Random radio jottings: Radio 4 Extra

Showing posts with label Radio 4 Extra. Show all posts

Thursday, 26 December 2024

Home Service Day 1964

This coming Saturday (28 December) BBC Radio 4 Extra is going to party like its 1964. For day only, all the programmes between 6am and 10pm are what you would’ve heard on the BBC Home Service in December 1964. Most are getting their first repeat broadcast in sixty years.

Guiding listeners through the day will be Wes Butters. Of the Home Service Day he says:

“It’s an extraordinary privilege to take the helm of BBC Radio 4 Extra for Home Service Day! This is not just any regular Saturday; it’s an opportunity to step back in time and relive the magic of Christmas 1964. The schedule is a treasure trove of radio history, featuring a comic operetta that includes an early performance from Dame Patricia Routledge, a drama starring the acclaimed Shakespearean actor Sir Donald Wolfit, and an anarchic comedy by my hero Spike Milligan, alongside an up-and-coming Barry Humphries! We’ve rooted around in all the nooks and crannies in the BBC Archive to uncover lots of hidden gems, and pieced together a day that will truly capture the spirit of Christmas exactly 60 years ago."

The day starts with the comic operetta The Duenna. The three part operetta by Richard Brinsley Sheridan was first performed in 1775 and had been revived in 1924. It was updated and adapted in the 1950s by musical theatre writer Julian Slade, best known for Salad Days (1954), and theatre director Lionel Harris and it’s their version that’s used here. Producer Peter Bryant thought that rather than perform it in the studio it would be best recorded before an invited audience at the Camden Theatre. Amongst the cast are Patricia Routledge, Andrew Sachs and Denis Quilley. Music is performed by the Sinfonia of London conducted by Marcus Dods with the John McCarthy Singers (stalwarts of many Friday Night is Music Night concerts). The Duenna was broadcast at 8pm on Christmas Eve 1964.

The Silver King is based on the 1882 Victorian melodrama by Henry Arthur Jones and Henry Herman that tells of a gambler who, after losing all his money, escapes to America. The play had been broadcast on BBC radio three times previously: in December 1930, June 1945 and in December 1954. That ’54 production had starred the actor-manager Donald Wolfit in the lead as Wilfred Denver, a role he reprised in this 1964 production. The play was produced for radio again in December 1991 with John Duttine as Denver. The Silver King was broadcast in the Afternoon Theatre slot at 3.15pm on Monday 28 December 1964 though the recording survives as it was issued by BBC Transcription Services under their World Theatre titles.

Next up is comedy from Spike Milligan in The GPO Show. This has been repeated before in December 2014 as part of a lost comedy gems season on 4 Extra. As I wrote then:

the Radio Times unhelpfully describes it as follows: “Spike Milligan takes a benevolent but distinctly Milligoonish look at the work of that mighty institution the British Post Office. In fact he braves the hallowed precincts of Mount Pleasant itself, to report the merry, festive scene. With the stalwart shape of Harry Secombe and John Bluthal, to name but six, he will be giving listeners a seasonal view of Operation Mailbag in full swing.” The GPO Show was recorded just five days before transmission and by then the Post Office had objected to the title on the grounds that GPO was a registered trademark so it was hastily changed to The Grand Piano Orchestra Show. The script, in part, was a re-working of an earlier Goon Show from 1954 titled The History of Communications.

The GPO Show was first broadcast after the Queen’s message at 1.10pm on Christmas Day 1964.

We Don’t Often Lose a Boffin was a comedy written by actor and writer John Graham. John was in 100s of radio plays and series including the role of Roddy MacKenzie in The Dales. You’ll likely hear him in repeats of The Men from the Ministry. The ‘boffin’ in question is top government scientist Dr Grebe played by Patrick Barr. Playing the ‘top brass’ at M.I.5 is Frederick Treves and at Whitehall its John Graham himself. This play was an Afternoon Theatre production broadcast at 3.00pm on 23 December 1964.

Radio 4 Extra then schedules a couple of Sherlock Holmes mysteries starring Carleton Hobbs and Norman Shelley as Holmes and Watson. In 1964 both these stories, The Three Garridebs and The Norwood Builder, had first been heard on the Light Programme in September but did get a Home Service repeat in December. They’ve been heard on 4 Extra a number of times before.

