A Crooning Christmas

With a career spanning seven decades Tony Bennett is the last of the American singers who goes back to the big band era. Most of his contemporaries - Sinatra, Ella, Ray Charles, Mel Tormé, Vic Damone - are sadly no longer with us. He's survived the rock 'n' roll and pop era and has come back time and time again, most recently enjoying success with the Grammy award-winning Duets albums. His most recent album Love is Here to Stay, a collaboration with Diana Krall, was released in September.    

For Christmas in 2001 Tony recorded a show for BBC Radio 2. This was relaxed easy listening with Bennett acting as DJ and playing some of his favourite music from Bing to Billy Joel, from Dinah Washington to Stevie Wonder plus some of his own recordings mixed in for good measure.

Sit back, pour yourself a drink and wallow in some classic music and reminiscences from Tony Bennett. First broadcast on Sunday 30 December 2001. Thank you to Paul Langford for passing this recording on to me.      




And if love this kind of music you were probably a listener to those Sunday night shows from The David Jacobs Collection. Here's a festive themed programme with David from 23 December 2007.  

Life at the ZOO

The hundreds of shoppers who daily pass by Urban Outfitters and Schuh on London's Oxford Street will be unaware that the building above them played a part in Britain's wartime broadcasting effort.  Yet it was the place where George Orwell broadcast to India and Ed Murrow to the States. It was where John Arlott started his career as a radio producer, at one point working alongside a young David Jacobs. And it was where a girl in the typing pool called Jean Metcalfe got her first opportunity to be in front of the microphone.    

Behind 200 Oxford Street cut through Great Portland Street and then take a right down Market Place and there's a clue for those that spot the plaque on the wall just next to the entrance of what is now known as Orwell Studios. It reads: "From June 1942 for fifteen years, this building was the headquarters of the BBC Overseas Services. During the war direct broadcasts were made to America from the roof while air-raids were in progress, The BBC vacated the premises in November 1957".

In the early days of the Second World War the BBC was asked by the Government to treble its output abroad so increasing the scale of both its Overseas and European Services, then based at Broadcasting House.  Also for security reasons some departments were being re-located, hence the move out to Wood Norton in Worcestershire for the likes of the drama staff.

During 1940 the various parts of the BBC's Empire Service found itself split up over three sites. Most of what would be the European Services was shifted to Bush House - after having first being evacuated to Maida Vale - others were billeted to Aldenham House in Hertfordshire and Abbey Manor near Evesham.

In June1941 BBC engineers indentified the basement of what was then the Peter Robinson department store, just round the corner from Broadcasting House in Oxford Street, as suitable for wartime studios. A surprising decision perhaps as the store had been ravaged by bombing in September 1940 - Broadcasting House itself was hit the following month.

Anyway the menswear department moved out of the basement and the BBC moved in to build the nine (later thirteen) studios and a control room. Some office accommodation was then added to the floors above and from June 1942 staff from both Aldenham House and Abbey Manor moved in.

In fact, as the plaque in Market Place attests, this wasn't the building's first association with broadcasting. During those famous Ed Murrow rooftops descriptions of London throughout the Blitz, the US correspondent had used the top of 200 Oxford Street as one of his vantage points, though he never revealed this at the time.   

Although the upper floors of the building are now named after George Orwell, his time at the BBC as an Eastern Services producer and broadcaster were described by the novelist as "two wasted years." His diary reflects that "much of the stuff that goes out from the BBC is just shot into the stratosphere, not listened to by anybody".

Staff at 200 Oxford Street would jokingly refer to the building as the ZOO. The studios themselves were perhaps not best placed for noise pollution from the nearest tube line. Edward Pawley's history of BBC Engineering explains: "Just as the noise from the Bakerloo Tube could be heard in the basement studios of Broadcasting House when it was opened in 1932, the noise of the underground trains on the Central London Line could be heard in some of the studios at 200 Oxford Street, which were about 50 ft below ground level. It was, in fact, possible to distinguish the arrival and departure of the trains, and the opening and closing of their doors. One of the many overseas visitors who came to visit Bush House after the war claimed that he had been able to identify a particular studio when listening 5000 miles away by the sound of the underground trains — and he was right."

Before her time presenting Forces Favourites (later Family Favourites) Jean Metcalfe had joined the BBC's General Office in the summer of 1940. She soon moved across to the Empire Service to help deal with the fan mail that came in for the announcers. Jean takes up the story of how she got her break into broadcasting: "the Service was expanding with the need to keep overseas territories in touch with London and soon we were moved from our makeshift office in the Restaurant Annexe of Broadcasting House, with its food smells and plasterboard partitions, to 200 Oxford Street, the old Peter Robinson building. Now there were dozens of us working twenty-four hours a day on the Overseas Service. My work became more clerical than secretarial, thank God, and even brought me glimpses of the studios below grounds. One joyous day, May 24th 1941, Noel Iliff asked me to read Thomas Nashe's poem Spring, the sweet Spring in a programme he was producing, Books and People at 1500 GMT. The refrain 'Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to witta-woo' would sound silly, he said, in the deep voice of the presenter, the novelist Gerald Bullet. It sounded pretty silly in mine too, I thought. However, it didn't matter if only a handful of homesick Kenyan planters would hear me, I was on the wireless - at last."

