Do you remember those radio shows where you could phone in and request any record you liked, a member of staff would then go scurrying round the record library to find it and when the DJ had finished his fill-in chat it would, hopefully, it’d be spinning on the turntable. Ah, for the days before computerised playout systems!
Now I’m pretty sure that such a programme went out on BBC Radio 1 in the 1980s. Was it just on a Friday? Mike Read or Peter Powell, or someone else? I’ve been racking my brains over this so any answers would be jolly welcome.
As it turns out the notion of challenging the BBC Gramophone Library to find a disc goes back about 50 years. During the 1960s the BBC would often broadcast from the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition at Olympia and one such show was Exhibition Choice, going out in the Twelve O’Clock Spin slot. In the programme the DJ, Keith Fordyce or in this case Geoffrey Wheeler (of Top of the Form and Winner Takes All fame but who did a stack of radio in the 60s/70s), would talk to visitors who’d then ask for their record choice.
The theme for Exhibition Choice was Polka for Strings by Dolf van der Linden and his Orchestra. Earlier this evening Colin Berry, on BBC Radio Three Counties, recalled this programme and played the theme. (BBC Local Radio online still suffers from the odd popping sound).
“It’s PM at 5 p.m.” For many years the opening announcement for Radio 4’s daily afternoon news magazine followed by the PM signature tune.
PM is unique amongst the station’s main news programmes (Today, The World at One, PM, The World Tonight) in having had a regular theme tune – a brief experiment on Today notwithstanding.
There’s an interesting article about PM on the Radio 4 website but I thought I’d add some information about the first and second versions of the theme.
PM started in April 1970 as part of the network’s response to Broadcasting in the Seventies – the BBC’s blueprint for change in the wake of the launch of Radios 1 to 4 in 1967 - which required Radio 4 to give more emphasis to news and current affairs. PM replaced a more light-hearted magazine programme called Home this Afternoon, a title it had acquired back on the Home Service in 1965. A typical line-up of features might include Anne Dunys, a 30s cabaret artist talking about her career, a report on people who have retired to Switzerland, a talk by gamekeeper and naturalist Walter Flesher and consideration as to whether corsets cause varicose veins – this particular programme went out in August 1969. So you can see how PM was a contrast to what had gone before, although in the early days it was less ‘newsy’ than it would become.
The original PM theme was composed by John Baker of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and is called Computers in Business. It had already been used to introduce News Time, a 15 minute news programme that went out on both Radios 1 & 2 at 7.30 p.m. each weekday.
News Time had started on the Light Programme in January 1967 and regular presenters included Tim Gudgin, the wonderfully-named Corbet Woodall (later a TV news reader who you may recognise if you’ve ever seen the Kitten Kong episode of The Goodies) and Derek Cooper who would go on to co-host PM with William Hardcastle. Regular Radio 4 listeners will know Derek as the long-running and original presenter of The Food Programme and he also provided the voiceovers for the filmed inserts on Tomorrow’s World.
The second PM theme was introduced in 1978, though the BBC website suggests this is from 1984 but I guess this is the date of the clip they use. Again the production team (editor in charge was Jenny Abramsky) went back to the Radiophonic Workshop, this time to commission Paddy Kingsland to compose it for them. Here’s Paddy talking to Gordon Clough about how he came up with the idea and put all the elements together:
This clip from PM in April 1980 is presented by Robert Williams and Janet Cohen:
Tucked away in the Radio 4 schedule this Tuesday afternoon (April 12th) is what should prove to be a fascinating listen, Into the Music Library presented by Jonny Trunk.
Much beloved by tv and radio producers alike library music has been used to provide background music and theme tunes for decades. Increasingly the older pieces of library music can instantly create a particular mood or era. Truly music 'off the shelf'.
Here are some examples (short clips only) you may recognise:
From the KPM Library a composition by Alan Moorhouse, played under the pseudonym of Oscar Brandenburg, called Music to Drive By familiar to Radio 2 listeners as the theme used by Charlie Chester.
Also from KPM another Alan Moorhouse piece called Peter Piper used as the theme to the Radio 4 comedy panel game You've Got to be Joking.
From the De Wolfe Library an Ivor Slaney composition called Top Dog as used in the long-running comedy seriesThe Men from the Ministry.
A TV theme first used by ITN in 1967 this was written by Johnny Pearson and called The Awakening taken from his 20th Century Portrait. Another KPM Library recording.
Johnny Pearson died just last month. Over on Radio Six International Tony Currie paid tribute to Johnny in a special edition of The Lively Lounge and also broadcast in interview he conducted with Johnny back in 1974. Here’s a small part of that interview.
Whilst flicking through some back issues of London Calling I came across this article on the history of Radio Newsreel and the public outcry there was about the change of the signature tune. This incident is referred to in the edition of Signing On I posted in November.
The article reads:
Its first broadcasts were to North America in 1940 intended to convey news of the war, in the Overseas Service of the BBC. By October 1941 it was being relayed to the Pacific and to Africa also in the Overseas Service, and in 1947 the programme was broadcast on the domestic network in the Light Programme.
The aim of Radio Newsreel was then, and still is, “to report faithfully on current events in Britain and abroad, and to present the picture attractively in a straightforward and unpretentious manner.”
The programme’s style marked a departure from the often necessarily solemn presentation of news during the war years. Its frank and enthusiastic approach to conveying the news endeared Radio Newsreel to listeners throughout the world, and today accounts for its lasting popularity.
In 1970 the programme ceased to go out in the Light Programme, but continued in the World Service, where it has since remained. In recent years proof of listeners’ affection for Radio Newsreel was shown when a decision to change its signature tune, Imperial Echoes, provoked an avalanche of letters in protest.
The very old recording of the music, composed by Arnold Safroni-Middleton, had finally worn out, and so was replaced by a modern, newly orchestrated version which was widely disliked. The protests were confirmed in a BBC questionnaire which showed that nearly two to one listeners preferred the original version.
But happily, a chance discovery brought relief to all concerned when BBC studio manager Keith Perrin, while browsing in a junk shop in Tiverton, Devon in England, found a mint copy of the recording of Imperial Echoes, which was promptly restored as the ‘rightful’ signature tune.
In the Signing On programme David Rider tells us that the original version was performed by the RAF Band and that the re-recording by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble. This brings me onto a couple of other World Service signature tunes that I came across whilst putting together the This is London post.
John Tidmarsh, presenter of Outlook
The theme for Outlook was immediately recognisable to me as The Hell Raisers, a fantastic tune by Syd Dale. This track appeared on the Girl in a Suitcase CD (an album I’m shocked to see Amazon is now selling at £50, and the 2009 upgraded version at just short of £100) in which the sleeve notes tell us it was used as the theme to the Rediffusion tv series Orlando. Orlando starred Sam Kydd by the way. How many other people play ‘Sam Kydd spotting’ when an old black & white British film is on the telly?
The theme for New Ideas is also a Syd Dale composition called Quite Contrary. I traced this through the KPM Music Library website. You can while away many an hour auditioning the tracks spotting many a recognisable theme tunes or piece of incidental music.
These themes, plus a number of others, are included in this montage.
So lets start with a signature tune, or indeed several signature tunes.
There was a time when virtually all radio programmes and DJs had their own sig tune. Nowadays you’ll mainly hear them on Radio 4, everyone knows the sig tunes for The Archers and Desert Island Discs even if they don’t listen to the programmes.
A sig tune could’ve been a hit record from the time – Gary Davies with ABC’s The Look of Love, David Hamilton with Listen to the Music by the Doobie Brothers – or it could just be a piece of library music chosen by the show’s producer – Town Talk for Jimmy Young or Number One for Saturday’s Sport on 2. Back in the 50s and 60s every comedy show had it’s own specially composed theme, think of Wally Stott’s for Hancock’s Half Hour or Bill Oddie’s Angus Prune Tune for I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again.
In the current Radio 1 and 2 schedules there are only a handful of programmes with opening themes that spring to mind. On Radio 2 Pick of the Pops, Sounds of the 60s, David Jacobs, Steve Wright and Friday Night is Bath Night (as Ray Moore used to call it). On Radio 1 perhaps only the Cheesy Song qualifies.
Here’s a short montage of well known themes used on Radios 1 and 2, no introductions necessary I hope.
Back in 1980 there was a seven-part Radio 4 series on signature tunes called Signing On, written and presented by David Rider. David started with the BBC in the 60s and was in at the start of Radio 1; he appears in the famous DJ line-up photo on the steps of All Souls Church in Langham Place. He went on to present Radio 1’s Playground in the 80s and then devised the Radio 2 radio nostalgia panel game On the Air. Here’s the second episode which focuses on news themes.