For fans of Henry Cecil’s Brothers in Law – the 1970s radio versions starring Richard Briers have been aired many times on 4 Extra – there’s an adaptation of his 1961 novel Daughters in Law. The plot summary reads: ‘Major Claude Buttonstep has two sons who fall in love with a judge's attractive twin daughters - one is a barrister and the other a solicitor. But Major Buttonstep, normally a mild, kindly rural Squire, has a pathological aversion to lawyers’. It stars Cecil Parker as the major and Naunton Wayne as Mr Trotter. The daughters are played by Gudrun Ure (tv’s Super Gran) and Diana Olsson (a long term member of the BBC dram rep). This production of Daughters in Law was first broadcast in Saturday-Night Theatre on 2 September 1961 but qualifies for this repeat as it was heard again on the Home Service at 2.30pm on Sunday 27 December 1964.

Although we inevitably associate Johnny Morris with Animal Magic he had an even longer radio career of over four decades as a storyteller, narrator and panellist. His longest running series was the travelogue Johnny’s Jaunt that ran from 1954 to 1975. At first Johnny and his travelling companions George and Leslie would visit areas of Great Britain but by 1958 they were off around the world. These fifteen minute talks were produced by Brian Patten (a Bristol-based producer not to be confused with the Merseyside poet) and it is he that produced this Christmas broadcast of Knock Up Ginger. The unlikely subject is doors with “childhood memories of doors he has faced, knocked on – and swiftly run away from. Knock Up Ginger was first broadcast at 9.40pm on Tuesday 22 December 1964.

As well as these programmes Wes will also be playing other archive clips from 1964 including some from the daily afternoon magazine show Home this Afternoon which had started in March that year and the daily topical programme This Time of Day. There are also new interviews with Dame Patricia Routledge and Spike’s daughter Jane Milligan.

The Home Service Day programmes will be broadcast on Saturday between 6am and 2pm and then again between 2pm and 10pm. They will be available on BBC Sounds for 30 days, except for the Sherlock Holmes programmes that are available all the time.

Whilst BBC Sounds has the programmes available most of Wes’s links are missing, as are the interviews and extra archive clips. To rectify this here’s some of what isn’t online.

Firstly the interview with Dame Patricia Routledge:

Secondly the interview with Jane Milligan:

Thirdly Scottish comedian Jack Radcliffe talking to Howard Lockhart about ‘the art of making the season festive’ taken from Home this Afternoon. This comes from a Scottish produced edition broadcast on Friday 1 January 1965:

Thursday, 15 December 2022

Another Chance to Hear

Listening to BBC Radio 4 Extra can sometimes feel like they’re just playing Hancock’s Half-Hour and Round the Horne on a loop for the last two decades. But aside from these “much-loved” comedy gems the station has a well-deserved reputation for digging deeper into the BBC’s archives and airing lesser-known comedies, dramas and readings. Indeed this coming weekend we have the first broadcast in nearly 70 years of an edition of Life with the Lyons and an Afternoon Theatre drama from 1974 that’s not had a repeat since 1977.

Despite pulling in an audience of 1.8 million (and hitting a high of 2.1m in 2015) Radio 4 Extra is now on radio’s death row. In May of this year DG Tim Davie announced that 4 Extra would (at some as yet undetermined date but certainly not in the next three years) stop broadcasting “on linear”.

Today the station is twenty years old. It was launched in a flurry of digital radio expansion in 2002 alongside the new services of 5 live Sports Extra, 6 Music and 1Xtra and the Asian Network going national on DAB.

Initially called just BBC7 a press release in November 2002 promised: “A great mix of entertainment with the best of BBC comedy, drama and books as well as a brand new daily live kids' radio show, BBC 7 is the fifth BBC digital radio station to launch this year and completes the BBC's digital radio portfolio”.

Here’s an early promo for the station:

Broadcasting 18 hours a day (7am-1 am) BBC7 was zoned with six hours of comedy (Comedy Hour, Classic Comedy, Comedy Zone and The Comedy Club), a drama zone, crime and thriller strand, science fiction and horror in The Seventh Dimension and four hours of children’s programmes. Of those ‘zones’ just The Comedy Club and The 7^thDimension remain. It started broadcasting around the clock from January 2004.

The station underwent a subtle name change in October 2008 to BBC Radio 7 (using just BBC7 was deemed confusing and people thought it was a tv service) followed by a re-launch in April 2011 as BBC Radio 4 Extra.