BBC producer Trevor Hill was one of the BBC staff, at that time a Programme Engineer, who made the move round the corner to Oxford Street where he worked on Radio Newsreel and many other programmes: "My job, when I started work at 200 Oxford Street in the Continuity Studios, was to play music on gramophone records besides complete programmes recorded by the BBC on seventeen-inch 'slow speed' discs. That was in the days before microgrooves had been invented. The BBC slow speed records would have things like Front Line Family recorded on them. Then there was the Epilogue. On a particular Sunday evening when I was working in the Continuity Studio for the Pacific Service I had a very nice Australian announcer on duty with me, Isabel Ann Shead. The trusting Ann turned to me and asked what was next on that day's Routine Transmission Schedule. I consulted the document. 'Oh, it's the old E-pill-o-gog,' I replied facetiously. Miss Shead went into action. 'This is the Pacific Service of the BBC.' We were allowed the slightest reverential pause for such a Sunday transmission. 'The E-pill-o-gog!' declared the good lady for all to hear."  

David Jacobs was briefly based at 200 Oxford Street after the war when he joined the BBC as an announcer in a team that included Jack de Manio, Jean Metcalfe and Mary Malcolm. His recollection of his time there seems to be full of japes: "for instance during a band show at Hammersmith Palais de Danse, where I was sharing announcing duties with Mary Malcolm, Mary turned to me before one number and said 'I can't think of anything, David - what shall I say?' 'Oh, say the next tune reminds you of the film Sweater Girl,' I told her. Mary had not time to sort this out. She trustingly stepped up to the microphone and announced to a large section of the English-speaking world: 'The next number always reminds me of the film Sweater Girl. ladies and gentlemen, The Jersey Bounce!' And her horrified 'Oh, David, you're dreadful!' also went winging out on the waves before she stepped back again."

But it wasn't all high jinks for David. For a while he was also one of the readers on Book of Verse, produced by a recent recruit to the BBC staff, one John Arlott. David recalls:"One of the things John taught me was how to get a story told in thirty seconds or a minute with a beginning, a middle and an end. he had me looking out of the window of his room overlooking Oxford Street and said, 'Righto, here's a watch. I want you to tell me what's happening in that street. You have to start when I tell you and when it comes to thirty seconds you've got to be halfway through and knowing you've got thirty seconds to finish and at the minute you've got to have finished. Not a minute and one second, a minute.' He had me doing that for quite a time, which I found very attractive for two reasons. One, that he should take the trouble to do it, and two, that he was concerned that I should learn. Ever since, it's been very useful, because if somebody says ' Will you give me thirty seconds,' I can count in my head and do it."

There's footage of the exterior of the buidling dating from 1953 on the Getty Images website.

The BBC continued to occupy 200 Oxford Street until late 1957 by which time any remaining staff were moved over to Bush House. The building then reverted back to retail use and was occupied by C&A for over forty years until the company closed down its UK business in 2001.   

In 2006 the site was redeveloped by ORMS Architectural Design on behalf of Redevco (the ultimate owners of C&A's property portfolio) to create the retail space for Urban Outfitters and Shuh and then apartments above named Orwell Studios. With that rooftop view from which those wartime broadcasts were made you can now occupy a 2-bedroomed penthouse apartment for £1.7m.  

Pop Pickers and Music Vendors

Asked to choose your favourite British radio DJs the chances are one of them will be on this list: David Jacobs, Alan Freeman, John Peel, Tommy Vance and Roger Scott. All now sadly no longer with us. But all are the subject of this latest book, Pop Pickers and Music Vendors by John Van der Kiste.

John has traced the careers of these eminent DJs (and Eminent DJs was the working title for the book) because he rightly regards the five "as among the greatest in their field", observing that not only did they end their careers as radio presenters "but also that four of them were still broadcasting within weeks of their passing away." Old DJs never die, they just fade.....

Aside from Peel - who must surely be the most written about DJ, with Kenny Everett running a close second - the rest of John's cast of players have not received the same level of attention, at least not in printed form. There is much here to satisfy the casual reader as there is the ardent radio enthusiast.

Pop Pickers and Music Vendors is published by Fonthill Media and is available from them and all the usual places. One for the Christmas book list I think.

Here are the famous five in action:

A Day on 2

Set the controls for the 18th of February 1985.

Imagine being able to fashion a radio time-travelling device that can receive your favourite show from the past or being able to listen again to an historic broadcast (and no I’m not talking about 4 Extra!)  

OK, so it probably wouldn’t be BBC Radio 2 on 18 February 1985. As far as I know nothing earth-shatteringly significant happened that day. But, for no real apparent reason, thirty years ago I decided to stick some tapes in my cassette recorder and capture that days output, well a large chunk of it.

This is your chance to hear again how the station sounded in the mid-80s, from Night Ride to Round Midnight, stopping off at the JY show, John Dunn’s Mystery Voice and all points in between.  Here's a quick rundown of the day in jingle form and the full Radio Times schedule.

These are the technical bits: I’m posting the clips on my YouTube channel just to ensure a wider audience. I’ve chopped out most of the commercial music tracks in order to avoid any copyright notices. So far this seems to have worked, though for some reason listeners in Germany may not be able to hear all the programmes, sorry Germany.

I’ll be posting the shows online during the day of the 18 February 2015 at the same time as their original start time – although to avoid staying up all night Peter Dickson and Colin Berry’s show will be available on Tuesday night. Each time a programme is added I’ll update this blog post, send a Tweet and update my Facebook page. All times in GMT of course.

Unfortunately I didn’t record every show that day. So you won’t hear the specialist music shows with Alan Dell and Humph, the mid-afternoon sequence Music All the Way or that evening’s Star Sound Special.  However, elsewhere on this blog you can read about and hear Alan Dell, Humphrey Lyttelton and Music All the Way.  Also the quality of the audio is variable, this is nothing to do with my FM reception at the time but more the fact I used budget tapes.

