It was the
first major television event in Britain and changed our viewing habits forever
but what of the radio coverage of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II back in
the summer of 1953.
“The
ceremonial pomp and pageantry of June 2 will furnish a theme for storytellers
and balladmakers who are not yet born”, proclaimed the special edition of the Radio Times. “How lucky are we who will
be able to tell our children’s children that we had a part in the events of the
great day. Thanks to broadcasting, none of us need be denied the opportunity of
sharing in them”.
The TV
audience was almost double that for radio: of the adult population about 56%,
or 20,400,000, peered at those small TV screens whilst 11,700,000 followed the
events on the wireless.
In 1953 the
BBC offered three radio services: the Home Service, the Light Programme and the
Third Programme (though this only broadcast in the evenings). On Coronation Day
the Home and Light joined forces from 5.30 a.m. to 5.20 p.m. Before the main
event listeners were offered sequences of light music with Music While You Wait, the BBC Scottish Variety Orchestra, Victor
Silvester, the Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra and Commonwealth Melodies from Peter Yorke and his Orchestra.
Covering the
procession and the ceremony were a group of commentators, many of whom would
continue to work for the BBC over the next couple of decades or so. At
Buckingham Palace was Jean Metcalfe of Family
Favourites fame. At the Victoria Memorial were Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, from
Australia Talbot Duckmanton and from Trinidad William Richardson. Stationed at
Trafalgar Square was Raymond (Tomorrow’s
World) Baxter and at Victoria Embankment Rex Alston, best known as a
cricket commentator. At Middlesex Guildhall were former wartime reporter and
future BBC manager Frank Gillard alongside Tom Fleming who would go on to
describe numerous state events for BBC television.BBC commentator Henry Riddell was positioned
at St James’s Palace and Alun Williams at Stanhope Gate.Announcer David Lloyd James was at Marble
Arch and cricket commentator John Arlott at Piccadilly Circus. In the Annexe to
Westminster Abbey were Audrey Russell and Canadian Ted Briggs. The service
itself was described by Howard Marshall and John Snagge, both of whom had also
covered the Coronation of King George VI in 1937.
Following
the Coronation the Home Service offered Children’s
Hour with David Davis, Henry Hall’s
Guest Night, the guest being ‘Our Gracie’, Gillie Potter (with tales of
Hogsnorton) and The Kingdom Dances.
Over on the Light more music from the Majestic Orchestra, Rhythm is Our Business and the hit comedy Take It From Here.
The Home and
Light combined again at 8 p.m. for Long
live the Queen narrated by actor Robert Donat with music by William Alwyn.
Just before 9 p.m. Sir Winston Churchill spoke to the nation and on the hour
the BBC television service joined, in sound only, for the Queen’s message.
Events on
the Home Service continued at 9.15 p.m. with Coronation Day Across the World narrated by Leo Genn, John Snagge
and David Lloyd James. This programme is being repeated this weekend on BBC
Radio 4 Extra.A performance of
resoundingly patriotic music followed in Land of Hope and Glory, Raymond Baxter
described the firework display (yes, on the radio!), Rikki Fulton introduced
the Show Band Show, a programme,
incidentally, produced by Johnnie (Mr Top
of the Pops) Stewart. Finally, in an extended day’s broadcasting through
until 1 a.m. there was Let the People
Dance featuring music from the likes of Geraldo and Jimmy Shand
interspersed with commentary “on the street scenes of Coronation night”.
A programme
described as “a living, instantaneous sound picture of rejoicings and
celebrations with song and dance, with ceremonial drums and loyal messages,
on
a scale as great as anything attempted in the history of broadcasting”.
On the Light
Programme there was a performance of the Basil Hood/Edward German comic opera Merrie Englandbefore they re-joined the Home Service.
Meanwhile over
on the Third Programme from 6 p.m. there was music from Kirsten Flagstad,
Solomon Cutner, a talk by Sir Llewellyn Woodward, concerts featuring works by
Handel produced by the Canadian and Australian broadcasting services and
rounding off with Esme Percy and Paul Scofield in Thomas Love Peacock’s Gryll Grange.
The
Coronation issue of the Radio Times,
with a circulation expected to exceed 9 million copies, made mention of its own
special cover with its Eric Fraser illustration. “The coloured cover we have
produced has been printed in a novel way: the yellow background was printed by
a gravure process on 50-incg reels each of which had to be re-wound twice and
cut into four 12 ¼-inch reels before being fed into our presses; the black
design was printed over the background in the course of the run”.
