1985 was the year of Live Aid, the end of the miners' strike,
riots on the streets and in football stadia and the rise of the Militant
Tendency. These, and other events, are recalled in this end-of-year round-up
from the Newsbeat team introduced by Frank Partridge.
This programme was broadcast on Tuesday 31 December 1985.
A couple of health warnings: It was recorded on Radio 1 medium
wave in the evening so expect the sound to dip now and then. The original
programme was 2 hours long but, for whatever reason, I only recorded one hour.
I edited it as I recorded it, so apologies for any jarring edits or major
stories I may have chopped out.
Whenever Radio 4 (or Radio 7 or 4 Extra) repeats the special
Christmas edition of After Henry, The Season of Relative Goodwill, it
never gets to pull off the neat scheduling trick of the original 1987 transmission.
Eleanor (played by Joan Sanderson): I really think you two
should be getting dressed now.
Sarah (played by Prunella Scales): What?
Eleanor: Well it'll soon be the broadcast. You weren't
thinking of lolling around listening to Her Majesty in your night things were
you?
Sarah: Hmm.
Clare (played by Gerry Cowper): But Granny
Eleanor: You have to
have some standards.
Sarah: Yes. Yes of course. What's the time?
Eleanor: Well it's ... oh goodness, it's nearly half-past.
Clare: Well I haven't got time to get dressed.
Eleanor: No. Oh dear, you really should have set the alarm
earlier Sarah, then you'd have had time to make yourself look respectable like
me.
Sarah: Yes, you look very smart Mum.
Eleanor: Thank you dear.
Clare: I still think the hat's a bit much Granny.
Eleanor; We all show respect in our own ways Clare.
Clare: Of course.
Eleanor: That is those of us who have any idea what showing
respect means.
Clare: Listen Granny ....
Sarah (interrupting): It's nearly time. We'd better switch
on.
Eleanor: Yes. Er, Just a moment before you do. Clare. At
least do your dressing-gown up.
Clare: All right.
Eleanor: And empty that mouthful immediately. You can't
listen to the Queen with your mouth full.
Sarah; Oh mother!
Eleanor: Quiet Sarah. And Sarah for heavens sakes sit up
straight.
Sarah: Better?
Eleanor: It'll have to do. You might at least have run a
comb through your hair. Now don't frown Clare. (clears throat) Very well Sarah
dear, you may switch the wireless on now.
FX: Sound of radio clicking on.
And there the programme ends. But back on Christmas Day
1987, Radio 4 continuity announcer Laurie MacMillan comes in with "an
almost merry Christmas After Henry. (pause) It's coming up to nine thirty.
(longer pause). In a few moments, after Big Ben, Her Majesty the Queen".
Followed by a short set of chimes and the Queen's speech to the Commonwealth.
(One is always tempted to say "And, cue Queen.")
This is exactly how that half hour was broadcast with the
complete edition of After Henry and
The Queen's Speech.
A festive radio fixture for the last 30 years is the mixture
of music and religion offered by the Canon Roger Royle. By my reckoning he's
had a Radio 2 Christmas Day show every year since 1985. (BBC Genome shows that
the 1986 programme was on Christmas Eve but thereafter its always on the day
itself).
For many years Roger offered wisdom and solace with a touch
of good humour on Pause for Thought.
For six years between 1984 and 1990 he presented Good Morning Sunday and from 1990 to 2007 regularly presided over Sunday Half-Hour. Nowadays the Christmas
Day show, this year relegated to a 3 am slot, is Rockin' Roger's only radio gig.
This is how that 1985 Christmas Day show sounded.
There's rather more of this Christmas Eve edition of Good
Morning Sunday. Roger's guests are General Eva Burrows of The Salvation Army
and, in the second part, Roy and Fiona Castle. This programme aired on Sunday
24 December 1989.
T. S.
Eliot's collection of feline-based poetry gets another airing this Christmas
when Jeremy Irons reads Old Possum's Book of Practical Catson Radio 4. The BBC publicity tells us that they first appeared on
the radio on Christmas Day 1937. Sure enough tucked away in the afternoon on
the Regional Programme is Practical Cats.