Kicking things off at 1 a.m. was Peter Dickson with a suitably jokey start to Nightride. Peter took care of the overnight shifts alternating with either Bill Rennells or Charles Nove. Lack of needletime meant we still had doses of the Radio Orchestra, the Brian Lemon Trio and so on. Making the first of two appearances that day is John Fogerty, whose new album Centrefield had just been released, although Peter seems not to know the former lead singer of Creedence Clearwater Revival. There’s a also a talk from Barney Lawrence – anyone know who he is? This kind of (mildly) comical talk was still a feature of Nightride just as they had been on You and the Night and the Music. 

Following Nightride was a repeat of the previous day’s Two’s Best with John Dunn, demonstrating that the current overnight repeat policy is nothing new. Sadly I didn’t record this programme.

At the time the king of the early shows was Colin Berry who’d had early starts, on and off, since January 1976. Getting up before dawn every day must have been taking its toll as Colin reports he’s practically wrecked the studio and nearly garrotted himself with his headphone lead. Note also a mention of changes that evening on BBC TV, he’s referring to a new BBC1 globe and the launch of EastEnders. Listen out too for a news summary from David Bellan.



At 6 a.m. enter the still much missed Ray Moore. Ray’s on form this morning, witness that lovely intro into the Shakin’ Stevens track There’s also mention of the announcers over on Radio 3 with Tarmac Rigby and Miss Hughes who’s apparently “gone into tax exile”. Towards the end of this recording catch Bill Rennells voicing a trail for Gloria’s show later that day and her special guest David Cassidy – more on that to follow.



It’s “hello chums” from Ken Bruce on the Radio 2 breakfast show. Perhaps it should have been the Late, Late Breakfast Show as Ken didn’t go on-air until 8.05 am. At the time of this recording he’d been presenting the programme for just six weeks. Punctuating proceedings are Steve Madden reading the news and Pause for Thought with the Rev Roger Royle. Listeners to Radio 2’s current morning output will notice how much calmer it all was thirty years ago; no shouting, no whooping, no laughing acolytes and no-one else to read the traffic news.

The matters on Jimmy Young’s agenda at 10.30 are the Falklands, the miners, school dinners and Winter Fuel Allowances. In this extract he interviews SNP MP Gordon Wilson about his Cold Climate Allowance Bill and Peter Smith of teachers’ union AMMA about school kids supposedly having ‘chips with everything’. In contrast to Jeremy Vine’s show no listeners appeared on the programme to voice their opinions, all the feedback from “the listener” is read out by Jim himself. “Bye for now!”

“Hello there!” It’s amazing to think that Radio 2 took an hour out each lunchtime for David Jacobs to play “our kind of music”. Much as I love the music he played it really did seem like the station was stepping back to the days of the Light Programme, even including a track by Frank Chacksfield, a regular on the Light.



As a reminder that Radio 2 used to have women presenters during the day on weekdays here’s Gloria Hunniford with an edited version of her 90-minute show. Promised guest David Cassidy is a no-show, having backed out at 12 noon due to a “contractual difficulty”, so instead its Bonnie Langford! Glo’s second guest is author John Byrne Cooke, son of Alistair Cooke. 

From 3.30 pm it’s as if Radio 2 had a short interlude and put up the audio equivalent of the test card whilst Music All the Way was on. This was a 30-minute sequence of music on record and BBC sessions. I didn’t record the programme for 18 February but you can hear an edition from February 1986 here. Of Music All the Way former Radio 2 presenter and announcer Charles Nove commented: “An odd little duty, that one, which involved heading for one of Broadcasting House's least popular studios (bit of lashup, no windows, dodgy ventilation etc) and doing the live top and tail for this, and playing in the music, ‘supervised’ by the BBC's most panicky producer and a bored engineer. Overmanning? Never!”

In all the recordings so far you’ll have heard very little new music, and certainly nothing that would trouble the charts. That’s why David Hamilton’s show was such a breath of fresh air, and rightly dubbed “the music show”. There’s also plenty of listener interaction and prizes available in The Music Game and Spot the Intro. 

The reigning monarch of drivetime for an eon was John Dunn. The show’s mix of music, topical interviews and a quiz – in this case the long-running Mystery Voice competition – is still the template for today’s Radio 2 offering. Providing the programme rundown at the end of this recording is John Marsh.



There are no recordings of Alan Dell’s double bill of the Dance Band Days and the Big Band Era but you can hear other editions here. Nor did I tape Humphrey Lyttelton with The Best of Jazz but there’s plenty of Humph here. And again I inexplicably failed to record Star Sound Special in which John Benson featured the music of Nelson Riddle. But what you can hear again is the third edition of a new panel game, and the second dose that day of David Hamilton, in Some of These Days. The premise of the programme was to answer questions about news, events, TV shows and music that happened on that day in history. On the panel are Peter Jones, Sheila Tracy, Fiona Fullerton and Barry Cryer.  



Closing proceedings for the day is Brian Matthew with the daily arts and music show Round Midnight, at this point more than halfway through its 12 year run.  Brian’s guests are Patrick Marr and James Roose-Evans talking about the revival of George Axelrod’s play The Seven Year Itch and author Nickolai Tolstoy plugging his latest book The Quest for Merlin. 

It Was Number One, It Was Top of the Pops

Fifty years ago today viewers to BBC TV saw the first edition of Top of the Pops. You’ll see or hear nothing on the usually anniversary-conscious  Beeb to commemorate this;  the brand has become more than a little tarnished in the last couple of years. Selected repeats start up again on BBC Four, we’re into 1979 now, but the regular series was killed off in 2006, though it limps on with the Christmas/New Year specials.

