The Battle for Breakfast on 2

In the battle for breakfast radio listeners (it seems almost obligatory to use the alliterative battle for breakfast beloved of headline writers) many of the major protagonists have moved on in the last few months. Christian O'Connell out at Absolute for new adventures down under. Greg in for Grimmy at Radio 1. Emma Bunton leaving Heart London. Shaun Keaveny making his #BreakfastExit at 6 Music. Over at Kiss Rickie, Melvin and Charlie are moving on to Radio 1. Meanwhile Bauer's new Greatest Hits Radio, replacing the City 2 brand this month, sees Simon Ross at breakfast across England. But of course the biggest headlines were reserved for Radio 2's news that Chris Evans was leaving  'Europe's most popular radio programme' for a new chapter at Virgin and that Zoe Ball was to become the station's first regular female breakfast show DJ.

When Zoe starts next Monday she'll only be the station's sixth breakfast show presenter in over 40 years, a statistic that does, of course, includes the 28 years in which Sir Terry was at the helm. I thought I'd take this changing of the guard as an opportunity to look at Radio 2's breakfast shows over its 50+ year history.

In fact we have to trace the history we have to go back a little further, back to the 1940s.

Early morning sequences of gramophone records first appeared on BBC radio during the Second World War as a way of kick starting a war-weary nation and there were also short sessions of calisthenics billed as Up in the Morning Early with exercises for men and for woman complete with piano accompaniment.  

Radio Times 16 January 1964 with Morning Music offering
a "pleasant background of melodic gaiety" 

Programmes titled Bright and Early and the self-explanatory Morning Music ran on the Home Service and the Light Programme from the mid-40s to the early-60s mostly featuring various in-house orchestras as well as other light orchestras and musical combos. Announcers were on hand to introduce the programme but were little heard apart from the occasional time-check

Recordings of some of these shows can be found on the Masters of Melody website. Listening to them you get the clear impression that the BBC wanted nothing raucous. It was all very civilised and designed to gently wake up the country and get them off to work or start the housework just in time to catch Housewives' Choice.

The big impetus for change was the arrival of offshore pirate radio in 1964 and the gradual shift towards personality-driven radio. The BBC responded in August 1964 with a named announcer assigned to each edition of Morning Music  and the introduction of a record show Family Fare at 8 a.m. As well as the recorded sessions listeners were promised the excitement of "some records."    

The Breakfast Special team in 1965

In October 1965 these different morning programmes were all lumped together in one show, known as Breakfast Special, that ran from 5.30 a.m. to 8.30 a.m. Needletime restriction meant that the bulk of the music was provided by orchestras and groups with the addition of singing groups plus some discs. More chat between items was allowed, even if some listeners didn't appreciate the wisecracks (see below) from the programme presenters who were drawn from the rota of continuity announcers.

Even with the introduction of Breakfast Special the notions of personality radio, familiar voices heard day in and day out, and of building a loyal audience  were ones that the BBC either avoided or just weren't bothered about. Eventually, by the time Radio 2 came on the scene in 1967, the team of announcers presenting the show was whittled down to a core of John Dunn, Paul Hollingdale, Peter Latham and, on Saturday morning, Bruce Wyndham. They were supplemented by Ray Moore following the launch of Radio 2. 

Meanwhile over on 'swinging' Radio 1 Tony Blackburn was pulling in large and appreciative audience for his lively new breakfast show. The difference was quite marked as these recordings of Breakfast Special in 1970 with Paul Hollingdale (and a little bit of Ray Moore) show.

The producers of Breakfast Special eventually cottoned on to the fact that listeners loved hearing the same voice everyday and that the show would become part of their daily routine. By the early 70s Ray Moore and John Dunn would take care of the programme for weeks at a time. This was years before the zoo format so Breakfast Special duties not only included presenting the three and a half hour show but reading the news (at least initially, later an additional announcer was drafted in to read the news and sports bulletin) and travel bulletins too, only throwing over to the likes of Vick Walters at the London Weather Centre for the forecast.         