The original BBC 7 head of programmes Mary Kalemkerian described her job like this:

I am entrusted with the BBC's heritage and I have to select what will go out on the air, but it is not just like a jukebox where you pluck a token out and put something on. I have to make sure the rights are cleared, as the BBC doesn't own half of its archive. So I work a lot with agents and also look at ways of polishing up these radio jewels by repackaging programmes to make them more accessible to a younger audience. I also commission some new programmes – quite a bit of contemporary comedy.

In addition to mining the archives or taking narrative repeats of Radio 4 comedy shows the station has often commissioned its own programmes, albeit a relatively small amount. Its 2007 service licence included a commitment to at least 10 hours of new comedy a year and 20 hours of new drama, though this was later amended to “some” new comedy and drama. It was also expected to contribute to BBC radio’s target of 10% of new commissions to go to the independent sector.

Original commissions include the Saturday morning 3-hour features, The Comedy Controller, Ambridge Extra, dramas such as Trueman and Bailey, The Comedy Club interviews and a number of comedy series, the most successful of which was Newsjack.

Broadcast between 2009 and 2021 Newsjack had six main presenters over its 24 series run: Miles Jupp, Justin Edwards, Romesh Ranganathan, Nish Kumar, Angela Barnes and Kiri Pritchard-McLean. It offered an Open Door policy in which members of the public could email in their sketches and one-liners. These submissions plus sketches from the staff writers are then knocked into shape by the script editor and producers. For this edition from the sixth series in 2012 Newsjack received 675 emails and 27 writing credits were given of which 21 were non-commissioned writers. With Justin Edwards are Pippa Evans, Lewis Macleod and Nadia Kamil.

BBC Radio 7 also had a large commitment to broadcast children’s programming, at one point at least 1,400 hours a year, later reduced to 350 hours when it became 4 Extra. This was mainly the pre-school series The Little Toe Show (later CBeebies on BBC Radio 7) and for older children The Big Toe Radio Show (later known as Big Toe Books). When they ended in 2011 there was just an hour of kid’s programmes now titled The 4 O’Clock Show and presented by Mel Giedroyc. This in turn was pulled in March 2015, justifiably as it only attracted 5,900 10-14 year olds and had an average listener age of 60.

Adopting a magazine style format, The 4 O’Clock Show was something of a pick ‘n’ mix affair with some clips taken from elsewhere on Radio 4’s output. Based on the evidence of this recording from 12 March 2015 it’s not hard to see why it got the chop. Here Mel introduces Dick and Dom investigating How Dangerous is Your School with the help of students and staff at the Cardinal Wiseman School in Greenford, London. There’s an extract from Saturday Live about life on a farm, more science, this time out in space, with Stuart Henderson from Radio 4’s Questions, Questions and musician Pete Roe on restoring and playing harmoniums. There’s an interview with actor Ron Ely (of Tarzan fame, yes, really) and Gabriel Quigley reads from Roddy Doyle’s A Greyhound of a Girl. Oh, and Mel reveals what’s inside her big bag.

Radio 4 Extra doesn’t broadcast live (with a couple of exceptions) but is built in advance from a number of pre-recorded elements. Obviously there’s the programmes themselves and then the separate links for The Comedy Club and The 7^th Dimension. All the continuity elements – intros, outros, top of the hour junctions, trailers and promotions and station imaging (from Mcasso) – are added to the playout system. If a programme goes out more than once a day the same intros/outros are used.

Those live broadcast exceptions are, back in the days of BBC7/BBC Radio 7, the weekday editions of The Big Toe Radio Show, originally presented by Kirsten O’Brien and Jez Edwards. The only other instance I’m aware of is for an hour on 14 November 2012 when Jim Lee provided the live continuity around the all station link-up for Radio Reunited as part of the BBC’s 90^th anniversary.

Here’s part of Jim's ‘live’ continuity:

When BBC7 started presenters or announcers would be associated with different strands of the station’s output. This changed from 2010 when the same continuity announcer was heard throughout the day (with the exception of The Comedy Club and The 7^th Dimension).

In 2014 Feedback’s Roger Bolton visited 4 Extra and spoke to Commissioning Editor Caroline Raphael, announcer Joanna Pinnock and producer Nick St George.

The continuity announcers are either current or former Radio 4 announcers plus a small number of voiceover folk who just provide 4 Extra continuity. The 4 Extra day runs from 6.00 am to 5.59 am and the announcers record two 24-hour days in one session. Back in 2019 one of the station’s most regular voices, Alan Smith, told me how it all works:

About 3 weeks before transmission, the programmes appear in the 4Extra schedule in the order they’ll be played-out. It’s at this point that announcers can listen to the programmes to get a feel for them. We don’t listen all the way through; we hear just enough to get a sense of what’s going on. Our listening is supplemented by written information which is held in the programme database. This database is a fantastic resource as it contains a plot summary of every programme together with its transmission history, cast & crew details and any contentious/sensitive factors which need to be flagged up.