Back in May 1983 Top of the Pops celebrated its 1000th edition and BBC Radio 1 joined in with a simultaneous broadcast and a history of the show introduced by Richard Skinner.

Firstly here’s what went out on Radio 1 only for the 10 minutes before TOTP and then half an hour afterwards.

And here’s that night’s edition of the show complete with an introductory chat between Richard Skinner and David Jacobs that also aired on BBC1.

Both recordings are exactly as I committed them to tape that day and include the voices of presenters who are now ‘persona non grata’. I have made no further digital edits.

Update (December 2023): The studio set Christmas specials ended in 2021. BBC Four repeats continue and we're now up to 1995.   

Radio Lives – David Jacobs

In my late teens you may have found me browsing the record racks of Sydney Scarborough in Hull not just for the latest pop offerings, but flicking through the Frank Sinatra back catalogue. The reason for my loitering in the Easy Listening section? It was down to the musical education I received every Saturday morning from David Jacobs and my introduction to the world of the American songbook and the voices of Ella Fitzgerald, Vic Damone, Keely Smith, Tony Bennett and co.

Yes, I did follow the latest trends in pop music, and develop a love for jazz and big band – with thanks to Alan Dell, Benny Green and Humphrey Lyttelton - but over the years it was the tunes that David called “our kind of music” that stayed with me. So it was a very sad moment in August when he presented his last show, illness now robbing his voice of the tone and fluency that had set him apart from many other broadcasters.  

Reading the obituaries for David you might think that his career was bookended by Juke Box Jury and The David Jacobs Collection. In researching this post I’ve been amazed by the sheer volume and variety of shows that David has been involved with, both radio and TV. As far as I can tell from 1948 to 2013 there wasn’t a single year he wasn’t on the radio and from the late 1950s and through sixties he remained a constant on the nation’s TV screens. Sadly, of course, little remains of his radio and TV work from the early years as most shows were live – only two editions of Juke Box Jury survive for instance. I can’t, of course, include every programme that David worked on – guest appearances on Hello Cheeky or the infamous Fred Emney Picks a Pop and so on - but I trust that this post includes all the significant ones in what was a remarkable career.

David was born in Streatham Hill, South London on 19 May 1926. He had a good ear for voices and at an early age would entertain his family with impressions of film stars, radio performers and local characters such as the milkman. The performing bug led to local talent shows and amateur dramatics. Early jobs included working at a pawnbrokers, a gents outfitters, a warehouse and a tobacco company. He joined the Home Guard as an officer cadet before plumping for the Navy in the summer of 1944.

His Navy service was all shore-based with training at HMS Royal Arthur in Skegness (at Butlins holiday camp), moving to HMS Ganges in Ipswich and then HMS Valkyrie (a row of boarding houses) on the Isle of Man.

A chance meeting with a young girl called Kay Emerson, who turned out to be a junior programme engineer on the BBC show Navy Mixture, led to David’s first radio appearance. The producer Charles Maxwell was not exactly overwhelmed by his range of impressions but nonetheless asked him to work it up into an act which, in the event, turned out to be imitations of Howard Marshall, Stuart Hibberd, Vic Oliver, Jack Benny and Rochester, Winston Churchill and –“in a crescendo of frenzied quacking” – Donald Duck. Sadly no recording of the show survives.

Coming off stage he was introduced to naval lieutenant-commander Kim Peacock (later to play Paul Temple) who told him that a career as an impersonator might be limited but had he thought of becoming an announcer in the services broadcasting unit. Within a couple of weeks he found himself at ORBS, the Overseas Recorded Broadcasting Service, in Drury Lane. There he met Jon Pertwee – they would become life-long pals – George Melachrino, George Mitchell, Sidney Torch and Eric Robinson, names that would become familiar in post-war broadcasting. David’s first announcing duties were for Services Music Hall.  

In May 1946 David was posted to a new station being set up in Ceylon, Radio SEAC (South Eastern Asia Command). It had immense coverage and could be heard in India, East Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Indo-China, Japan and even the west coast of the States.

David was the station’s senior announcer but had no experience of live broadcasting. His instruction came from Captain McDonald Hobley - later one of the BBC’s team of in-vision announcers – and he was finally let loose with his first live announcement: “This is Radio-Seac, Ceylon, broadcasting on 6.075 megacycles per second in the 49 metre band.”

Also at Radio-SEAC were Desmond Carrington, who like David would have, and continues to have, a long radio career, future BBC radio producer Charles Chilton and Alexander Moyes, who would join the BBC’s Overseas Service announcing team. David continued to have links with Radio Ceylon, as SEAC became after hostilities ended, until the mid-50s, providing batches of scripts for a weekly record feature.

Posted home in January 1947 - a somewhat enforced return following an unfortunate dalliance with a married woman - David had been due to return to the Army Broadcasting Service when he was invited to join the BBC’s Overseas Service who were short of announcers. Working alongside Jack de Manio, Jean Metcalfe and Mary Malcolm the strait-laced corporation didn’t seem to be the place for someone who, by his own admission, was an uncontrollable giggler. In his autobiography David recalls how his job was cut short following a Home News bulletin:

At that moment one of the sub-editors came over with what was evidently an urgent piece of lately-arrived news. He slipped it into my hand and I glanced down at it. It was simply a photograph of a remarkably unclad young woman. And it was so unexpected and incongruous that I began to laugh. And having once begun to laugh, I couldn’t stop. I managed to take a deep breath and stay straight-faced long enough to get out ‘That is the end of the news’. It had finished five minutes too soon.