The next big shake-up was in 1972 when Head of Music Mark White asked Terry Wogan to move from Radio 1's afternoon show to Radio 2's breakfast show. Mark was the man who had given the OK to Terry's audition tape back in 1966 and his first shows on the Light Programme. By 1972 the plan was to drop Breakfast Special and split it into two: opening the day with The Early Show hosted by a staff announcer (initially a number of them for a few weeks at a time and then from 1974 Simon Bates and from 1976 Colin Berry) and then Terry with a breakfast show.  

Terry recalls that "I was not to everyone's taste, though, over the wheatybangs. John Dunn had been the previous incumbent. Soft-spoken, urbane, with impeccable diction and manners, he was a perfect English gent; who was this Irish gobdaw, with his ridiculous exercises, upsetting the British Breakfast?"

Those "exercises" were the Fight the Flab feature he'd started on the afternoon show, shades of Up in the Morning Early. Another feature was to follow the morning racing bulletin with what became known as Wogan's Winner though the "nags I back rarely trouble the judge." Over 12 years Terry developed a rapport with his audience that had probably not been seen before, letters, poems and comic song lyrics poured in. Fun was to be made at the expense of BBC management and their bizarre Broadcasting House rooftop rituals and what was on the telly, especially US soap Dallas. There was the Floral Dance, son of Fight the Flab, Hello Chunky and pre-show chats with Jimmy Young.  

Here's an early example of Terry's show from April 1973.

All this ended in December 1984 when Terry stepped down from the breakfast show to prepare for the new thrice-weekly BBC1 chat show Wogan.  

Here's how Terry signed off.

Terry's replacement was a little unexpected, not least by the man himself. Ken Bruce had been working on Radio 2 for a couple of years covering the Early Show and presenting a Saturday late-night show when he got the call from controller Bryant Marriott. Initially unsure, "I was taking over from an icon", he accepted the gig. Others in the frame were his mate Ray Moore and David Hamilton.

Ken Bruce in 1985. "You won't be getting Wogan
with a Scottish accent" 

Starting on 7 January 1985 the show times were rejigged with a later start time of 8am, an odd decision for a breakfast show (in fact a long 8 a.m. bulletin meant that Ken didn't actually start the show until 8.07 a.m.), and ending at 10.30 a.m. in time for the JY prog. The new programme was pretty much music all the way with Radio 2 management reluctant to countenance many other programme elements. Ken recalls that a request to have a selection of newspapers in the studio to allow more current and informative subject matter was turned down "because Gloria Hunniford sometimes reads out snippets on her show". Perhaps the budget was spent on the lyric competition which offered winners a Ken Bruce eggcup!         

Here's Ken in action on 14 November 1985.

The next presenter was something of a left-field choice for Radio 2, that of former Fleet Street editor Derek Jameson. The head of music Frances Line was convinced that Ken was more suited to a mid-morning slot, which is indeed where he ended up and has been ever since, and she seemed to be instrumental in bringing Jameson into the fold.

Derek Jameson interviewed for the Radio Times w/c 5 April 1986

The reasons for Jameson's appointment  stem back to March 1980 and a sketch on Radio 4's Week Ending in which Jameson was described as "an East End boy made bad", who thought that "erudite was a type of glue". He didn't see the funny side of this and took legal action against the BBC. It took four years to come to court and in February 1984 Jameson lost the case and had to pay legal fees of £75,000. Apparently as a goodwill gesture the Corporation started to offer him work such as the BBC2 show Do They Mean Us? and a regular slot on Radio 4's The Colour Supplement. In November 1985 he was asked to cover for Jimmy Young for a week and provoked such a favourable reaction that he was offered the breakfast show.

Here's the first half hour of Derek's first show.  

If listeners had got used to Terry's whimsy and blarney followed by Ken's chuminess and dry humour then they were in for something of a shock with Derek Jameson. Now it was a gruff "mornin', mornin', Jameson 'ere!" and a show peppered with news items and interviews, though not with "the obvious bigwigs. I shall be talking to people who've got a story to tell." The BBC seemingly now had that newspaper budget.