Then the writing process begins! All of us who present on 4Extra write our own scripts, so everything you hear us say on air is information taken from the database that’s given a personal twist in our own style. It takes two working days to write two 24-hour on-air days. We all have different amounts of time committed to 4Extra – in my case I do two 24-hour on-air days every five weeks; some presenters do a bit more, some a bit less.

Then, about 10 days before transmission, its recording day when we go to the studio with the producer, armed with our completed scripts. This part of the process is super-efficient as we simply record all the individual links we’ve written, one after the other, plus the promos and trails. It takes about three hours to record the two 24-hour days. The announcers then leave the producer to put all the links into the schedule and build the final on-air audio.

In this sequence you’ll hear a number of familiar voices introducing the programmes on BBC Radio 7 and 4 Extra. In order you’ll hear Zeb Soanes, Steve Urquhart, Wes Butters, Neil Sleat, Debbie Russ, Luke Tuddenham, David Miles, Alan Smith, Penny Haslam, Joanna Pinnock, Jim Lee, Chris Berrow, Alex Riley, Kathy Clugston, Susan Rae, Amanda Litherland, Toby Hadoke, Nick Briggs, Andrew O'Neil, Arthur Smith and Jon Holmes.

BBC7 presenters/announcers included Joanna Pinnock, Penny Haslam, Jim Lee, Alex Riley, Michaela Saunders, Phil Williams, Richard Bacon, Kevin Greening, Etholle George, Alan Smith, Helen Aitken, Kerry McCarthy and Alex Riley.

Radio 4 Extra announcers include or have included Joanna Pinnock (there from the start in 2002), Alan Smith, Jim Lee, Wes Butters (the station’s “bit of rough” according to a recent Radio Times profile, who’s been on since 2009), Susan Rae, Kathy Clugston, Rory Morrison, Zeb Soanes, David Miles, Neil Sleat, Luke Tuddenham, Debbie Russ, Chris Berrow, Amanda Litherland and Steve Urquhart.

The 7^th Dimension presenters have included Toby Hadoke, Nick Briggs, Natalie Haynes, Andrew O’Neil and Nicola Walker.

The Comedy Club introductions and interviews have been looked after by Arthur Smith, Jon Holmes, Jake Yapp, Jessica Fostekew, Paul Garner, Angela Barnes, Laura Lexx, Rob Deering, Jade Adams, Cariad Lloyd, Sarah Campbell, Harriet Kemsley, Diane Morgan, Iain Lee, Tom Wrigglesworth, Tiff Stevenson, Lou Conran, Isy Suttie and Thom Tuck.

With thanks to Alan Smith and Chris Aldridge.

Postscript: Well wouldn't you know it. After saying how few shows on Radio 4 Extra are live, one appears in 2023. In January Jake Yapp's Unwinding started a 20 programme run live on weekday evenings between 7 and 10 pm.

Saturday, 18 June 2016

Something to Shout About

If you thought Legal, Decent, Honest and Truthful (1982-6) was the only radio comedy series set in an advertising agency, think again. Between 1960 and 1962 the Light Programme offered listeners "a light-hearted look at the advertising world" in Something to Shout About. Now, more than fifty years later, its getting its first ever repeat starting next month on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Something to Shout About was penned by scriptwriter and songwriter - Right said Fred and Hole in the Ground being his best known - Myles Rudge and Ronnie Wolfe - think On the Buses. It had a cast of well-known actors: Michael Medwin, straight out of The Army Game and years before Don Satchley, as account executive Michael Lightfoot, Fenella Fielding as his secretary Janet, Eleanor Summerfield, Joan Sims, Nicholas Phipps, Warren Mitchell and, in the final series, Sheila Hancock.

Set in the agency of Apsley, Addis, Cone, Barbican, Blythe, Giddy & Partners the programme ran for three series. Sound Archives kept very few episodes so the repeats are taken from the Transcription Services discs.