Thumbing
through the rest of the RT programme highlights include a new production of The Tempest with John Gielgud as
Prospero; on The Forces Show
alongside Ted Ray, Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warriss was Betty Driver (aka Corrie’s
Betty Turpin)and a gala performance titled Light
Up Again in which Brian Reece (PC 49) and Noel Johnson (Dick Barton)
introduce the stars of Hi, Gang!, Waterlogged Spa, Riders of the Range, Ignorance
is Bliss, Much-Binding-in-the Marsh
and Variety Bandbox.And finally I wonder if As Millions Cheer ever made it to the archives? This hour-long
programme was set in a newspaper office on Coronation eve and featured Eric
Barker, Peter Ustinov, Alfred Marks, Roy Plomley, Pearl Hackney, Maurice
Denham, Stanley Unwin, Graham Startk and Herbert Mostyn (i.e. Frank Muir and
Denis Norden).
This weekend
there are a number of radio and TV programmes celebrating the 60th
anniversary of the Coronation:
Scriptwriter
Eddie Braben, who died earlier this week, is rightly lauded for his
contribution to British comedy: the TV and radio scripts for Morecambe and
Wise. What is often overlooked are the radio shows that Eddie both wrote and
starred in during the 70s and 80s.
In 1975
there was The Worst Show on the Wireless
followed by The Show with Ten Legs in
1978. This in turn spawned The New
Improved Show with Ten Legs in 1979 and three years later The Show with No Name (1982-84). All the
shows were produced by James Casey up in Manchester for Radio 2.
This is
an episode of The Show with Ten Legs
that I recorded on 28 August 1980. Starring alongside Eddie are the gormless
Eli Woods, Alison Steadman (a radio regular at this time also appearing with Roy
Castle and later on The News Huddlines
and Week Ending ), David Casey and
David Mahlowe.
This
particular broadcast was billed in the Radio
Times as a repeat, though the rest of the run wasn’t. My own notes state
that it was first broadcast on 15 July 1979 which actually makes it the first
episode of The New Improved Show with Ten
Legs, though this isn’t mentioned in the recording. If anyone can offer a definitive answer please
let me know.
Eddie Braben
(1930-2013)
You can hear
Morecambe and Wise’s last ever programme for the BBC, repeated this week on
Radio 4 Extra, online at this link:
It’s
Eurovision. This year yet again the UK rolls out one of pop’s golden oldies, as
the raspy-voiced power balladeer Bonnie Tyler attempts to impress voters with Believe In Me.
For many
years the voice and face of Euro-pop on the BBC was Catherine Boyle – later
billed as Katie Boyle of Camay ad fame and the TV Times agony aunt column Dear Katie. During the 60s and early 70s
she hosted the Light Programme/Radio 2 show Pop
Over Europe and was compère on four occasions at the Eurovision Song Contest.
Eurovision 1968
Here’s Katie
in 1990, broadcasting just before Zagreb contest, recalling some of the past
winners in 35 Years of Eurovision.
This show went out on Radio 2 on 5 May 1990.
Today’s
State Opening of Parliament once again displays al the pomp and majesty in what
is essentially a triumph of style over substance. The Queen’s Speech will, no
doubt, have been well sign-posted in advance and is unlikely to contain any
surprises.
Admittedly
we can now be pretty blasé about the whole event but 55 years ago the State
Opening was broadcast for the first time, on both radio and television. The decision to cover the event was not taken
lightly. During a Parliamentary debate in July of that year Prime Minister
Harold MacMillan was adamant that it was not the start of regular coverage: “I
should like to make it clear that the Government regard this ceremony as a
State occasion, quite distinct from the day-to-day work of Parliament, and that
they have no intention of proposing that facilities for the televising of those
day-to-day proceedings should be allowed”.
The
Government was also at pains to ensure that the public didn’t think that the
Queen was sullying her hands with the dirty world of politics. The speech “is
drafted by the cabinet and is a short, factual account of what the Government
proposes to do during the coming session of Parliament”, wrote the BBC’s
Parliamentary Correspondent Roland Fox. “The fear has often been expressed that
this would not be realised by the viewing and listening millions if the speech
were to be broadcast ‘live’. When the decision to allow the facilities for the
first time was announced in the House of Commons, Mr Gaitskell said there was a
possible danger that the sight of Her Majesty reading the speech might be
misleading, and he emphasised how important it was that the Crown should not
become involved in party politics”.
That first
broadcast of the Procession from Buckingham Palace and the State Opening was on
Tuesday 28 October 1958. Explaining the proceedings to BBC viewers was,
naturally enough for a Royal event, Richard Dimbleby. Meanwhile radio coverage
on the Home Service was described by Audrey Russell from the Victoria Memorial,
Wynford Vaughan-Thomas at Westminster Abbey, Raymond Baxter at the Entrance to
the Palace of Westminster and David Lloyd James in the House of Lords.
That week’s Radio Times went into some detail not
just about the ceremony itself but the engineering problems involved in
bringing to the public, with the pictures also been fed to Independent Television.
As a
broadcasting operation, the Opening of Parliament, for all its richness and
splendour, does not compare with the Coronation in complexity and magnitude. It
has its own problems, however. The engineers led by Alan Bray and his chief
planner John Allport, have had to install and the test the equipment at odd
moments when the Law lords were not sitting. Cameras have had to be conjured
into positions where they don’t steal seating space for the distinguished gathering.
In the sound
radio broadcast, the absence of music, except for fanfares, will thow a heavier
load on the commentary.
Not to spoil
the splendour and dignity of the Palace of Westminster, the three cameras
covering the ceremony in the Upper House will be mounted inconspicuously on
platforms built into doorways and galleries. Sound-proof cubicles have been set
up for Richard Dimbleby and David Lloyd James, and for the Independent
Television commentator. (The ITA’s commentator was Robin Day).
Pictures
are, of course, only half the story. The sound side, like television, will have
its specially-built control panel in the Houses of Parliament. Charles
Max-Muller, producing for sound, will have with him the veteran engineer R.H.
Wood, for the past 22 years responsible for the Royal broadcasts from
Sandringham on Christmas Day.
Microphones,
though less eye-catching than television cameras, could still jar on the august
Chamber. The engineers have tried their hands at camouflage. For instance, the
tow microphones carrying the Queen’s Speech are hidden behind twin angels on
either side of the Throne and gilded to match their wings.
The BBC TV
coverage of the 1958 ceremony has cropped up on the BBC Parliament channel but
here’s the Pathé Newsreel of the occasion.
This Friday on
BBC Radio 2 sees the return of 2Day for its third year in a row. And, as is now
tradition, I delve into the station’s past and feature a day’s broadcasting
condensed to just a few minutes.
So its back
to Saturday 8 March 1980, all in just nine minutes. That day’s schedule ran as
follows:
0200 You and the Night and the Music with Geoff
Bennett
0500 Tom
Edwards with The Early Show
0800 David
Jacobs with Star Sounds
1000 Pete Murray’s Saturday Show
1300 The News Huddlines(not included)
1330 Sport on 2 with Peter Brackley
1800 Europe 80 with Colin Berry
1900 Beat the Record with Don Davis
1930 Big Band Special with Sheila Tracy
2000 Saturday Night is Gala Night(not
included)
2200 Sentimental Journey with Carl Sheppard
2300 Bob
Kilbey with The Late Show
You’ll also
hear the voices of Tim Gudgin, James Alexander Gordon and Vivien Stuart.
“A well-known Old Etonian ex-Guards
Officer
jazz-trumpeter-broadcaster-cartoonist-bandleader-bird-watcher-gastrnome-humourist-panellist-TV-personality.”
Who is this? Why Humphrey Lyttelton of course with the words taken from his
self-penned comic obituary.
To many Humph is associated with a
certain radio panel game and many a round of Mornington Crescent is played in
his memory. But in this post I’m looking in more detail at Humph’s other radio
career: as a jazz broadcaster over five decades.
A well-known online encyclopaedia has
this to say on Humphrey’s jazz broadcasting career: “From 1967 until
April 2007, Lyttelton presented The Best of Jazz on BBC Radio 2, a
programme which featured his idiosyncratic mix of top-quality recordings of all
ages, including current material”. And that’s it. Shame the dates are wrong
too.
His first
broadcast was an impromptu and entirely accidental affair. On VE Day, 8 May
1945, Humphrey went up to London and joined friends outside Buckingham Palace.
Happening to have his trumpet with him he played Run Rabbit Run and We’re
Gonna Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line to the delight of the
crowd. He ended up leading a procession up the Mall and into Piccadilly. “In
later years I wondered if I had dreamt all this”, he recalled. “Then to my
delight a friend unearthed a BBC tape of a commentary by Howard Marshall in
which I got a mention. Admittedly not by name, but he does say, ‘And as we
return to the studio, somebody down there is playing a trumpet…’”
Humph had discovered jazz when aged
15 he started collecting records by Nat Gonella. But his moment of epiphany was
on hearing Louis Armstrong’s Basin Street
Blues. (He would go on to present a Radio 2 documentary series, Satchmo, in 1974/5). Soon after he gave
up playing the mouth-organ formed his first jazz band and took up the trumpet.
His war service saw him serving with
the Grenadier Guards and on demob it seemed that a career as a cartoonist
rather than full-time jazzman might be on the cards. On the back of the
post-war New Orleans jazz revival Humph joined George Webb’s Dixielanders for a
few months but by late 1947 he’d left and together with his friend the
clarinetist and fellow cartoonist Wally Fawkes he formed his own band in
January 1948. They soon became regulars at the newly formed London Jazz Club
with a “jazz-for-dancing policy”.
It was also in 1948 that Humphrey
made his first studio broadcast for the BBC in the series Jazz Club - this had started the previous year and ran, with breaks,
until 1975. Writing for the Radio Times
some 16 years later he recalled that Piccadilly studios broadcast: “It sticks
in my mind because Mark White, Jazz
Club’s originator and first producer, had cast me in the unlikely role of
Louis Armstrong, and I had to play the scarifying introduction to Armstrong’s West End Blues. Throughout the tea break
just before transmission I walked round and round Piccadilly Circus, wishing I
was dead and fighting an urge to jump on the tube and flee to the furthest Stanmore
or Collier’s Wood.” (It seems even then
he couldn’t resist a quick game of Mornington Crescent!)
As bandleader Humphrey would, of
course, introduce the band and the songs, a task that he’d perform with wit and
humour – something I was to witness many years later when I saw the band
perform at the Beverley Picture Playhouse. By the late 1950s the BBC was also
letting some bandleaders make their own announcements on air and Humph soon
became an assured and natural broadcaster. This is an early Radio Times billing from 7 August 1958.
Alongside Jazz Club listeners could, in the late 50s also hear Just Jazz with Charles Melville and
Steve Race, Jazz Session (1958-64) on
the new Network 3 (later Third Network) as well as Ken Sykora’s Guitar Club. In the early 60s we got Jazz Today (Charles Melville again and
Alexis Korner) and from 1962 Jazz Scene with
Steve Race. By now the same names were coming up on these various programmes,
broadcasters who would be associated with jazz on the BBC for many years and
Humphrey was one such name, becoming an occasional and then regular host of Jazz Club from 1964, appearing on its short-lived
successor show It’s Jazz and later
alternating compering duties on TheJazz Scene with Benny Green. In addition when, in December 1964, the Music
Programme (the daytime service of the Third Programme) started to extend
broadcasting hours and introduced the Saturday lunchtime Jazz Record Requests it was Humphrey who played the selection of
‘gramophone records’.
In the mid-60s there were also
occasional forays into television with Jazz
625 and Jazz Goes to College,
both produced by Terry Henebery who’d worked on Jazz Club for many years.
BBC Radio's jazz offerings in 1966 across all the networks.
On the launch of Radio 1 in September
1967 the old Light Programme show The
Jazz Scene ended up scheduled on the new pop station. In the Radio Times Humphrey explained the
changes, as well as providing something of a hard sell for British jazz radio:
So Jazz Scene and Jazz Club henceforward go their own
separate ways. As compere for both new programmes I’m aware of the apprehension
in some quarters about our new Radio 1 environment. After a day of non-stop pop
shall we feel like belated guests coming stone-cold sober into a roomful of
whooping revellers? Jazz has admittedly grown away from pop to the extent that
it is more concerned with enduring quality then fashions or trends. So Jazz Scene must present the vintage
stuff as well as the newly pressed. And the great range of British jazz heard
in Jazz Club will reflect the
traditional as well as the trendy.
But jazz is happening now, it’s being talked about now, and
it entertains and excites millions of people now. And we shall always keep this
in sight. On Jazz Scene, for
instance, as well as a half-hour review of new discs and the voices of leading
musicians in Hear me Talkin’, we
shall have Peter Clayton working as my ‘oppo’ chasing the jazz news right up to
the last minute of rehearsal and ready to chip in with the latest happenings at
any time during transmission.
As for Jazz Club, I
can only repeat what I have said before. American artists, reared on a diet of
canned, bottled and pickled radio back home, are staggered to find a place
where radio broadcast means singing to real live people with a real live
atmosphere, and not just talking to a man in a little box about your latest
record. On Jazz Club, we don’t call
on electronics to whip up an atmosphere. It’s built in – and you can’t get more
trendy than that!
It was all change again in 1968 when The Jazz Scene morphed into The Best of Jazz, the programme for
which Humphrey would become best known, panel games aside. Still on Radio 1
late on Sunday night it first aired on 13 October, moving over to Radio 2 in
March 1970.
From late 1969 The Best of Jazz had an unusual unique existence on three BBC
channels. Billed as a Radio 1 show on medium wave it also went out on Radio 2’s
long wave and VHF. However, as Radio 2 still wasn’t in stereo you could hear
most of it, aside from an extended news bulletin, over on Radio 3’s VHF stereo
transmitters. This Sunday night arrangement continued for a couple of years. By the summer of 1973 The Best of Jazz was occupying what would be its most regular place
in the schedules on a Monday evening.
Here’s a couple of clips from The Best of Jazz from the 70s and 80s:
Meanwhile Humphrey was much in demand
elsewhere, contributing to radio and TV arts programmes and starting the
inevitable round of chat shows, quiz and panel show appearances that would
include Sounds Familiar, Quote…Unquote and Jazz Score.
Programmes for the BBC World Service included Jazz in My Life (1975)
In 1971 he got the call to pilot a
new radio panel game. The idea for I’m
Sorry I Haven’t a Clue came from Graeme Garden’s desire to have a programme
that contained the essence of the fun of I’m
Sorry I’ll Read That Again without the hassle of writing a script.Garden and radio producer David Hatch needed
a chairman for the new show. Hatch recalls: “The notion was we should actually
go off-piste and not have the words written down, but invent it. And the
equivalent to the composed piece of music was jazz.” They both thought of
Humphrey. “It needed a father figure. I mean it was a bit like Ken Horne used
to be on Twenty Questions, that sort
of gravitas. A large figure who could hold these wild young things together.”
Writing in his diary some three years
later Humph remembered that “everyone agreed that it was too self-indulgent and
dreadful to get off the ground Months later a BBC ‘high-up’ heard the pilot,
fell about and insisted it should go on.” Relying on the comic skills of the
panel increasingly the real star of Clue was the chairman. He feigned
boredom (or was it real?) and sounded if he’d rather be elsewhere. He delivered
the scripted game intros with a bewildered air that belied his comedy timing. “He’s
the only person I’ve ever known who could get a laugh just with silence”,
claimed friend and ISIHAC panellist Barry Cryer.
In October 1998 The Best of Jazz hit its 30th anniversary, here’s that show
complete with a revived theme tune:
In April 2007 Humphrey decided to cut
back on The Best of Jazz shows,
presenting them for 12 weeks at a stretch, alternating with Jools Holland’s
shows. On 17 March 2008 he bowed out with a typically under-stated show: no
fanfare, no BBC send-off or mention in that week’s Radio Times. Here’s Humph’s swansong:
Just over a month later, on 25 April,
Humphrey, passed away after post-operative complications.
Humphrey Lyttelton 1921-2008
With thanks to Mrs Trellis of North
Wales
Humph signed this CD cover for my late father-in-law.
A few notes on Jazz Club
After Jazz Record Requests (still running on BBC Radio 3) and The Best of Jazz, the longest-running show
was Jazz Club. It was first broadcast
in the Light Programme on Saturday 15 March 1947 and billed as a “half-hour of
music in the jazz idiom played by some of Britain’s leading jazz
instrumentalists, coming to you from the heart of London’s West End”. The first
presenter was Mark White who would later rise through the ranks of BBC
management and is credited, amongst other things, as giving Terry Wogan his BBC
break in 1966. Other presenters in the early years included Jack Jackson and
Steve Race. The programme’s theme,
composed by Billy Munn, was Jazz Club
Stomp.
The programme took a break in the
early 1950s, replaced by the record show World
of Jazz with presenters including Alun Morgan, Denis Preston, Rex Harris,
Charles Melville and Kenneth Ashden and session performances in British Jazz with Dill Jones.
Jazz Club returned
on 3 October 1957 and for this run the presenters included Dill Jones, Tony
Hall, Hector Stewart, Alan Dell, George Melly, Diz Disley and Humphrey
Lyttelton. It ended on 19 September 1964 only to be revived on Monday 22 March
1965 with Humphrey as the main host through until 26 December. From Sunday 2
January 1966 it becomes part of The Jazz
Scene show, with the performance billed as In the Jazz Club.
With Humphrey presenting the show
again becomes a stand-alone programme on Radio 1 from Wednesday 4 October 1967,
later moving to Saturday nights in 1969. Major changes to all networks in April
1970 means Jazz Club is now on Radio
2, initially midweek but then swapping with The
Best of Jazz to occupy a Sunday night slot post-midnight after Peter Clayton’s Jazznotes.
On 8 April 1973 Sounds of Jazz begins, this time on Radio 1, with Humph looking
after the first hour as Jazz Club and
Peter Clayton the second hour of jazz records. By October 1973 Humphrey no
longer looks after proceedings and from 5 January 1975 when Sounds of Jazz moves to Radio 2, Jazz Club finally ends. Jazz Club
sessions continued to feature as part of Sounds
of Jazz which ran until 1990 and was succeeded by the nightly Jazz Parade.Listeners to Radio Ulster can enjoy their
version of Jazz Club every Sunday
evening.
Is it a
collection or am I hoarder? In fact I like to think of my Radio Times archive as a valuable research resource.
When packing
up to move our worldly possessions from Yorkshire down to France I sold or
threw away a whole stack of magazines. But the Radio Times boxes, they remained untouched, save for some extra
parcel tape. They were coming with us.
My Radio Times collection dates back from
1976 starting when, aged 14, I kept the family copy rather than let it go into
the bin. At the time the magazines were, much to my mum’s annoyance, stored in
the bottom of my wardrobe.
The run is
patchy during 1976 and only complete from Easter 1977, save for those missing
editions due to the 1980s print disputes. That’s about 1,800 copies. Recent
eBay purchases have supplemented my archive with older editions. But with the
BBC’s Genome project perhaps going public later this year will I be ditching
the lot?
The Genome project
scanned all the various editions of the Radio
Times back to 1923 to create a fully searchable programme information
database, ideal for radio and social historians or just the idly curious
alike.At first the project won’t be
making the photos, articles, letters, adverts and that classic artwork
available online, although the whole of the magazine will have been scanned.
Using optical character recognition the software will build up the programme
data to populate a screen similar to the existing schedules pages you see on
the BBC radio and tv websites. I think I’ll be hanging onto the actual
magazines for the moment.
Here in
France fortunately enough two of the main supermarkets in the nearby town of Parthenay
– both Leclerc and Hyper U –stock the Radio
Times, appearing on the shelves by the Thursday. So I’m still able to get
my weekly fix. The online version just doesn’t do it for me. And if, for some
reason, the RT doesn’t get delivered then it’s a quick call to a chum back in
the UK. Cheers Phil!
There are
plenty of other Radio Times
collectors out there. The late Wallace Grevatt probably had the largest private
collection and some of his copies were used by the BBC for the Genome Project.
Tony Currie talked about his personal obsession on Radio 4 back in 1990 and
went on to write a book about the magazine’s history.
There's
still a few Radio Times issues that
are on my wish list. I did eventually manage to acquire the famous 1967 launch
of Radio 1 ‘dolly bird’ issue as well as the preceding week for the close of
the old Home, Light and Third but I’m on the lookout for:
w/c 29 July
1945 launch of the Light Programme
w/c 29
September 1946 launch of the Third Programme
w/c 26
September 1964 extension of broadcasting hours
w/c 23
October 1965 start of Breakfast Special
The
Christmas double issues for 1973 and 1974.
Remember
those Radio Times jingles? “It’s out
today….the new Radio Times.” Here’s a sample of the jingles produced by JAM
Creative Productions for both Radio 1 and Radio 2.
From 1985
this is Mark Page with a Radio 1 promotion as the magazine hits the newsstands.
No jingles
in this Radio 2 example from 1980, just a bit of over-acting from announcer
Paddy O’Byrne.
And to show
that you can perhaps have just too many issues of this esteemed publication
this chap in Channel 4’s Get Your Home In
Order had 5,000+ with many multiple copies. Whilst the Churchill funeral
issue may not be worth much I did spot an old Dad’s Army one (Clive Dunn on the
cover) and at the end of the clip the 1970 Codename issue (featuring Anthony
Valentine) is significant as it’s the first week of major radio changes
following the Broadcasting in the Seventies review. Let’s hope he just didn’t
junk those.
More on the Radio Times this November when it
celebrates 90 years of publication.
