joined Westward TV also working on commercials and selling airtime when an opportunity came up to work on the admin side at Radio Caroline.

Colin joined Radio Caroline in 1964 as an Assistant Traffic Manager but after a few months he was asked to make a tape recording ‘for fun’ that led to him compiling (by recording the Light Programme news) and reading news bulletins and joining some DJs on their shows. He appeared on air as Robin Berry as fellow DJ Colin Nicol was also on the station at that time and management didn’t want two Colin’s on air. 

In 1965 he started recording commercials, such as the Weetabix Partners in Profit promotions, and made some personal appearances around Britain to “get better known”. “I used to get a lot of fan mail which rather surprised me, and even had a few proposals of marriage.” 

With the closure of most of the pirates in 1967 Colin joined Yorkshire Television as an admin assistant at their London office in Portland Place, though it was not a happy time for him as he was sacked for some mistake he’d apparently made but which management refused to tell him exactly what it was. 

Colin in his club DJ days (Surrey Mirror 1 May 1970)

In the late 1960s he was juggling a number of roles: volunteering at the Radio Harrow hospital radio and working one or two nights a week as a DJ at the Starlite Ballroom, Greenford and the 100 Club on Oxford Street. He would also DJ at Crawley’s Starlight Ballroom and the Birds Nest in Harrow, where a fellow DJ was Tony Barnfield who, a few years later, was also a BBC broadcaster and would present features on some of Colin’s overnight Radio 2 shows.   

At the same time he’d also made the acquaintance of some folk in the radio and music business and it was thanks to BBC broadcaster Roger Moffat that he got a job as a music plugger. His employer was the music publishing firm of Campbell Connelly (started by the song writing partnership of James Campbell and Reginald Connelly) and apparently he was responsible for getting Mouldy Old Dough to the top of the charts. So now you know who to blame!

Whilst still working for Campbell Connelly he freelanced as a summer relief announcer at HTV in 1971 and in 1972 at BBC Radio Medway (now Radio Kent). At Medway he took over the Saturday afternoon show Out and About from Simon Dee. Colin covered the music side whilst sports editor George Pixley looked after the sport. Due to his weekday work at a music publisher he had access to all the new releases which helped him build the show for which he had complete musical freedom. (It also gave him access to both commercial and non-commercial records that would help build up his home library that he would often dip into for his BBC Three Counties radio shows). He even had his own custom jingles recorded with the help of Rod Lucas, who at the time was producer of Medway’s Teen Scene. Rod would later provide some drop-ins for Colin at Radio 2.  

In 1973 an opportunity came along to join the BBC at Broadcasting House in the Trailer Unit for Radios 1 and 2 under Presentation Editor Jimmy Kingsbury. Kingsbury was looking for a new voice following the loss of Tony Myatt to Capital Radio. As well as writing and recording trailers the job also offered a position on the rota of presenters of Night Ride (midnight to 2 a.m. on both Radio 2 and Radio 1). It was Noel Edmonds that mentioned the vacancy to Colin over lunch one day, and encouraged him to audition; Noel had started at the BBC doing a similar job.

Colin’s first Night Ride was scheduled for Saturday 29 September 1973 but when his boss, Jimmy Kingsbury, phoned in sick for his shift on the Wednesday night/Thursday morning show he ended up been thrown in at the deep end and doing that one first.

Shortly after, Colin left the Trailer Unit to become a full-time announcer and newsreader. During the 1970s and 1980s the work of the Radio 2 announcers was quite varied. There was the reading of news bulletins on both stations, where Colin would develop a more punchier approach to reading for the Radio 1 bulletins on the half-hour. Evenings and weekends meant live continuity links between programmes as well as recording trailers and attending comedy show and panel game recordings to provide the opening and closing announcements.