After just nine months on the staff David went freelance, and his career flourished. Poetry producer John Arlott asked him to narrate Book of Verse, sharing the duties with John Whitty. Book of Verse was a weekly programme that went out on the Eastern Service, and later also on the Light Programme. Meanwhile he was also busy on English by Radio and Radio Newsreel.

By the late 40s/early 50s David had established himself as both an actor and a disc jockey. For the independent producer Harry Alan Towers there was the marathon 150 episode serial The Scarlet Pimpernel, playing Lord Tony Dewhurst to Marius Goring’s Sir Percy Blakeney. This series was syndicated in North America and on Radio Luxembourg. For the BBC, written and produced by his old Radio SEAC colleague Charles Chilton, was Journey into Space (1953-58). Famously Jacobs played all the roles not taken by the four principal characters: a total of twenty-five. He recalled that on at least one occasion “I found myself having a conversation with myself.”

As ‘DJ the DJ’ he joined the roster of presenters on Housewives’ Choice, getting his first booking for the fortnight beginning 25 January 1949. He left nothing to chance and after a week wrote himself lots of letters from various imaginary people telling him how good he was. He needn’t have bothered: “the BBC, scrupulously refraining from poking its nose into other people’s business, politely forwarded all the letters to me – unopened”. Nonetheless he continued to present the show at intervals until 1966.  

Meanwhile David was also doing commercial voiceovers and recording shows in London for transmission on Radio Luxembourg, most running at just 30 minutes each. Some of his 1950s shows were sponsored by Bournvita and during the 60s he fronted some EMI-sponsored shows produced by Ken Evans, who would later produce his Radio 2 shows in the 1980s. (Ken died just last month). Shows on 208 included Roxy Time, Woodbine Quiz Time, Lucky Couple (an early version of Mr and Mrs), Record Roulette, Pops Past Midnight, David Jacobs’ Startime, David Jacobs Plays the Pops and, not unnaturally, The David Jacobs Show. He worked on and off for Radio Luxembourg until 1968, when such recorded shows were faded out.   

The Amazing Adventures of Commander Highprice (1947 BBC TV)

A programme starring Jon Pertwee and David’s first TV appearance.
Little Women (1950-51 BBC TV)
Playing the part of Laurie
Jazz Club (1940s Light Programme)
Both the BBC’s biography of David and Gillian Reynolds writing in the Daily Telegraph list Jazz Club. I can’t be certain when he presented the programme as it tended to have a different compere each week. 
Puffney Post Office (1950 Light Programme)
Comedy series with Jon Pertwee and Eric Barker
She Shall Have Music (1954 Home Service)
Providing the announcements for this show featuring Gracie Cole and her All Girl Orchestra
Purely for Pleasure (1954 Home Service)
On the Brighter Side (1950s Home Service)
David’s first show with producer Derek Chinnery
Grande Gingold (1955 Home Service)
A series starring Hermione Gingold
Paradise Street (1954 Light Programme)
Comedy with Max Bygraves, Peter Sellers and Hattie Jacques
Saturday Show (1954-55 Home Service)
Featuring Cyril Stapleton and the BBC Show Band, Alfred Marks and Rikki Fulton. Produced by Johnnie Stewart, later of Top of the Pops.
The Man About Town (1955 Home Service)
Star vehicle for Jack Buchanan with Vanessa Lee, Pat Coombs and Hubert Gregg
Curiouser and Curiouser (1956 Home Service)
Reading humorous verse along with Peter Sellers
My Patricia (1956 Home Service)
Radio show with Pat Kirkwood and Hubert Gregg. When Hubert died in 2004 it was David that presented the tribute version of Thanks for the Memory.
Movietone News (1955-56)
David had previously voiced newsreels for the BBC and had stood in for Leslie Mitchell at Movietone. When Leslie joined ITV full-time in 1955 he suggested David for the job.
Dateline London (1950s BBC)
Programmes for the North American Service of the BBC in which David interviewed big name US stars visiting the UK.
Top Town Tournament (1959-60 BBC TV)
A Barney Colehan produced show in which towns round the UK competed in a talent contest to find the best variety acts, a kind of early It’s a Knockout and Britain’s Got Talent hybrid. The series ran from 1954 to 1960 but David Jacobs is only credited in later series.

Here's David with a Movietone News report in December 1955. You can listen (and see) more on the British Movietone website.

An honorary mention must go to the one-off (and deservedly so) 1955 BBC show Music, Music, Music in which the panel had to identify tunes tapped out with a pencil, played backwards, speeded up or other disguised. At Jacobs recalls, “it might have kept a couple of schoolboys amused for part of a wet afternoon but it had no general appeal at all.”

Focus on Hocus (1955 ITV)

David presented this short-lived series featuring the magic tricks of David Berglas
The Vera Lynn Show (1956 ITV)
Make Up Your Mind! (1956-8 Granada TV)
“Competitors with an eye for value have a chance to show their skill by saying which is worth more-an object or a certain sum of money. There are prizes for viewers as well as for studio challengers”
Tell the Truth (1957-58 ATV)
With regular panel John Skeaping, Jacqueline Curtis, Roberta Leigh and Bill Owen.

Although we think of David as mainly a BBC man he became one of the early star names on the fledgling commercial television channels in the late 1950s. He got this break thanks to an offer to compere Focus on Hocus from producer Tig Roe who’d worked with David on the Scarlet Pimpernel radio series. 

David was chairman of Make Up Your Mind!, a kind of early The Price is Right with valuations provided by Arthur Maddocks. Tell the Truth was the more successful show, coming as it did from the Goodson-Todman stable, and enjoyed a UK revival in the 1980s. When David left the show the next host was McDonald Hobley (1958), his old Radio SEAC colleague, and then Shaw Taylor (1959-61)   

Juke Box Jury (1959-1967 BBC TV)

The Wednesday Magazine (1959-62 BBC TV)
A daytime show aimed at the housewife – it had previously been billed as Mainly for Women and though having a female production team was fronted by John Whitty.
Top of the Pops (1964-66 BBC1)
David was one of the quartet of hosts of when the show started in January 1964 with Pete Murray, Alan Freeman and Jimmy Savile.

It was Juke Box Jury that made David Jacobs a household name and the show became a Saturday teatime fixture throughout the 1960s. When the show was first muted the idea was that David would be on the panel but he pointed out that he had considerably more experience as a chairman so he ended up in the hot seat. In fact three of four years earlier he’d already suggested to the BBC a similar show under the title Hit or Miss but they demurred. But Hit or Miss stuck in one way or another as it’s the title of John Barry’s theme for the programme.  

 

David puts the early success of Juke Box Jury not down to the opportunity for the TV audience to hear the latest pop records or hear the opinions of the panel but to his mock feud with panellist Pete Murray. This had started on the radio when David was on Saturday night’s Pick of the Pops and plugged Pete’s Sunday night show, Pete’s Party.

The introductory music faded down: I began to introduce the panel; and when I came to Pete Murray I said ‘And now it is my pleasure-or, at least, my duty- to introduce Pete Murray.’ Pete, keeping his face perfectly straight, looked at the camera and said: ’Oh, I’ve nothing against David Jacobs. I think the world needs men like him: in fact, there’s a very good job going for him in the gentlemen’s lavatory in Leicester Square Underground Station.’ I raised my eyebrows and replied: ‘Thanks – mention my name and you’ll get a good seat.’

To my consternation and embarrassment, hundreds of letters began to come in, protesting at Pete’s ‘ill-mannered and completely unprovoked attack’ on me. Thanks to all this undeserved criticism of poor Pete Juke Box Jury was kept on long enough to settle down and become one of television’s most unexpected and apparently unshakeable successes.  

Earlier this year David spoke to Shaun Tilley for Top of the Pops Playback about his time presenting the Pops between 1964 and 1966.

Roundabout (1958-59 Light Programme)

David was the Tuesday host of this new daily show, in what we would now call a drivetime slot. Looking after the other days of the week were Peter King, Alan Dell, Ken Sykora and Richard Murdoch. The programme ran until 1970 though David only appeared for the first couple of years or so.
Pick of the Pops (1956-61 Light Programme)
David succeeded Franklin Engelmann and Alan Dell to become the third host of POTP. Nearly 40 years later he’d take over from Alan Dell again on Sounds Easy.
The DJ Show (1961 Light Programme)
A Monday night show in which he “spins The Top of the Pops”
Late Night Saturday (1963 Light Programme)
Twelve O’Clock Spin (1964 Light Programme)
The DJ Show (1964 Light Programme)
On Sunday afternoons with “news and views of current records”
Follow That Man (1964 Light Programme)
Jacobs plays Rex Anthony, a BBC producer “caught up in a curious and violent train of events”. Each week a different set of writers take up the story. Those producing the scripts were Edward J.Mason, Eddie Maguire, John P. Wynn, Lawrie Wyman, Philip Levine, Ted Willis, Bob Monkhouse & Denis Goodwin, Gale Pedrick and Frank Muir & Denis Norden.
Midday Spin (1965 Light Programme)
Music Through Midnight (1966/67 Light Programme)
Eurovision Song Contest (1960, 1962-66 BBC TV)
David provided the television commentary. His involvement in Eurovision actually goes back to 1957 when he hosted Festival of Popular British Songs, a series of heats to decide that year’s UK entry (All sung by Patricia Bredin). 
Hot Ice (1963 BBC TV)
This series had started in 1961 with Alan Weeks introducing. The competition catered for “ice-skating enthusiasts and for lovers of pop records.” Seven days before each show the competing teams were supplied with records, chosen by a listening panel, to which they had to rehearse a routine.
The Cool Spot (1964 BBC1)
Similar to Hot Ice it was filmed at the Ice Stadium in Nottingham and as well as the skating there was music from the likes of The Yardbirds (in the first programme on 7 July), Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen, Shane Fenton and the Fentones and Lulu and the Luvers.
Hot Line (1965 BBC1)
A live Saturday night show in which “viewers have the opportunity to discuss any subject they like with any member of the panel via the Hot Line telephone”.

As a lad David whiled away many an hour at the Streatham Ice Rink. His brother Dudley became a professional skater and his best chum Freddie Tomlins went on to win World and European silver medals in figure skating. Perhaps then, it’s not surprising that David was chosen to host Hot Ice and The Cool Spot, though there’s no evidence that he went on the ice for these shows. However, he did for a December 1955 edition of Television Ice-Time (from a time when television seemed obsessed with shows on ice).  He’d suggested that he should jump a row of barrels during the programme. The BBC insured him for £10,000 which helped to boost publicity for the stunt. “The inevitable happened,” he recalled, “at rehearsals I soared over the barrels like a bird; on the broadcast I clipped the last one and went scudding across the ice like a tipsy penguin. Fortunately the result was only breathlessness and bruises.”   

 

Was Hot Line Britain’s first phone-in? I’m not sure but such broadcasts were rare at the time. Only running for three weeks in May 1965 the Radio Times proclaimed that “David Jacobs presides over a team of personalities who will answer questions on the telephone put to them by members of the public”.  The first programme gave viewers a chance to quiz Peter Ustinov, Randolph Churchill, Italian painter Pietro Annigoni and fashion house director Ginette Spannier. However, this was the mid-60s so the public couldn’t just phone in on the night as “the jamming of the Shepherd’s Bush telephone exchange could interfere with essential services.” Instead they had to write into Television Centre giving their details and the question they wanted to pose. Hot Line wasn’t exactly live; BBC engineers had to introduce a tape delay in case of any choice language from a caller.

David Jacobs' Words and Music (1966 Rediffusion TV)
Series looking at trends in music. Guests included Georgia Brown, Dennis Lotis and Millicent Martin.

The David Jacobs Show (1968 Tyne-Tees)

A Wednesday night show in which David meets ”show business personalities, politicians, and members of the public who have a point of view to put.” Broadcast in some ITV regions April-July 1968.
The Wednesday Show (1968 BBC1)
A live early evening show with guests and music. Each week there was a song from folk singer Deena Webster. Broadcast from July to December.
It’s Sunday Night (1969 LWT)
A late-night chat show for which the executive producer was LWT’s Head of Variety Tito Burns. Tito had been a warrant officer in the RAF and had guested on one of David’s SEAC shows as an accordionist. The programme ran in most ITV regions from June to September 1969.
The David Jacobs Show (1967-68 Radio 1 & Radio 2)
Surprisingly David was a Sunday night fixture on the new pop station when it launched in 1967 although the accent was more on the “tuneful end”, playing LPs and featuring music, in the first show from the BBC Radio Orchestra and the Mike Sammes Singers. He also talked to ‘People of Choice’, the first being Julie Andrews.
Any Questions? and Any Answers? (1967-1984 Radio 2 then Radio 4)  

For someone so closely associated with popular music Jacobs was, perhaps, not the natural choice for the role of chairman on Any Questions? Since the programme’s inception in 1948 Freddie Grisewood had been in charge of proceedings but by the winter of 1967 he was unwell and his doctor had ordered rest for a week or two, in the event he didn’t return to the show apart from a one-off to celebrate his 80th birthday. Five different chairmen were given a try-out, one of whom was David Jacobs. Producer Michael Bowen, writing in 1981, recalled the circumstances that led to his appointment:

The first thought that David might be the next chairman of Any Questions? came from Bobbie my wife. She heard him doing Desert Island Discs in which he revealed his love of horses, and to Bobbie that is always a prime, indeed an essential, attribute to anyone seeking high office. She was very impressed by the whole broadcast and told me about it. I put the idea forward that we should invite David to be one of the chairmen during the interregnum and Robin Scott, for one, was enthusiastic.  

That Desert Island Discs appearance had, in fact, been some three years earlier, but it makes a delightful story. David became the permanent chairman from April 1968 and remained with the programme until July 1984. He was masterful at dealing with some occasionally rowdy audiences, notably the 1976 Enoch Powell incident and this interjection in 1980.       

After Seven (1971-73 Radio 2)

David hosted the Tuesday evening edition of this hour-long show. Other nights were, at least initially, covered by Michael Parkinson, Alan Freeman, Ray Moore and Michael Aspel. After Seven ran from 4 October 1971 to June 1973.
Christmas Morning later David Jacobs’ Christmas Crackers (1972-77 Radio 4)
Every Christmas Day morning for six years David provided the links for a miscellany of seasonal comedy clips and music. Writers included Barry Pilton, Pete Spence and David Rider. There were also other holiday shows in a similar vein such as Spring Into Summer (May Bank Holidays 1976-78), Fall Into Summer, The August Jacobs and so on. The Summer Show on August Bank Holiday in 1977 featured sketches written by Alastair Beaton performed by Bernard Cribbins, Sheila Steafel and Royce Mills. From Christmas 1978 the shows were replaced by Christmas Briers with Richard Briers.   
Melodies for You (1974-84 Radio 2)
David was the third presenter of this long-running show playing light classical music.
David Jacobs with Star Sounds (1978-90 Radio 2)
Starting on 11 December 1978 this was a two-hour Saturday morning show featuring the kind of music that would later make The David Jacobs Collection. The Star Sounds title was eventually dropped and the show cut down to an hour when Sounds of the Sixties was introduced.
David Jacobs (1985-91 Radio 2)
Weekday show from 1 to 2 p.m. running from 7 January 1985 to 20 December 1991.

Here’s the man himself coming in for some light-hearted criticism on Radio 4’s Feedback in 1983.

Those Radio 2 weekend shows of the late 70s/early 80s (Star Sounds and Melodies for You) were recalled by former Radio 2 presenter and newsreader Charles Nove, writing shortly after David’s retirement:

When I joined Radio 2, David was presenting two shows every weekend. On a Saturday morning, he’d be offering a mix of Sinatra, Torme, Sammy Davis et al, while the Sunday show would be the classical repertoire. As David put it, in a turn of phrase that may in part be lost on today’s CD and MP3 generation, “I’ll turn myself over and play you music from my other side.” Or, as the late, great Ray Moore would have it: “On Saturday David will play you songs from his front side, and then on Sunday he’ll turn over and show you his……..”. David took this weekly ribbing in good part.

The lunchtime shows that ran between 1985 and 1991 were, in fact, the first time in his career that David had presented a regular daily programme (indeed for five years he was on six days a week!). They came at a time when the network music policy was more melodic and less pop-orientated, ideal for David but sounding a little out of place elsewhere in the schedule.  