At the start of the second series on 2 January 1961 the Radio Times published this article, though it actually tells you very little about the programme:

"From the outset listeners were quick to express their appreciation of this show, and its revival after so brief a lay-off is further proof of its popularity. Myles Rudge, who with Ronald Wolfe, writes the scripts of Something to Shout About did some pretty intensive investigations in the world of advertising before starring to write and, he says 'infiltrated into the offices of several of my friends in that line of business. Actually, to present that quite unique world as it really is would utterly bewildering to the uninitiated. Nobody would understand what was going on, and, if they did, they wouldn't believe it. Our show presents a sort of compromise.

"As before Michael Medwin has three leading ladies, Eleanor Summerfield, Fenella Fielding and Joan Sims, and those who held their breath at the prospect of the sparks that could fly around the studio when three start comediennes were cast in the same show have been disappointed. the girls are the firmest of friends, and woe betide any of the men in the cast who don't keep in line. As Eleanor Summerfield puts it: 'If the men tread on any of our toes, we girls gang up on them, and they have a very rough time!'

Series 1 of Something to Shout About starts on BBC Radio 4 Extra on Friday 8 July at 8.30 am. You can read more about the programme on Laughterlog.

Tuesday, 11 August 2015

Peter Ustinov

Actor, director, author, playwright, producer, humanitarian, polyglot and raconteur. There were so many facets to the late Sir Peter Ustinov, but what often gets overlooked is his work for BBC radio. The balance is being redressed this coming Saturday as Radio 4 Extra presents PeterUstinov-The Radio Years.

In this three-hour tribute journalist John McCarthy explores the archives and introduces:

In All Directions: A 1952 comedy teaming Ustinov with Peter Jones

Appointment With Daughter: An exclusive interview with John McCarthy and Sir Peter Ustinov's eldest daughter, Tamara Ustinov

Encounter On The Balkan Express: A 1956 comedy for radio by Wolfgang Hildesheimer starring Peter Ustinov as Robert Guiscard

I'll Never Forget The Day: Ustinov on the popular 1950's radio series

Down Your Way: A special edition from 1991 with Ustinov in Leningrad

Quote Unquote: A memorable appearance by Ustinov on the popular quotation quiz hosted by Nigel Rees

Ustinov's radio appearances date back to 1940, mostly in acting roles, but his only major series was the above mentioned In All Directions. In his autobiography he recalls how he and Peter Jones "evolved a comic series for the BBC, which preceded the Goon Show and was like chamber music to the orchestral follies which were to follow. Pat Dixon produced these programmes, and our guardian angels, and consistent inspirers were Denis Norden and Frank Muir, masters of the ridiculous".

According to Barry Took: "Muir and Norden would invent a situation and then Jones and Ustinov would ad lib the dialogue to fit it. It was worked out in advance in Muir and Norden's office, and the results of this ad lib session were transcribed into script form, and then recorded in a BBC studio with further ad libs contributed by Ustinov and Jones".

Took goes on to say that the best-remembered characters "were Morry and Dudley Grosvenor, a pair of Jewish fly-by-nights, always involved in dubious transactions and usually having to run for it with the law in hot pursuit. The theme of the series was the search for the mysterious Copthorne Avenue, and as Morry and Dudley wandered vainly towards their goal their encounters with various people along the way constituted the show".

Ustinov again: "Peter and I invented a couple of characters out of the folklore of London, Morris and Dudley Grosvenor, low characters with high ambitions, as their name suggests. they spoke in the lisping accent of London's East End, and had endless wife trouble with their platinum-haired companions, as they did with the wretched character called simple 'The Boy' who was sent out on dangerous and sometimes criminal errands, in which he consistently failed. These programmes were improvised within a certain framework, and often they reached satisfactory heights of comic melancholy. Foolishly asking 'How's Zelda?' on one occasion, I received the following exercise in gloom from Peter Jones.

'Zelda? I'll tell you this much, Mowwie, if every evening after work you are hit on the head with a beer bottle with monotonous wegularity mawwiage soon loses its magic.'

The characters, sort of, made the transition to the big screen. In School for Scoundrels (1960) Peter Jones and, this time, Dennis Price play two used-car salesmen Dudley and Dunstan Dorchester.

PeterUstinov - The Radio Years is on BBC Radio 4 Extra on Saturday 15 August at 9 a.m. and again at 7 p.m.

Quotes from:

Dear Me by Peter Ustinov (Penguin Books 1978)

Laughter in the Air by Barry Took (Robson Books 1981)

Wednesday, 3 December 2014

Lost Comedy Gems

There are a number of so-called “lost gems of the Light Programme and Home Service” airing on Radio 4 Extra over Christmas. As ever it’s great when the BBC dusts off (one somehow imagines the reels sitting on dusty old shelves rather than the temperature-controlled reality) these old comedy shows. All but one, the edition of Up the Pole, have not been heard on the radio in decades. And two really were “lost” as they come from off-air recordings provided by the Goon Show Preservation Society.