Posing with way too many cups of BBC tea for
Night Ride 17 May 1974

Many announcers would also host live shows such as Night Ride, Music Through Midnight and The Late Show as well as programmes featuring one of the radio orchestras. Colin was particularly adept at the live shows, so much so, that when Simon Bates left the Early Show it was Colin that took over (for two years) from January 1976, so starting a long association with that time of day. These 6 to 7 a.m. Early Shows were carried on both Radio 1 and Radio 2, with Colin being the warm-up man for either Noel Edmonds or Terry Wogan (who was wont to refer to Colin as 'Wallace Beery'), depending on who you switched over to after the 7 o’clock pips. Most of the BBC local radio stations also carried part of the show so the audience ran into millions.

There’s a flavour of what these Early Shows sounded like in this sequence.

It was in 1977 that Colin also started his long association with all things European. That was the year he first acted as spokesman for the UK jury at the Eurovision Song Contest, a role he held, apart from in 1980 and 1998, through until 2002. Based down at Television Centre he would start off with the usual “London Calling, here are the results of the United Kingdom jury”, though it wouldn’t be until the 1994 contest that the world eventually saw the Berry visage when results were first delivered to camera.         

His first in-vision appearance as UK jury spokesperson in 1994. 
Colin's favourite Eurovision song was Take Me to You Heaven,
the winning Swedish entry by Charlotte Nilsson in 1999  

In 2012 Colin told me how things were organised behind the scenes for the song contest:  “On the day of broadcast the jury were assembled at Television Centre were they would watch the afternoon full dress rehearsal and there was a chance for them to hear any of the songs again if they wished. In the 70s and 80s the London end was under the control of Light Entertainment Organiser Tony James ...[who] was a great ambassador for the BBC and did everything with great finesse. He made sure that the jury members were well looked after, that all the introductions were made, providing a waitress-service dinner and having studio tours during breaks. When Tony’s team left in the 90s it was all clipboards and vouchers for the BBC canteen.”

During the contest itself Colin also had a monitor and a lip-microphone should “Wogan’s line vanish and there was a need for me to continue commentary. It never happened, but got within thirty seconds of it one year.”

He went on to say that “when it came to announcing the UK decision there was an agreed script but as the years passed I deviated a bit to make it less formal. Others did too eventually, but they tended to overdo it sometimes, building up the part”.

The BBC did acknowledge Colin’s 25 years in the spokesperson role and so threw him a lunch and presented him with a BBC inscribed microphone but at the same time they let it be known that changes were planned for the following year (as it transpired in the form of Lorraine Kelly) and that he’d no longer be required. This was despite supportive words from the King of Eurovision Terry Wogan who started his after-lunch speech by saying "I don't know why you’re getting rid of yer man....if it ain't broke why mend it?"

YouTube user ESC Clarinet Moon has compiled this video of Colin’s appearances in the Song Contest voting.  

Meanwhile, back on Radio 2 Colin maintained the European link by presenting the Europe music programmes (Europe 78, Europe 79 etc. ending in 1982) and taking over as main host of European Pop Jury. European Pop Jury, which had been running at intervals since 1965, featured pop juries in several countries passing verdict on the latest pop releases from each nation in a Europe-wide hook-up. David Gell presented the London end (pre-recorded at the Paris Theatre, Lower Regent Street and later the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House) until he went back to his native Canada in 1977 when Andy Cartledge, Nick Page and Don Durbridge all had a go at it. Producer Mel House auditioned them plus David Allan and Colin to permanently take over the job with Colin getting the gig until it all ended in December 1983.    

Radio 2 had planned to switch over to 24 hours broadcasting in November 1978 but in the event, due to industrial action, it was postponed until the following January. By then it was Colin who was going to kick things off in the early hours of Sunday 28 January with a four hour stint. He’d spent the previous week popping into other people’s shows to promote the new service and during Ray Moore’s Saturday night show was on hand to chat to Ray and link up with BBC2 viewers.

You and the Night and the Music was run on a shoestring. All the presenters were staff announcers on a daily presenting rota and there was, according to Colin “a mere ten minutes of commercial needletime. The shows were full of foreign recordings and studio sessions. Musicians Union restrictions were hard on music lovers in them there days!” To further pad out the shows pre-recorded features were also dropped in. Colin presented YATNAM, as it became known, at intervals until November 1983.