Radio 2 listeners are (mainly) not a happy lot.
Letters to the Radio Times 3 May 1986

Reaction was mixed with letters to the Radio Times going from "raucous, uncouth ...indulging in news trivia and telephone conversations of toe-curling banality" to "a lovely man, full of merry quips and sideswipes at the way things are, is a real tonic."

This clip comes from 18 October 1989.

Programmes from the self-styled 'bunker' saw a step up personnel, both on-air and behind the scenes with former Radio 2 newsreader Vivien Stuart joining Derek as 'weatherwoman' and two (later three) producers, initially Brian Stephens and Anthony Cherry, plus a researcher, with another former Radio 2 newsreader Ruth Cubbin working on the show for the first year or so. There were a number of OBs including this pre-Christmas edition from Gatwick airport on 21 December 1990.

Amazingly Derek Jameson's tenure at breakfast lasted six years - his last show was on 20 December 1991 - before he was shunted off to a four nights a week late-night show with his missus. There were, according to Ken Bruce, two schools of thought on this move. One that Derek and Ellen would make a "quirky on-air team" and would be a way of diversifying production bases as it was to come from the Glasgow studios. Theory two was that they offered him a package "so insulting he would resign" due to the move north, the reduction in hours and the splitting of the fee. Nonetheless. they bought a flat in Glasgow as a base and the late-night The Jamesons ran for five years.       

Libby Purves speaks to Brian Hayes.
Radio Times w/c 4 January 1992

Next up was Brian Hayes, at the time best known to listeners in London for his long-running LBC phone ins and acerbic style. Brian had been introduced to national BBC listeners in 1991 covering for Jimmy Young (something he'd do almost a decade later when Jim was unwell prior to his 'retirement') and as a guest interviewer on Radio 4's Midweek.  This is the start of Brian's first Radio 2 breakfast show on 6 January 1992 which promised "more music and less speech" and adopted the title Good Morning UK.

The attempts at mixing news elements and music seemed, at first. a little half-hearted and missed some of the verbal jousting with callers and guests that Brian had built his reputation on at LBC. Whilst the shows did pick up during the year behind the scenes Terry Wogan was itching to get back to radio , his TV chat show having ended and replaced by the ill-fated Eldorado. As a result Brian's tenure was short lived and ended in the December. By way of consolation he was given a weekly phone-in on the station, Hayes Over Britain that ran for four years and later he appeared on Radio 5 live with a weekend breakfast show and other programmes until 2006.

And so it was that Terry returned to the breakfast show in January 1993 "my heaven it's good to be back....he lied". Here's how he sounded on day one.

For the next 16 years Terry was at the top of his game. The show developed from giving away alarm clocks (WUTWACs), to the near the knuckle Janet and John stories, the faithful band of TOGs, studio support from Dr Wally and then 'Barrowlands' Boyd, a coterie of newsreaders whose lives, real and imagined were woven into the show. 

I've uploaded just over 20 of Terry's shows (many as podcast versions) on YouTube and there are more than a dozen on Mixcloud from myself and other users. The latest upload from me is this complete show from 28 November 2006.  

Although Terry's position at breakfast was unassailable Radio 2 management were thinking about the inevitable day when he'd step aside as far back as 2005 when Chris Evans was bought into the BBC fold. Initially with a Saturday afternoon show, in 2006 he was offered drivetime by Lesley Douglas (the then Controller) and told, according to Evans, "if and when it [breakfast] becomes available, and if you've behaved yourself and things have gone alright on drivetime - who know?"   

Sir Terry bows out (for a second time).
Radio Times w/c 12 December 2009

Wogan later intimated that he would leave the show at the end of 2008 but when the so-called Sachsgate episode erupted he was asked to stay on a help 'steady the ship' for a little while. In the event Terry remained for another year and made bade an emotional farewell on 18 December 2009. It was the end of an era.  