This is what’s on offer in the week commencing 22 December 2014:

Over the Garden Wall was a Light Programme comedy in 1948/9 starring Lancastrian comic Norman Evans in which he brought his variety stage act of Fanny the garrulous gossip to the radio. His co-star was Ethel Manners (of the musical hall act Hatton and Manners) who played Mrs Higginbottom.

A Date with Nurse Dugdale was a six-part series that ran in 1944 starring Arthur Marshall as the eponymous Nurse Dugdale with her catchphrase “Out of my way deahs, out of my way instantly!” It was spin-off from the series Take It From Here, not the long-running Muir/Norden creation but an earlier 1943/44 series. Both Take It From Here and the Nurse Dugdale programmes also featured the May Fair Hotel Dance Orchestra conducted by bandleader and later renowned-DJ Jack Jackson.

Up the Pole ran for four series between 1947 and 1952 and starred Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warriss initially playing the cross-talking proprietors of a trading post in the Arctic. Later series shifted the action an apartment in a disused power station and a rural police station. Only one edition survives, from 1 November 1948, but has been heard again as part of Bill Oddie’s turn on Radio 7 and Radio 4 Extra as The Comedy Controller.

It’s Great to Be Young was Ken Dodd’s first starring programme and ran between October 1958 and January 1961. It’s the one that gave rise to Doddy’s catchphrase “Where’s me shirt?” and co-starred impressionist Peter Goodwright.

Blackpool Night was a regular summer series of variety shows that ran from 1948 to 1967. It gave early radio appearances for Ken Dodd and Morecambe and Wise and its Eric and Ernie that star in this repeat from 18 August 1963.

The Naughty Navy Show was a one-off Home Service comedy from Christmas Day 1965 written by and starring Spike Milligan along with John Bird, Bernard Miles and Bob Todd.

Sid and Dora was another one-off show from 25 December 1965, this time over on the Light Programme. Described as a ‘domestic comedy for Christmas’ it starred Sid James, Dora Bryan and Pat Coombs.

The Army Show also stars Spike Milligan and shares cast members with The Naughty Navy Show as well as Barry Humphries and Q series regular John Bluthal. The show was first broadcast on 16 June 1965 and has only been repeated once, and that was in 1966.

There’s more Milligan in the The GPO Show from Christmas Day 1964. The Radio Times unhelpfully describes it as follows: “Spike Milligan takes a benevolent but distinctly Milligoonish look at the work of that mighty institution the British Post Office. In fact he braves the hallowed precincts of Mount Pleasant itself, to report the merry, festive scene. With the stalwart shape of Harry Secombe and John Bluthal, to name but six, he will be giving listeners a seasonal view of Operation Mailbag in full swing.” The GPO Show was recorded just five days before transmission and by then the Post Office had objected to the title on the grounds that GPO was a registered trademark so it was hastily changed to The Grand Piano Orchestra Show. The script, in part, was a re-working of an earlier Goon Show from 1954 titled The History of Communications.

And finally also worth mentioning, and of more recent vintage, is a repeat of the 2008 Archive Hour feature on Kenny Everett from music journalist Mark Paytress in Here’s Kenny.

Tuesday, 5 August 2014

The Home of Radio

BH. Broadcasting House. How the BBC love their initials and love to tell us about their buildings. And the home of radio has had more than its fair share of programmes about its history and what goes on behind that famous façade.

Within months of its opening in 1932 John Watt was offering A Tour of Broadcasting House. I’ve already posted about The Second Tower of Babel narrated by Wynford Vaughan-Thomas in 1982. From 1997 comes this BBC2 documentary One Foot in Broadcasting House in which historian and broadcaster follows one day in the life of the building. There’s a rare chance to hear part of George Posford’s specially composed music composed for the opening and we hear some fascinating anecdotes about that famous Prospero and Ariel statue. The programme was broadcast on 7 November 1997.

In 2006 Sir David Hatch returned to BH for an edition of Radio 4’s The Archive Hour. This programme, The Home of Radio, was broadcast on 18 March.