All this time Colin continued to read news bulletins as he felt he didn’t want to lose the skill. He was also recording a weekly Golden Days show for BFBS radio and music shows for Inflight Prodcutions Ltd. At Radio 2 he was the backstop during many outside broadcasts, playing in the discs, reading any traffic reports and just been on standby if the line went down, whether it was an afternoon at the races or the JY prog coming from Rhodesia or Toyko. This was also the time when if a main Radio 2 presenter was off they could often call on one of the announcers to cover, which he did for Terry Wogan, Ray Moore, David Hamilton, Charlie Chester and others. The only bit of broadcasting he regretted not doing was reading the classified football results on a Saturday afternoon.

In this montage we hear Colin across the years on Radio 2 (and Radio 1).

One of Colin’s best mates was fellow broadcaster Ray Moore, whose shows often followed Colin’s or who would cover each other programmes in what Ray termed as a ‘Box and Cox’ arrangement.  In his autobiography Ray recalls that he first met Colin in the late 60s “when he was a young record plugger who regularly turned up at The George at lunchtime wearing a baggy pink suit, a very daring number even for those liberated times.”

Colin and Ray

When Colin married Sandra Barker in the summer of 1981 their honeymoon was in Corfu. Ray takes up the story: “Our good friend Colin Berry had married, inappropriately enough on Independence Day, and had invited the two of us to go on honeymoon with him and his wife Sandra. It seemed a bizarre idea at first but, given that the four of us were far from strangers, it began to look quite logical. The episode took on a rather less rosy dimension when, after five days away, I became semi-housebound thanks to a boating accident”.

The Face behind the Voice in 2009

According to the 1983 edition of Who’s Who in Radio Colin’s likes were motoring, walking and a good pint of real ale. His dislikes: traffic jams, bad timekeepers and pressurised beer. In later editions the real ale was still there but now with added likes of the Isle of Wight, Victoria Wood and oysters with ‘most folk music’ and cricket on the negative side.   

On a personal note I’d been listening to Colin since the days when I first started recording programmes and clips off the radio in early 1976. Tuning in to Radio 1 or Radio 2 before 6 a.m. it was either dead air or test tones until he came on with the early show. When I started writing this blog in late 2010 Colin was one of the people I contacted and, fortunately, he responded. He was always very helpful in assisting me to identify voices from the past and freely answered questions on programmes and broadcasters. We swapped airchecks and I was only too pleased to provide audio for one of his local radio specials on pirate radio. I was fortunate to meet Colin back in 2015 for a long lunch at the Bree Louise pub (since demolished). He was concerned that I’d spot him (of course I did) saying “hopefully you will recognise me.. a good bit more hair missing since the last photo”. I joked that I’d carry a rolled-up issue of the Radio Times, and I did indeed pop into WH Smiths at Euston for a copy. We enjoyed a long chat over a pie and several pints of real ale (naturally). We’d planned to meet up again in 2018 but for one reason or another it didn’t happen.

As the Daily Telegraph obituary says: ‘Switching between the soothing, unforced tones of a presenter, and then the authoritative ones of a newsreader, Berry was skilled at creating the necessary intimate connection with the listener.’ As someone has commented to me “he had his own built-in compression”. Apparently amongst Colin’s regular listeners were the Kray twins with Reggie telling the News of the World: “We both love to listen to Radio 2. We’ve learned to appreciate another side of life. One of my favourites is Colin Berry of Radio 2...he’s a nice fellah.”

Away from the radio studio Colin made only occasional forays onto television. Aside from those Eurovision duties he appeared on The Generation Game, Blankety Blank, Bargain Hunt and Supermarket Sweep, both of these with Tony Blackburn, and just one appearance on Top of the Pops alongside Peter Powell on 30 October 1980. 