In 1972 David was part of the Capital Radio bid for an ILR licence. Programme proposals show that he was penciled in for a Sunday lunchtime show: “The period between ten and two o’clock will be in the hands of David Jacobs and apart from providing an appreciable music content will take advantage of Mr Jacobs’ talent and experience as a programme moderator. One o’clock Sunday lunchtime is traditionally the time for the family to be together and David Jacobs will direct the show towards them in a spirit which includes those listeners who are unable to enjoy the company of their own families.”

David didn’t make it on air at Capital. Instead Sunday lunchtimes would eventually feature that other old smoothie Gerald Harper with his Sunday Affair.

What’s My Line (1973/4 BBC2)

The first revival of the early television hit with David in the chair
Where Are They Now? (1979 BBC1)
A four-part series in August 1979 in which David meets “people who made headlines in the past.” Guests were Ruby Murray, Captain Carlsen, Buster Crabbe, Wing Cmdr Robert Stanford Tuck, Billy Hayes, Humphrey Lestocq, Ethel Whittaker, Reita Faria, Sir Alec Rose and Gerald Campion.
Come Dancing (1984-86 BBC1)
In fact it was a return visit to the show as David had been one of the presenters in the late 50s.
Primetime (1989-92 BBC1)
A daytime magazine show aimed at the “more mature viewer”.

The idea for Primetime arose from a letter that Sue Lawley read out on See for Yourself that argued that while youth had Janet Street-Porter to look after their TV interests, older viewers received scant attention and suggested that David Jacobs present such a programme.

Both David and his Radio 2 producer Anthony Cherry saw this programme and set about creating Primetime, broadcast on Wednesday afternoons on BBC1. On-screen alongside David were  co-producer Miriam O’Callaghan and assistant producer Sheila McClennon. The guest on the very first edition was none other than Vera Lynn, neatly linking back to those 1955 shows on ITV.  

This series of clips are taken from some of David’s Radio 2 shows: Star Sounds from 1980, the start of a 1986 daily show live onboard HMS Ark Royal, Sounds Easy, a Robert Farnon concert, Easy Does It from October 1997 and The David Jacobs Collection from September 2007.

David Jacobs (1992 Melody Radio)

Easy Does It (1993-1998 Radio 2)
Taking over this Saturday night show from Bill Rennells on 2 January 1993 the show featured music on record and sessions from the BBC Big Band. Ended 11 April 1998.
Sounds Easy (1994-96 Radio 2)
David sits in for Alan Dell on this Sunday afternoon show when he is unwell and eventually becomes the permanent host when Alan died in 1995.
The David Jacobs Collection (1996-2013 Radio 2)
There were two separate series of The David Jacobs Collection. The first, from 10 to 11 p.m. on Sunday nights from 6 October 1996 to 12 October 1997, and then the return of the much-loved show from 11 p.m. to midnight starting on 12 April 1998.
Frank Sinatra-Voice of the Century (1998 Radio 2)
Narrating a 13-part series
He’s Playing Our Song-The Music of Marvin Hamlisch (2002 Radio 2)
Narrating a six-part series

Following the end of the daily show in December 1991, David made only occasional appearances on BBC radio in 1992. These included a concert with the BBC Concert Orchestra in May (on the occasion of their 40th anniversary), a 75th birthday concert for the arranger and composer Robert Farnon (David went on to present other concerts featuring Farnon’s music and introduced a tribute programme on his death in 2005) and a Boxing Day special.

There was also a return to commercial radio in June and July when David presented weekend shows on London’s Melody Radio. His show producer at Melody, Gary Whitford recalls how he would “start on air at six in the morning and David would usually arrive by seven. During the first hour – while on air- I would pull David’s music and get a cup of tea and some custard creams ready for his arrival. David used the second studio/come production suite to broadcast from and after I read the news at eight I’d fade up the second studio and David would take over.” Gary told me that “David was a lovely man and a true professional. He was old school, an original pioneer.” But he wasn’t one to suffer fools gladly “and some less respectful people found that out quite quickly.”

Meanwhile back the Beeb, it was back to regular shows from January 1993 with Easy Does It and in 1994 sitting in for an ailing Alan Dell on Sounds Easy. But it was the culmination of all those years in the business and meeting all those star names and performers that came together in The David Jacobs Collection: “Hello there. Stay with me from now until midnight so that we can share that which many call Our Kind of Music. All of which comes from within the David Jacobs collection.” Cue I Love You Samantha by the Pete Moore Orchestra.

In The Collection Closes I posted a David Jacobs Collection show from May 2005.

In the last year it became apparent that David was unwell and he missed a number of shows. In July 2013 it was announced that David would step down citing treatment for liver cancer and Parkinson’s disease. His last collection aired on 4 August, by now he was too ill to make it into the studio and his links were recorded at his home by producer Alan Boyd. Less than a month later David passed away.

Tributes to David’s broadcasting longevity, his consummate professionalism, his charm, his sense of humour and his musical knowledge followed both his retirement and his death. After his last broadcast Janice Long’s post-midnight show was filled with tweets and emails from listeners saying how much they’d miss those Sunday night dates with Mr Jacobs. It was noticeable how many broadcasters paid heartfelt tributes when he died. Here are Ken Bruce, Jeremy Vine, Tony Blackburn, Head of Programmes at Radio 2 Lewis Carney, Alex Lester (talking to John Foster on BBC Tees) and a close to tears Desmond Carrington.    

It had been hoped that David would have been well enough to record a Christmas show for Radio 2. As this didn’t come to pass, by way of a substitute, enjoy this Christmas show that was broadcast on Saturday 23 December 1989 (with thanks to Paul Langford for providing this copy). 

David Jacobs 1926-2013

Thanks to Paul Langford, Gary Whitford, Paul Easton and Charles Nove.