The billing tells us: "For some time past Mr. Eliot has
been amusing and instructing the offspring of some of his friends in verse on
the subject ofcats.These poems are not of the kind that
have been usually associated with his name, and they have not yet been
published. With his permission, some of them have been arranged into a programme,
and they will be read by Geoffrey Tandy ".
The
collection was published two years later and they would soon find a young
audience as they cropped up in Children's
Hour and programmes For the Schools
from 1940 through to the late 50s. I dare say they continued to be featured in
English programmes for schools but these billings have so far fallen through
the Genome net.
The Cats only put in occasional TV appearances;
the first in 1952 on Children's Television
when actor Anthony Jacobs read a couple of the poems. In 1971 they got the full
Omnibus treatment as part of an
appreciation of Eliot's work.
In 1954 Alan
Rawsthorne set six of the poems in a work for speaker and orchestra, the studio
recorded version featured the voice of Robert Donat. This has made several
appearances on Radio 3 - it is first
billed on Network Three in 1965 - right into the noughties. A similar idea by Humphrey Searle only seems
to get the one billing, in 1985.
Straight
readings of the poems are heard on the Home Service in 1962, read by Val
Gielgud and Hugh David. In November 1974 BBC2 closes down each evening with a
poem read by either Sian Phillips or Richard Bebb; The Naming of Cats appears on the 27th.
Radio 4 broadcast
the reading of all 15 poems in a five-minute slot just before the 9 am news
during September and October 1988. It offers a starry line-up of readers: Alec
McCowen, Anna Massey, Roger Daltrey, Richard Briers, Fenella Fielding, Wendy
Hiller, Maurice Denham, Penelope Keith, Derek Jacobi, Michael Bryant, Max Wall,
Charles Gray, Alan Bennett, Ian McKellen and Bernard Cribbins. These are so successful that they get a
repeat in 1989 and in 1994, though they have not, to my knowledge, been heard
since.
The installation of Eric Gill's sculpture of Prospero and
Ariel over the original entrance of Broadcasting House was mired in controversy
from the moment it was unveiled in 1933.
The nude Ariel, or at least the size of his
"organ", caused maidens to
"blush and youths to pass disparaging remarks", according to the Daily Herald. An unrepentant Gill
retorted that he had only followed the Corporation's request: "I am only a
servant of the BBC, and if a statue is placed under the responsibility of Sir
John Reith and other directors then it must be all right. Supposing I want to
erect an immoral statue outside Broadcasting House, I could not do so. Ariel,
the boy, is only ten years old. He cannot be offending women, and are men going
to be offended? I think not"
Local MP George Gibson Mitcheson passed the sculpture every
day on his way home and is reported to have claimed in Parliament that the
figures were "objectionable to public morals and decency". Eventually
Gill compromised and chiselled a bit of the offending part of Ariel. He did,
however, leave behind a hidden memento at the back of the sculpture, the face
of a girl that "nobody will find until Broadcasting House falls
down". In the event it was uncovered in 2004 when work began on cleaning
and remodelling the building.
Referring to the carvings at Broadcasting House in his
autobiography Gill viewed them as a "failure". Elaborating on this he
said: "I mean simply that I don't much like looking at them. The idea was
grand but I was incapable of carrying it out adequately. Prospero and Ariel!
Well you think. The Tempest and
romance and Shakespeare and all that stuff. Very clever of the BBC to hit on
the idea, Ariel and aerial. Ha! Ha!"
As to why he chose to represent them as Father and Son:
"I don't know anything about Shakespeare's intentions, but it didn't seem
to me to be unduly straining the poem to see in the figure of Prospero much
more than that of a clever old magician, or in that of Ariel more than that of
a silly fairy. Had not Prospero power over the immortal Gods? At any rate it
seemed to be only right and proper that I should see the matter in as bright a
light as possible and so I took it upon me to portray God the Father and God
the Son. For even if that were not Shakespeare's meaning it ought to be the
BBC's".