Colin in the Radio 2 studio sometime in the 1980s.
He claimed to able to work those faders and knobs blindfold
so frequently was he on air

Colin continued to present shows on Radio 2 throughout the 80s and 90s, mostly late night or early morning shifts. “The only trouble with early shows”, he said, “is that they get earlier!” He hosted the weekday early show, with a 4 a.m. start, from 1984 to May 1988 and the weekend version in 1993 and 1994. Meanwhile, overnight, he was one of the presenters of Night Ride between 1989 and 1995. Colin’s last billed Radio 2 show was on 31 March 1995, but it wasn’t actually the last. Fast forward to 2012 when Richard Allinson was doing a weekend 3 to 6 am slot and Colin was on late news-reading duty when one weekend Richard doesn’t make it to the studio and it ends up with Colin doing an impromptu fill-in.

Enjoying a real ale with Dave Cash

Colin retired from the BBC in 2006 but remained on the books as a freelance newsreader on Radio 2 until September 2012. By this time the plan was for broadcast journalists to read the news on the station, as they did on 6 Music and increasingly overnight on Radio 2. Colin’s final bulletin was at 3 a.m. on 8 September 2012 and with “and that is likely to be it from me” he signed off for the last time, just shy of 39 years of news-reading.   

Meanwhile, over on BBC Three Counties Radio Colin was settling in for some regular weekend music programmes. He’d already appeared on 3CR in 2004 and in 2008 until early 2009 he was on the Saturday night late show. From April 2009 until July 2010 he presented a three-hour early evening show known as The Saturday Club. Both these programmes were also carried on other stations across the eastern counties to give a fairly substantial audience. From 2011 until 2019 Colin continued to work for the station covering for Richard Spendlove on his Saturday night programme many times as well as occasional specials he called A Little Light Music, one on Eurovision songs (of course), one on pirate radio and, in the last couple of years, mining a seam of one hit wonders.

From 26 December 2014 here’s Colin remembering the days of the offshore pirates.

Those 3CR shows were a real mix of musical genres and styles. Colin had a penchant for light music and library music so often his only source for these, and some rare pop 45s that he played, were from his own vinyl collection. He was concerned that the BBC would, in a computerised ViLoR studio setting, still support the use of record players and his liking for dubbing stuff off onto mini-disc (I once sent him a pack of blanks MDs to keep him stocked up), especially after the move to new studios in Dunstable in 2015.  

Colin’s final radio programme, again on one hit wonders, was broadcast on BBC Three Counties Radio on 25 December 2019. The pandemic the following year, and changes to BBC local schedules as a result, greatly decreased the opportunity for further occasional shows. 

For about three years Colin had been unwell and was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. He died on Wednesday 16 April. He is survived by Sandra and their children Marina and Jonathan.

In 2012 I edited together this short sequence of Colin on the radio over 50 years.

Colin Berry 1946-2025

BBC 100

On Monday the BBC celebrates 100 years since its first radio broadcast on 14 November 1922.

Making the opening announcement on station 2LO was Director of Programmes Arthur Burrows who wrote: “November 14, 1922, was the day chosen to commence British broadcasting in the official sense. It was the day of the declaration of polls in connection with the General Election, and the news for that evening consisted in the main of election results. The next day the Birmingham station, 5IT, began to operate, and within a week 2ZY had also joined in the work. The London station continued in my charge (Mr Jeffries arranging the musical programmes and sharing in the pleasures of the children’s hour). Birmingham fortunately secured the direction of Mr Percy Edgar, already well known in the Midlands, and Metropolitan Vickers appointed to the Manchester station Mr K.A. Wright, a young graduate of Sheffield, who, since his earliest days with the firm, had shown a keen interest in music and its propagation by wireless. One cannot look back upon those early days without a smile.”

To mark the BBC’s centenary I’ve produced this sound montage 100 Years of BBC Radio in 100 History. Roughly chronological in order it’s my selection of some memorable voices and programmes designed to show something of the breadth of the radio services. I hope you enjoy it.

You’ll hear some broadcasters who make more than one appearance but see if you can spot who appears most often, on seven different clips throughout the sequence.