It was inevitable that when Chris Evans took over the breakfast show many listeners would miss the calm, collected tones of Sir Terry and that Evans approach was just too shouty. In an attempt smooth the transition for TOGs that tuned in, Chris started the first show with The Beatles and Frank Sinatra,  assuring listeners that there'd be no "turbulence" and re-introducing Moira Stuart back to the station as the programme's newsreader - she'd read the news and presented overnight shows on Radio 2 back in the early 80s. Also as part of the on air team was travel reporter Lynn Bowles, who'd been such a major part of Terry's shows, and coming over from drivetime Jonny Saunders with the sports news.  

Fears that Radio 2's listeners would drain away proved unfounded but there's no doubt some of Terry's old listeners did tune-in elsewhere on the dial. The show slowly evolved with more studio guests, including the Friday editions packed with live music, 500 Words, CarFest and the continued support for Terry's beloved Children in Need. Sadly a tendency to trample all over the music didn't change. 

This was Chris's first show.          

2018 proved to be a difficult year for Radio 2 with the turmoil over the drivetime show which led to the departure of once of its best broadcasters, Simon Mayo and the shock announcement from Chris Evans that he was leaving to (re)join Virgin Radio. "I crave the uncertainty" he would say on his final show. There was much speculation as to his replacement with money going on Sara Cox (once described back in 1999 as "the next Zoe Ball") who did such sterling work when depping on the show. But instead Radio 2 plundered yet another of the Radio 1 breakfast show alumni, Zoe Ball.

This is Chris's last breakfast show as broadcast on 24 December.  

Zoe Ball's association with Radio 2 started in earnest in 2009 when she covered for Ken Bruce (although she'd first appeared briefly in 2006) and presented a Saturday early show between 2009 and 2012. She was back in 2017 with a Saturday afternoon show that ended just before Christmas.

In 1997 Zoe was employed on Radio 1's breakfast show to fall out of the clubs and into the studio, "blonde, bouncy but also ballsy" according to one headline of the time. Now her role for Radio 2 is critical: holding on to that large inherited audience and being the cornerstone of a new schedule that has, in part, been forced on the station and is, in part, self-inflicted. And in a neat bit of serendipity the 'battle for breakfast' mirrors the 1997 face-off between Zoe at the Beeb and Chris at Virgin. Fascinating times for radio. 

You'll be able to hear Zoe's first show next Monday at 6.30 a.m..  

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. 

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

I’ve been down various audio avenues and alleyways since my third post last November in which I recalled some early radio memories of hearing Listen with Mother, though it’s that haunting melancholic closing theme from Faure’s Dolly Suite (above) that probably lingers in the memory.  So to remind you what the programme sounded like here’s an edition from 16 June 1965 in the days when it went out on the Home Service. The announcer is John Dunn.

It’s amazing isn’t it how over the years the phrase “Are You Sitting Comfortably? Then I’ll begin” has become part of the language, even though the programme is now a distant memory. It conjures up cosy black and white images of the children playing in front of the wireless, mother going about her housework, father out at work in some suburban post-war full employment world that never really existed.

It’s probably such memories that led to the outcry on 1982 when the BBC announced the decision to axe Listen with Mother after 32 years as by then few children actually listened, with mother or otherwise. The audience share of pre-school children was just 2%. An audience survey in the mid-70s revealed that there were as many long-distance lorry drivers as young children listening, presumably sitting comfortably in their cabs.

The then Network Controller Monica Sims, formerly head of BBC Children’s Television, saw the programme as a “frightful nuisance” as listeners switched off after Woman’s Hour. So in September 1980 the programme was shunted off to a mid-morning VHF only slot opposite the Daily Service and two years later the axe fell.

Here is that final Listen with Mother from 10 September 1982. The presenters are Tony Aitken and Nerys Hughes (of The Liver Birds fame). As you’ll again hear, contrary to what reference books and online encyclopaedias state, the phrase “are you sitting comfortably?” precedes the story and not the actual programme.

Radio 2 - A Day in 12 Minutes

Inspired by Radio 2's 2DAY event on the 22nd of this month - which promises a taste of the full schedule over a 12 hour period - here's 24 hours of Radio 2 from Thursday 3 April 1980 compressed into just 12 minutes*.

In this montage you'll hear: Bill Rennells, Ray Moore, Terry Wogan, Jimmy Young, David Hamilton, Ed Stewart, David Symonds (who gets the date wrong), John Dunn, Wally Whyton, Colin Berry, Alan Dell, David Bellan, Brian Matthew and Sheila Tracy.

* In January 2020: I' added a clip from You and the Night and the Music with Sheila Tracy to this sequence so that it now runs at nearly 15 minutes, admittedly making a nonsense of the blog post title.    

BBC All Network Service

The Short Life of Radio 10

In my last post I recalled how the industrial action of the Association of Broadcasting Staff (ABS) delayed the implementation of 24-hour broadcasting on Radio 2. By December 1978 that action culminated in the brief merger of Radios 1,2,3 and 4 to form the All Network Service, or Radio 10 as it was informally known.

On Friday 22 December the ABS called an all out strike and from 4 p.m. the four national networks became one.  That evening’s schedule proved a fascinating mix of musical and broadcasting styles.

16:00 News Summary – Paddy O’Byrne

16:02 John Dunn including at 16:35 Story Time

17:50 Shipping Forecast with Charles Colville

17:55 Weather Forecast with Michael Shore

18:00 News Summary – Brian Perkins

18:02 Kid Jensen

20:00 News Summary – Jan Leeming

20:02 Cormac Rigby with Popular Classics

22:00 News Summary – Brian Perkins followed by Sports Desk

22:15 Bill Rennells including Shipping and Inshore Forecast with Charles Colville

02:00 News Summary – Cormac Rigby and then closedown

That same evening an agreement was reached, mediated with ACAS, and union members were granted a 12.5% pay rise. The networks returned to virtually normal broadcasting the next day apart from some minor disruption on Radio 4 such as Any Questions being replaced with a programme about Joyce Grenfell and the dropping of Kaleidoscope Encore.

In fact radio got off lightly as that week TV screens were blacked out as BBC 1 and BBC 2 went off the air from Wednesday 20 December. For a short while viewers in the Yorkshire TV region had no TV at all as YTV was also suffering from separate industrial action that shut the channel from the Monday of that week.

A word or two about The Early Show

Ray Moore is very much associated with BBC Radio 2’s Early Show, but when exactly did he present the show? This post aims to make a stab at giving you the facts.

Firstly the nomenclature. We normally associate the Early Show as being the show that precedes the Breakfast Show. However, in the early-80s when Ray was on the air between 5.30 and 7.30a.m. - before Wogan - The Early Show was in fact presented by Ray’s friend Colin Berry between 4.00 and 5.30 a.m. So, for the purposes of this post I’m looking at the show pre-breakfast, sometimes know as the Early Breakfast Show. Confusing!

When I first started listening to Radio 2 in 1976 the Early Show was presented by Colin Berry. I’ve traced the history of the show since that year but my knowledge prior to that is a little sketchy. If anyone has any further details I’d welcome your input. 

For many years, seventeen and a half in fact, the presenter of the Early Show was Sarah Kennedy. This continuous run for the Dawn Patrol, periods of sickness aside, is the longest by a single presenter. Prior to that role would chop and change on a fairly regular basis.

When Radio 2 started in 1967 it made no distinction between an Early Show and a Breakfast Show. Breakfast Special ran from 5.30 a.m. with different presenters each day that included Paul Hollingdale, John Dunn and Ray Moore, with Bruce Wyndham on Saturdays. So Ray was setting his alarm clock early from the very beginning of the station.
 