He was pretty scathing about his fellow artists too: "My
sculpturing experiments were, after all, only an extension of my lettercutting
into another sphere - but it was a sphere into which the arts and crafts
movement of William Morris and his followers had not only never extended, but
had fought shy of and turned away from. My friends in the arts and crafts
circles rather looked askance at me. I seemed to be deserting their homely
fireside and going into brothels and dance-halls. They really are like that;
they're terribly strait-laced and prim."
Gill was, and remains, a controversial figure, though his
sculptures are much admired and his lasting contribution to typefaces - see
Gill Sans etc. - and through to modern-day fonts is undeniable.
Seventy years after his death Gill was back in the news in
the wake of the Savile scandal with the Daily
Mail, never failing to hop onto any passing bandwagon, calling for the BBC
to "remove sculpture of naked boy from outside Broadcasting House".
This picked up on some disturbing revelations in a Gill biography, though this
had been published some twenty-odd years earlier. Needless to say they still standing,
overlooking Portland Place.
You can hear more about Eric Gill and his work for the BBC
when Radio 4 Extra repeats The BBC Tour
on Saturday 12 December.
References:
Autobiography by
Eric Gill (Jonathan Cape, 1970)
The Story of
Broadcasting House by Mark Hines (Merrell, 2008)
Action Stations by
Colin Reid (Robson Books, 1987)
This year has seen the celebrations of the Sinatra Centenary
marking one hundred years since the birth of Francis Albert Sinatra in, as
every quizzer knows, Hoboken, New Jersey.
Sinatra's meteoric rise to worldwide stardom happened over just a few months between the autumn of 1942
and the spring of 1943 and coincided with the Golden Age of US radio.
Frank's musical ambitions were set a decade earlier in 1933
after watching a well-known crooner in concert. "I saw Bing Crosby tonight
and I've got to be a singer", he told his parents. Most of his early performances
were in local talent contests but by September 1935 he made his first broadcast
whilst singing as part of The Hoboken
Four. The show, at New York's Capitol Theatre, was carried by one of the
local radio stations.
His time with the singing group was brief and he was soon back
to touring the clubs and theatres. But he realised that he'd only make the big
time with radio exposure so he'd offer to sing for free whenever a station had
a vacant spot. WNEW provided him with a number of opportunities but seemingly
only WAAT in Newark paid him a fee - the 70 cents bus fare home.
His break came when he filled a vacancy for a singer and
compere at the Rustic Club, a local roadhouse on Route 9W in Alpine, New
Jersey. Quickly building up a repertoire of songs and a neat line in audience
repartee, Frank's shows were wired into the local stations. The Rustic Club's
management relished the publicity and upped his weekly wage from $15 to $25.
Those early broadcasts proved invaluable. In the summer of
1939 Benny Goodman's former trumpeter, Harry James, was establishing a new band
and was looking for a vocalist. Hearing one of the Rustic Club shows James
asked who this kid was. Young Frank was signed up just days later. His first
performance with Harry James was on 30 June and he cut his first record just a fortnight
later.
Sinatra's time with James was brief, by January 1940 he'd been poached by Tommy Dorsey and was
touring, recording and regularly appearing on the radio. With Dorsey he honed
his craft and learnt his distinctive
musical phrasing, though he was still unnamed on the records they released with
their generic credit to "with vocal chorus". Ambitious to the last he
eventually flew the Dorsey coop in September 1942.
It was Marnie Sachs at Columbia Records who found Sinatra
his first solo break, a twice weekly slot on CBS titled Songs by Sinatra. Next he was the "Added Extra
Attraction" on the bill of a New Year's Eve Benny Goodman show at the
Paramount Theatre in New York. The screams that greeted the scrawny young
singer stopped Goodman in his tracks. A star was born. It was the start of the
infamous bobby-soxers period. Time
magazine proclaimed that "not since the days of Rudolph Valentino has
American womanhood made such unabashed public love to an entertainer".
The impact of the Paramount shows, which eventually ran for
a recording-breaking eight weeks, was immediate. In January he negotiated a
film contract with RKO and was then signed up to replace Barry Wood on the
weekly networked Saturday night concert show, Your Hit Parade. By February the programme had doubled its
audience.
Sinatra's fame was also spreading across the Atlantic. He'd
first appeared on BBC radio in 1940 when it broadcast a recording of a Harry
James show. But in 1944 the General Forces Programme relayed a joint production
with NBC called Atlantic Spotlight
that featured Frank. From December 1944 to May 1945 the BBC also carried the Your Hit Parade shows, though it just
billed them under the name of the show's musical director as Mark Warnow and his Orchestra.
By 1947 Frank was earning $12,000 a programme even though
his career was now on the wane. The mainly Republican press laid into Sinatra;
they frowned upon politically committed stars, his private life came under the
spotlight, especially his dalliances with actresses like Lana Turner, and there
were verbal and physical punch-ups. Even his radio appearances were coming
under fire with Metronome describing
them as "alternately dull, pompous and raucous". He gave up the shows
in May 1949 fed up with both the songs he was given to sing and the style in
which he had to sing them.
Frank starred in a
number of other US radio shows in the early 1950s, these are listed in
this Wikipedia entry. Meanwhile, in the way that Sinatra would continue to make
several comebacks during his lifetime, by 1953 his fortunes had revived: he
signed up with Capitol Records and established his superb musical relationship
with Nelson Riddle and Billy May and there was a successful tour of Britain.
That British concert tour led to a couple of appearances
that summer on the Light Programme's Show
Band Show as well as an interview with David Jacobs on his Radio Luxembourg
show Portrait of a Star - David
recalls this meeting in All or Nothing At
All below. Apart from a 1954 disc jockey show on NBC that seems to the end
of Frank's radio career. After that its programmes about the man himself, some
concert recordings and film reviews and soundtracks (see the BBC's Movie-Go-Round for instance).
Firstly, on the occasion of Frank's 70th birthday, comes
this appraisal of his life and career from American novelist and screenwriter
Clancy Sigal, All or Nothing at All.
It aired on BBC Radio 4 on 8 December 1985.
Secondly a programme presented by the British DJ that knew
the man himself, David Jacobs. This is the first edition of a 13-part series
titled Frank Sinatra: The Voice of the
Century. It was broadcast on 4 October 1998.
And finally all I have of a 3-part series written and
presented by Benny Green, Sinatra! A Man
and his Music. This was first broadcast in December 1985 but my recording
comes from a November 1986 repeat.
Reference: Frank Sinatra by John Howlett (Plexus, 1980)
By the late 1980s it was, perhaps surprisingly, ITV that
dominated the satirical news landscape with Spitting
Image. This was followed in 1990 by Have
I Got News for You over on BBC2. Meanwhile it was Radio 1 that was leading
the way with shows such as The Mary Whitehouse Experience and Loose Talk - both
transferring to TV of course. The newly
launched Radio Five Live offered The
Treatment initially with Simon Hoggart (later to chair The News Quiz) bur for most its run (1994-2001) with Stuart
Maconie.
We'll come to The Now
Show and It's Been a Bad Week in
a moment but by the time we get to the noughties there were a flurry of shows
that took at least some of their inspiration from current events:
Parsons and Naylor's
Pull-Out Sections (Radio 2, 2001-2007) starring Andy Parsons (now a team
regular on BBC TV's Mock the Week)
and Henry Naylor with musical interludes from Richie Webb.
Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive (Radio 4, 2005-2007). According
to Iannucci "the aim of Charm
Offensive is to take the talking points of the week and address them as a
team of colleagues having a chinwag, in front of a studio audience." (RT 110807)
I Guess That's Why
they Call it the News (Radio 4, 2009), a short-lived panel show hosted by
Fred McAuley.
Newsjack (Radio 4
Extra, 2009-2021) which extends the open door policy of Week Ending to any budding comedy writing willing to email their
sketches and one-liners.
7 Day Sunday
(later 7 Day Saturday) (Radio Five
Live 2010-2015) with Chris Addison and then Al Murray picking over the week.
But the regular purveyors of topical comedy for nigh on 30
years have been Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis.
Steve and Hugh's first on-air collaboration was the 1988
series for Radio 4, Live on Arrival.
This was a rare venture into live comedy, previously done by the In One Ear team (1984-86), coming each
Saturday night from the old Paris Studios. With Punt and Dennis was Flip Webster
and singer/songwriter Guy Jackson. Here's the first edition from 30 April 1988.
In fact Punt and Dennis had worked together previously on a
Radio 4 comedy, Project Santa Claus,
with Hugh in the cast and Steve providing the script. Indeed Steve's comedy writing
pedigree was well-established by the time they came to perform together. He'd
submitted sketches and quickies to Week
Ending since 1983, contributed material to the Jeremy Hardy comedy Unnatural Acts (1987) and to Loose Ends(1987-90) as well as writing
for Jasper Carrott and Rory Bremner's TV outings in Carrott Confidential and Now-Something
Else.
On Radio 4 in 1988 Punt and Dennis wrote and starred in a
two-part comedy about "the oddities of Olympic antics" called Olympiod 88. Meanwhile Live On Arrival's producer David Tyler proposed
a 15-minute edit of the show for a try-out on Radio 1. Controller Johnny
Beerling turned the idea down but did ask David to develop a new comedy show
for the network. The result was Hey
Rrradio!!! (1988-89) with Patrick Marber acting as host and during the series Punt and Dennis popped
up as guests. Following Hey Rrradio!!!
on Radio 1 was The Mary Whitehouse Experience
(1989-90) featuring the combined talents of Punt and Dennis and Newman and
Baddiel. It was this that helped secure them more TV work: the TV version of The Mary Whitehouse Experience itself, Canned Carrott and The Imaginatively Titled Punt and Dennis Show. Whilst Hugh has
continued to regularly perform on TV, e.g. Mock
the Week and Outnumbered, Steve
has largely remained behind the scenes acting as script associate, i.e. writing
the gags, on many shows including most of the run of Mock the Week.
However, on radio Punt and Dennis have remained consistently
employed, and consistently funny, since 1998 on two series that have relied
heavily on topical comedy.
On Radio 2 from 1999 to 2006 there were fourteen series of It's Been a Bad Week, perhaps best
remembered for Van Man and the Worst Week of the Week Award, Awarded Weekly on
a Week-by-Week Basis.
It's Been a Bad Week
was an independent production from Celador, who described the programme thus:
"Hosts Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis trawl the world’s media outlets in
search of tales of woe, disaster and misfortune – and then have a good laugh at
them. From gigantic corporate cock-ups to the sad failures of the humblest
individual, It’s Been a Bad Week is
unflinching in its search for stories that reflect the calamitous misfortunes
which occur daily around the globe. Drawing on a mixture of sketches, songs,
impressions, guest contributions and scripted news items, the show targets the
week’s well-known bad news stories, governmental disasters, royal excesses,
celebrity misbehaviour as well as a myriad of less well-publicised stories from
Britain and abroad".
From 2005 this is the fifth programme in the eleventh
series. With Punt and Dennis are Sue Perkins, Simon Greenall and Mitch Benn.
Starting in 1998, and still running to this day - the 47th series kicks off this week - is The Now
Show. Make that The Noooow Shoooow! A typical edition would go like this:
Steve and Hugh pick on the week's top story for a routine invariably involving
Hugh doing a comic voice or impression with support from Laura Shavin; a comic rant
from someone like Marcus Brigstocke or Andy Saltzman; a song from Mitch Benn; a
routine from vertically-challenged Jon Holmes ("his dream is to be the
present in a Kinder egg") and rounding off with answers from the audience
to a question set before the show.
This is first ever edition of The Now Show from 26 September 1998. With Punt and Dennis are Jane
Bussmann, Dan Freedman, Simon Munnery, David Quantick and Nick Romero. Of the
initial cast only David Quantick has remained a semi-regular guest.
This next audio upload concludes this series of posts. It's
another Now Show from 2012, the final
show of series 36. With Steve and Hugh in this pasty and petrol-fuelled edition
are John Finnemore, Jon Holmes, Mitch Benn and Laura Shavin.