Here’s the version with accompanying pictures.

The selection of early clips was, of course, limited by what’s survived from that period. Most of my audio for the first half century comes from compilation records issued by the BBC (for their 50^th and 75^th), documentary programmes about BBC history I’ve recorded over the last 40+ years and repeats, often on Radio 4 Extra. Those 1920s clips you here were all recreated for the May 1932 programme The End of Savoy Hill produced by Lance Sieveking. Much of what you hear from the mid-70s onwards was recorded by me at the time or may come from recordings kindly donated since starting this blog.  

Inevitably as soon as I’d edited the ‘final’ final version I remembered all the stuff I’d missed out. No “I’m rather worried about Jim” or “Give ‘em the money Barney”, no Noel’s funny phone calls, no reports from foreign correspondents (other than wartime), the role of the  European Service during the Cold War. I could go on. Summarising local radio or what the BBC calls ‘the Nations’ was impossible; they all just get seven minutes. The wonderful World Service has been reduced to two minutes.

I first started work on this project after completing my BBC90 montage, saving clips away in a separate folder. Most made the cut, some just didn’t fit or no longer felt appropriate or interesting. Serious editing, sequence by sequence, started in February and altogether I’ve used nearly 700 different bits of audio (including jingles). I reckon about 20% of material was also in the BBC90 celebration. Thanks go again to Andy Howells who helped with some BBC90 material in 2012 and to Aircheck Downloads who tracked down a couple of DJ jingles for me that appear in one of the Radio 1 sequences.

Here’s the audio only version.   

 

Action Stations

 

Over the last three and a half years I’ve been tracking the fiftieth anniversaries of the BBC local radio stations, in a series of nineteen posts from Leicester, Sheffield and Merseyside through to Newcastle, Lancashire and Humberside. I’ll be picking up the history again in November 2023 for the half century of BBC Radio Carlisle/Cumbria.

In the meantime here are two wonderful short publicity films that go behind the scenes at a number of stations a mere forty years ago. Both are titled Action Stations! – BBC Local Radio and were directed by Patricia Owtram for the BBC Local Radio Publicity Unit.

The first, with a running time of 20 minutes, dates from 1981 and is narrated by John Saunders. It’s full of images of newsrooms complete with typewriters, fax machines and Studer tape decks, remote studios, county shows, youth programming, snow days and local elections.

We see at work Radios Lincolnshire, Medway, Sheffield, Humberside (with coverage of the opening of the Humber Bridge this week in 1981), Nottingham, Carlisle (and their farming programme), Bristol (the O Level Show), Leicester, Leeds (with the Best Pub Pianist competition) and London (with the last ever GLC election).

The second shorter film dates from early 1980 though it includes footage from 1977 and 1978. Here the emphasis is more on community involvement and also the BBC Local Radio Parliamentary Unit.  We visit the short-lived Radio Taunton (a Bristol’s emergency news station), Medway, Leicester, Solent, Birmingham, Bristol and Sheffield. There are no credits for this film but the narrator sounds like Laure Mayer to me.      

See how many familiar faces you can spot in Action Stations! BBC Local Radio.

Down Your Local - 50 Years of BBC Radio Derby

 

Fifty years ago today, at 5.50 pm, the last of the BBC's second tranche of local stations, Radio Derby, came on air.

Broadcasting from the studios at 56 St Helen's Street (and by my reckoning the only one of the original stations still to be in the same building five decades later) like all the BBC local stations it was initially heard on VHF only (on 96.5 MHz), transmitting from Sutton Coldfield some 25 miles away. Medium wave reception on 269 metres (1115 kHz) became possible a couple of years later when the site at Burnaston Lane was opened, by which time a VHF/FM relay was also in use on 94.2 MHz.

In common with a number of the other local stations, Radio Derby had made an impromptu appearance before the official launch date. In this case it wasn't weather related but was for the breaking story, in late February, of the bankruptcy of Rolls-Royce, a major employer in the town.

The station's first manager was an old BBC hand. George Sigsworth had worked for the corporation since the 1950s and was the Midland's Home Service agricultural correspondent producing programmes such as Farming Today and, in the late 60s, In Your Garden. He was succeeded in the post by John Bright. George's deputy was the Programme Organiser Roger Matthews (ex-Radio Leicester). The station's first news editor was Barrie Eccleston a news agency journalist who'd provided the news for Radio Leicester from Roly Orton's agency. Barrie also worked as a football commentator and reporter at a time when Derby County was riding under Brian Clough and then Dave Mackay.

The earliest Radio Times with Radio Derby listings that I have comes from the week of 18 November 1972. It's the usual mix of weekday shows concentrated around the key times of breakfast, lunchtime and teatime/drivetime with Radio 2 and Radio 4 output acting as a sustaining service in between. Weekends offer more specialist shows, sports coverage and, like virtually every other local station at the time, a Saturday mornings kids show. Derby's breakfast show Up and About was presented by a rota of the presenters, this particular week by Michael Murray, a former Home Service announcer who'd been part of the launch team at Radio Leicester in 1967. His voice had opened Radio Derby. The local news bulletins were given the somewhat Americanised title of Dateline Derby. The teatime show is Five O'Clock Monday etc. but a year or so later that too got the 'dateline' treatment with Dateline Monday and so on.      

Other presenters included Mike Warr (who a decade later would be the station manager when Radio Jersey launched), John Stiles (a former station assistant at Radio Stoke who opened Radio Derby in 1971.  He stayed with the station until the early 1990s), Kit Poxon (ex-Radio Nottingham who'd go on to present the Down Your Way type show Kit at Large), David Graham, Jack King, Maureen Axelrod, Leslie Robinson, Ralph Laing and sports presenter Graham Clarke. Producing the educational programmes including the daily 5-minutes Nutshell are Peter Legge and Ann Toy.    

Moving on a couple of years to this schedule for the week commencing 28 September 1974 which includes the name Stewart White, who'll be immediately familiar to viewers of BBC One's Look East which he's presented for the last four decades. Listed here as the presenter of Up and About, Derby Country and The 78 Show he'd joined from Radio Brighton. Stewart would move over to BRMB before joining ATV (later Central) and then back to the BBC in 1984. On a couple of separate occasions he's also presented a Saturday morning show on Radio Norfolk.  

Another very familiar radio name is that of football commentator Mike Ingham. Growing up in Belper he'd joined Radio Derby as a station assistant in 1973 after gaining some hospital radio experience in Birmingham. Initially presenting music shows, in this week Back Track and Up and Coming, he switched to sports presenting following the death of Graham Clarke.  Mike moved down to London in 1979 to join the Radio Sport department where he presented Sport on 2, Sunday Sport and the Sports Desks before becoming a match commentator and later the football correspondent. He retired in 2014. You can hear Mike speaking to Radio Derby's Andy Twigge on the BBC website here.  

With the local cinema news In the Picture is, I'm guessing, the same Ian Christie who went on to be a renowned film historian (at the BFI and now Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck, University of London). In 1969 he'd got a job teaching at the Derby College of Art where he established one of the country's first film studies courses.  

Unusually for many of the BBC local station's at this time Derby had an evening show Late Night Derby originally introduced the previous year to provide some late-night company during the power cuts when the television service was forced to closedown at 10.30 pm.  

Presenting a Saturday morning pop show is Al Kay, the name that Alastair Yates had adopted at the time. Alastair was running a mobile disco when he got the chance to try out radio broadcasting when Radio Derby held a DJ for a Day contest in 1971. He joined the stations two years later eventually using his real name when he was offered some speech shows including a time on Up and About. He moved to Pebble Mill in 1978 to work at Radio Birmingham, Midlands Today and read the regional news on the Radio 4 VHF opt-out. TV news work followed at Grampian, Anglia and the newly launched Sky News before long stints at BBC World and BBC News 24. He retired in 2011 and died suddenly in 2018.    

With thanks to Michael Wincott  @RadioMerch

Other Derby presenters in the 1970s/early 80s included John Burton, Simon Shaw, Paul Baird, Arthur Coyne (jazz shows), Canon Noel Vincent (later a religious programmes producer for BBC radio and TV), Norman Innes, Richard Else, Richard Sykes, Chris Baird (ex-Radio Trent and one of Derby's longest-serving presenters until the mid-2000s), Tommy Owen (The 78 Show), Peter Gore, Nigel Dean, Dave Fern , Neil Everton (also the news editor for a time), Rodney Malcolm, Mike Robinson, Yvonne Guy,  Glen Wright (long-time presenter of Black Roots), Richard Dallyn (later IRN Political Correspondent, Radio 5 live and LBC) and Satvinder Rana (one of the original presenters of Aaj-Kal when it started in September 1981 and still on air today).

Behind the news from the 1979 Radio Derby magazine (with thanks to David Ballard).
In 1989 the station would win a Silver Medal at the International Radio Festival
of New York for its coverage of the M1 Kegworth air disaster. 

Amongst the news reporters in the 70s were Bob Egginton (later heading up the BBC's GNS and launching BBC News Online in 1997), Nigel Kay (later the Corporation's Head of Journalism Development) and Paul Leighton (later a general presenter before joining Radio 4 and then Radio 2 as a continuity announcer and newsreader).  

Editor Simon Cornes hands over a cheque to the Matlock Red Cross following
the final Money Mountain Appeal in 2008. The charity appeal first ran in 
1983 and over 25 years raised more than £1m

One of Radio Derby's most unexpected appointments was Terry Christian, some eight years before The Word came along. Christian presented the early evening music show Barbed Wireless between 1982 and 1988 picking up two Sony Awards on the way. The BBC Handbook described the show as mixing "music with information about jobs, alternatives to work and suggestions about the sort of things that can constructively fill otherwise empty days". Terry moved back to Manchester to Key 103 and on to television from 1990. Audio from a 1988 edition of the show is on Mixcloud.

One of the Barbed Wireless team was Kevin Fernihough who also presented the show when Christian was on leave. Fern moved up to Radio Cumbria for the first of three spells at the station, in- between appearing on Radio Stoke (twice), Signal Radio and Century 106. Also on Barbed Wireless was Devon Daley who years later would produce Trevor Nelson's shows for Radio 1 and 1Xtra and has presented A Touch of Soul (2007-20) and currently DJ Delights across the East Midlands.  

Jumping forward to the week commencing 11 January 1992 where Ian Skelly is the weekday breakfast show host. Ian started with the BBC in 1984 initially at BBC WM before moving to Radio Shropshire and then Derby but is best known as a Radio 3 presenter (Essential Classics and now Afternoon Concert).

On mid-mornings is the late Graham Knight (14 years with the station, ex-Radio Trent and host of Radio 2's weekend early show 1987-91). Another former Radio 2 early show presenter was David Yarnall (ex-Beacon, Mercia Sound and Radio Stoke) here presenting the Saturday morning breakfast show. On weekdays after lunch with Paul McKenzie the station was still taking Dennis McCarthy's Afternoon Special, something it had been simulcasting since 1980.    

Amongst the specialist music shows is Folkwaves, a folk music show that ran from 1985 until it was axed in December 2010. The longest serving presenter was Mick Peat (who died in January of this year) alongside Bob Hazelwood, Barry Coope and finally Lester Simpson.   

Other voices on Radio Derby over the years have included Alex Trelinksi (also at Leicester, Nottingham and Humberside), Steve Orme, Ian Gatford, presenter of Level Out Mark Sheldon (later at XFM and producer at 6 Music and Radio 2), Colin Gibson (sports), Graham Richards, Mick Smith (country music shows), Ashley Franklin (at Derby for 22 years also on Radio Nottingham Stoke and Saga), David Harvey, Dave King (1985-2011), Aleena Naylor (1999-2021), David Rider, Andy Whittaker (breakfast show presenter for 13 years followed by 13 years at breakfast on Radio Nottingham), John Shaw (ex-Radio Trent, also on Radio Nottingham and Saga), Howard Turner, Canon Donald Macdonald, Tom Price, Nigel Cash, Ian Perry (currently at Erewash Sound), Julia May-Brown (also on BFBS now freelance producer), Graham Wright (ex-Trent), John Holmes (perhaps best known for his time at Radio Nottingham), Gary Andrews, Rob Underwood (also at Radios Nottingham and Lincolnshire), Frances Finn (now on Radio Nottingham, ordained as an Anglican minister in 2020), Shane O'Connor (ex-BBC WM later at BBC CWR), Ed George, Dean Jackson (presenter of The Beat), Ross Fletcher, Johnny Kinch, Phil Trow (currently at Radio Manchester), Rev Nicholas Henshall (presenting the Sunday morning religious show 2004-09), Adrian Lacey, Maria Richmond (now with Radio Lincolnshire), Ed Dawes, Dave Fletcher, Sally Pepper (see the 2013 Face behind the voice feature above), Dylan Roys, Mike Carey (Memorable Moments), Andy Twigge (ex-Trent, Oak FM), Jeff Harris, Ian Skye, James Watt, Tony Lyman, Richard Spurr, Rob Watts, Dean Pepall, Ed Stagg, Martyn Williams, Steve Jordan (ex-Lincs FM, Viking, Magic 1161, Century 106, Leicester Sound, KCFM, Asda FM, Real Radio, Yorkshire Coast and Greatest Hits Network- I may have missed some!), Chris Coles, Rachel New, (ex-Heart), Donna Alos, Jen Thomas and Simon Morykin.

Special mention must, of course, go to two Radio Derby broadcasters who have sadly died in the last few years. In January 2017 Andy Potter, who been with the station since 1999, announced that he had terminal cancer. A blue plaque was placed on the studio building in January 2018.   

Colin Bloomfield spent 10 years at the station. Suffering from skin cancer in February 2015 he initiated the Colin Bloomfield Melanoma Appeal which went on to raise over £150,000. Colin passed away just three months later aged just 33. In April 2016 the studio complex at St Helen's Street was named Bloomfield House in his honour.               

Radio Humberside Year by Year

 

This is a  companion post to 50 Years of BBC Radio Humberside. Whilst researching that post I went back through my Radio Times archive to trace the history, people and programmes on the BBC local station. I've scanned in that many pages that I thought I'd put some of them online.

My collection is pretty complete from 1976 but there are gaps before that. Nothing from 1973, 1974 or 1975, so if you have an old edition somewhere in the house please let me know. As you'll see this is a case of the gradually shrinking schedule, in terms of column inches at least.  In the 70s the listings get a full page at the back of the Radio Times. By the 80s they share space with neighbouring locals, Lincolnshire, York, Leeds and Sheffield, depending on the edition. By the 90s up to a dozen stations are spread across two pages. I've stopped in 2008 as by 2009 all the schedules appear on the BBC website.   

W/C 13 March 1971 (with thanks to Ken Clark)

W/C 30 December 1972

W/C 29 May 1976

W/C 5 February 1977

W/C 30 September 1978

W/C 20 January 1979

W/C 16 February 1980

W/C 21 February 1981

W/C 29 May 1982

W/C 1 October 1983

W/C 12 May 1984

W/C 13 July 1985

W/C 8 February 1986

 

W/C 5 September 1987

W/C 11 June 1988

W/C 6 May 1989

W/C 29 September 1990

W/C 15 June 1991

W/C 20 June 1992

W/C 1 May 1993

W/C 1 October 1994

W/C 25 February 1995

W/C 27 April 1996

W/C 8 March 1997

25 May 1998

W/C 18 September 1999

W/C 25 March 2000

W/C 24 February 2001

W/C 26 January 2002

W/C 1 March 2003

W/C 3 July 2004

W/C 7 May 2005

W/C 27 May 2006

W/C 18 August 2007

W/C 27 September 2008