For that week’s Radio Times Sir David Hatch recalled his time at Broadcasting House and wrote this article:

Every weekday morning for 15 years I walked into Broadcasting House (BH) at 6.55 am, en route as controller of Radio2 (CR2) to see Ray Moore coming to the end of his shift. By then his belt was undone and he was bantering with Terry Wogan on the inter-studio link, limbering up for the live handover.

Later, as CR4, I called in on Today during the 7 am news bulletin to chat with Brian Redhead and John Timpson. Later still, as MDR (By now you’ve cracked the code – all BBC jobs were known by their initials. An engineer in external services information and operations was known as EIEIO. I’m not kidding!) I went to all five networks. Terry Wogan, God bless him, had returned from his TV chat show and Redhead and Timpson had morphed into Jim Naughtie and Sue MacGregor. The last two speak affectionately of BH on The Home of Radio.

My first programme from BH as a producer was called Roundabout, and went out live on 1 April 1964. The first record went on at the wrong speed – 45 rpm not 33⅓ - and I thought my career was finished. Fortunately, those were the days when you were promoted for incompetence in the hope that, eventually, they would hit on something you could actually do.

Walking under Eric Gill’s statue, through the heavy gold double doors into the imposing half-moon reception hall, thrilled me every day. Gill was asked to provide statues of Prospero and Ariel, but is that what he sculpted? The local MP, and Lord Reith too, thought Ariel’s willy over-generous. Was it snipped? It was said that on Prospero’s back Gill had carved a girl’s face. True or false? Myths and legends abound before one has even entered the building.

An old girlfriend of mine, who had unceremoniously dumped me 20 years previously to marry a dentist, turned up in reception to meet me one day. I had set my face to cool and indifferent, only to discover that she was excited and in awe of what she was seeing – Robin Day, Denis Healey, Kenneth Williams, Robert Robinson, and Jimmy Young all in the space of five minutes. “It’s an amazing place,” she said. “Yes,” I said nonchalantly. And I thought “And it’s a bit more glamorous than a dentist’s waiting room.”

There’s more about Broadcasting House as well as Savoy Hill, Lime Grove and Television Centre in The BBC Tour presented by Nick Baker on BBC Radio 4 Extra on Saturday 9 August.

Broadcasting House illustration by Mark Thomas at Central Illustration Agency as used in the Radio Times 3 November 2012.

Sunday, 27 July 2014

It’s That Man Again, Again

During World War II he was probably only second in popularity to Winston Churchill. He was a comedian who poked fun at the establishment and kept the nation laughing. His show was filled with more catchphrases than The Fast Show decades later. His death was mourned by millions, and thousands lined the streets for his funeral. He’s now largely forgotten. That man was Tommy Handley.

Listening back to old episodes of It’s That Man Again (1939-49) – though few of the 300+ were kept – the clever word play from scriptwriter Ted Kavanagh is much in evidence, as is Handley’s rapid gunfire delivery. But with the passage of time some of the puns and broadly drawn characters that constantly drop in and out of the action make it hard to understand why the audience were whooping with delight. Today’s PC brigade would have apoplexy about Ali-Oop and Signor So-So.

One of the best remembered characters was Mrs Mopp, her cry of “Can I do you now, sir?” was one of the many ITMA catchphrases to enter the common vernacular. This scene dates from a 1942 show, make of it what you will:

F/X Door Opens

Tommy Handley: Well if it isn’t Mrs Mopp, the char with the bald-headed broom
Mrs Mopp (Dorothy Summers): Can I do you now, sir?
TH: Yes, Mrs Mopp, I want you to pacify my landlady, Cheap Chat.
MM: Her sir? I wouldn’t lower me dignity by talking to her. She’s a woman, that’s what she – a woman!
TH: You confirm my worst suspicions.
MM: What I could tell you about her and her daughter!
TH: Some other time, Mrs Mopp. What about her daughter? Anyway, she threatens me with expulsion.
MM: How dare she! You’ve never had it, have you sir?
TH: No – I’ve had brewer’s asthma and a touch of the tantivies, but never expulsion.
MM: I could let you have a nice combined room, sir. It may not be clean, but it’s comfortable. My present lodger’s been pinched again.
TH: What – between the mattress and the ironwork? I’ll think it over. I should be very happy in Maison Mopp.
MM: I’ll get rid of the pigeons before you move in. Ta-ta for now.
TH: Hotpot for stew.
FX: Door closes

I mention all this because BBC Radio 4 Extra are today repeating – for the first time – the earliest surviving recording of ITMA. However, it’s not one of the regular editions but is a recording of the stage show performed at the Palace Theatre, Manchester and first heard on the Home Service on 18 May 1940. The stage tour, produced by the bandleader and impresario Jack Hylton, went on the road shortly after the second series had ended but was not deemed a great success.