Breakfast Special ended in 1972, by now just presented by John Dunn, when Terry Wogan started his famous Breakfast Show run. That same day Barri Haynes became the presenter of the very first Early Show. Barri, I believe, was a Radio 2 announcer at the time who later went on to work at LWT. Barry Alldis was presenting the show in 1972 and 1973. By the middle of 1973 Pete Brady, now back on the radio after his stint on Thames TV’s Magpie, had the 5-7 slot.

From March 1974 to January 1976 Simon Bates presented the Early Show. This run doesn’t appear to have been continuous as Ray Moore was also on the show in 1975 as was Jeff Cooper.
 

From 1976 Colin Berry had taken over the reins for what was to be a long association with early morning shows on Radio 2. By January 1978 Ray Moore was back on the Early Show having finished presenting the Saturday night Late Show. However, before he got too comfortable, in August that year he was off and Tony Brandon took over.

Tony’s run lasted until November 1979 whereupon the picture gets very messy with essentially Ray Moore and Steve Jones alternating every 3 or 4 months for the next two years. For the record Steve Jones, he of The Pyramid Game fame, hosted as follows: Dec 1979 to March 1980, June to Sept 1980, July to Oct 1981, Jan 1982 and finally May to June 1982. From Jan to April 1981 Bob Kilbey had a go.

During this period Ray was at the microphone March to June 1980, Sept to Dec 1980, April to July 1981. Oct to Dec 1981, Feb to May 1982. Ray finally took over his main stint as presenter from Monday 28 June 1982.

In 1982 Ray was still doing holiday relief for Wogan at Breakfast, something he’d done for a number of years. Whilst Ray moved his shift to cover, the likes of Nick Page, Jimmy Mack, Don Durbridge and Colin Berry all took turns on the Early Show.

As is well documented Ray’s run as presenter came to an abrupt end in January 1988 when he became too ill to continue. “It was over” he said “not with a bang but a whimper”.

When Ray left staff including Bill Rennells, Charles Nove, Jean Challis, Liz Allen and John Marsh held the fort until April 1988 when Chris Stuart became the next permanent presenter. Chris was no stranger to the show, having sat in for Ray when he was on leave.

Chris’s stint came to an end after just under three years in December 1990. From January 1991 scheduling changes meant that Ken Bruce was on air between 6 and 8 a.m. prior to the Derek Jameson Breakfast Show. 

Further changes in 1992 meant that Steve Madden hosted until April when ‘the Dark Lord’ Alex Lester took over until December. These shows preceded the Brain Hayes Breakfast Show.

And so we come full circle when on 4 January 1993 Sarah Kennedy started her record-breaking run. The same day Wogan was back at Breakfast. Sarah left last September and since then Richard Allinson, Aled Jones and Lyn Parsons have covered. In November the BBC announced that Vanessa Feltz would host “the Early Breakfast Show” from this coming Monday. 

 

Wavelength Changes 1978 - Part 1

The biggest single shake-up in UK radio broadcasting happened on 23rd November 1978 and affected all four national services. In the months and weeks leading up to the big event the BBC publicised the changes on air and in the press. Remember those stickers issued with the Radio Times to put on your radio dial? Radios 1 and 2 commissioned new jingles from JAM Creative Productions in Dallas and Radio 4 rebranded itself as Radio 4 UK.

To kick things off here's some audio of the BBC tv coverage on Nationwide on the evening of the 23rd.


For the record you'll hear Nationwide presenters Sue Lawley and Glyn Worsnip. On the radio there's Kid Jensen, John Dunn, Patricia Hughes, Moira Stuart and Week Ending featuring David Jason. The Managing Director of Radio is Aubrey Singer and you'll also hear The Kings Singers. The Radio 4 newsreader, who gets talked over, is Colin Doran.

At the end of the Nationwide clip I think it's Hugh Scully and John Stapleton. The tape runs on into an announcement by BBC1 North announcer Vanessa Hill introducing Tomorrow's World.

From October 1977 BBC Engineering Sheet 1045 explaining the new frequency arrangements.