Returning in 1941 the programme hit its stride: “a basic, if slim, storyline, sustained by an endless procession of crazy characters through the overworked door – often for no particular reason – each of whom introduced himself with the requisite catchphrase. Although he was the central figure, there was no strict division of comic and feed between Handley and this cavalcade; roles were interchangeable and laughs evenly distributed.”

Tommy Handley himself had been a radio star from the earliest days of broadcasting. Born in 1892 he’d seen service in the First World War and became involved in concert parties. After the war he briefly formed a double-act with Jack Hylton. From 1921 he toured the music halls with The Disorderly Room, a sketch written by Eric Blore – Blore himself now best-remembered for his comic roles in the RKO films Top Hat and Shall We Dance. Handley performed the sketch in his first broadcast in 1924, a relay of that year’s Royal Variety Performance.

From 1925, having passed a BBC audition, Handley was regularly heard on the wireless in shows such as Radio Radiance (his first regular broadcast was 22 July 1925), Handley’s Manoeuvres, Tommy’s Tours and Hot Pot. In 1930 he formed the double act North and South with Ronald Frankau; they would later become Murgatroyd and Winterbottom, specialising in pun-laden topical commentaries on current events. In 1936 he appeared on Radio Luxembourg in Tommy Handley’s Watt Nots.

By the late 30s the BBC’s head of variety was looking for another “fixed points” comedy series to follow the hugely successful Band Waggon, and for Tommy Handley to be the star. The team of Handley, Kavanagh and producer Francis Worsley came together - meeting over at the Langham Hotel in Portland Place - to create It’s That Man Again.

Still popular in its post-war incarnation ITMA featured in the 1947 edition of The World Radio and Television Annual reproduced below:

But ITMA wasn’t universally admired. Within the BBC there was much discussion about whether the jokes crossed the line and caused offence. One listener wrote to the Radio Times and opined: “I am constantly amazed by the number of otherwise intelligent people who rave about this programme. I have tried to discover some sort of level of culture or intelligence from which ITMA fans are drawn – but in vain.” But the programme got the Royal seal of approval when one edition was recorded before a delighted Royal Family in 1942.

The behind the scenes discussions and memos are revealed in this programme from 1979, The ITMA File, based on documents in the BBC Written Archives. Narrated by Gordon Snell, the readings are by Douglas Blackwell, Martin Friend, Garard Green, Roger Hammond, Godfrey Kenton, Peggy Paige and Eva Stuart. Unfortunately my tape of this documentary suffered from numerous audio dropouts. I have rectified most of these but about five minutes of the middle of the programme, from 17:55, are missing. The ITMA File was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 24 December 1979.

ITMA came to an abrupt end in January 1949 with the death of Tommy Handley. It’s not overstating the case to say that the nation mourned. As for Ted Kavanagh he’d formed the literary agency Kavanagh Associates that included amongst its signings Denis Norden and Frank Muir. I wonder what happened to them?

At Tommy Handley’s memorial service at St Paul’s the then Bishop of London spoke for those thousands that turned out to pay their respects: “He was one whose genius transmuted the copper of our common experience into the gold of exquisite foolery. His raillery was without cynicism, and his satire without malice. From the highest to the lowest in the land people had found in his programmes an escape from their troubles and anxieties into a world of whimsical nonsense.”

Tommy Handley 1892-1949

“Don’t forget the diver…”

Sources:

The ITMA Years, The Woburn Press 1974
The World Radio and Television Annual, edited by Gale Pedrick, Sampson Low, Marston & Co Ltd 1947
Radio Comedy 1938-1968 by Andy Foster & Steve Furst, Virgin Publishing 1996

Sunday, 20 April 2014

The Art of Hitch-Hiking

Series two of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has just started a repeat run on BBC Radio 4 Extra. When it was first broadcast in January 1980 it bagged itself a Radio Times cover, testament to the overwhelming success of the first series. (Was this the last time a radio comedy made the cover? Readers with better memories than mine please respond).

The programme billings were something special too as they included artwork from renowned graphic designer and illustrator George Hardie – think Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd album covers. They don’t all tie into the events in that particular programme – the five episodes aired every week night - as, notoriously, Douglas Adams was still sweating over his scripts until the last minute and the final episodes were still being edited as the week began.

Here are Hardie’s illustrations: