Showing posts with label Capital. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Capital. Show all posts

Tuesday, 19 December 2017

Christmas Countdown - 19 December - Matt, Polly & Geraint


To South Wales for the Capital Breakfast show from a trio rather than the usual duo of Matt Lissack, Polly James and Geraint Hardy. Goodness me, all this talk of Christmas parties, Snapchat and members of the  Kardashian clan makes me feel old. This is how it all sounded a year ago today. 

Saturday, 22 October 2016

Radio Lives - Dave Cash

Yesterday's news of the sudden death of Dave Cash silences a voice that has been an integral part of British radio for the last half century. His passing further reduces the number of DJs that have worked across the board: offshore radio, national radio, Luxembourg, local radio, both commercial and BBC, as well as ITV and BBC television.

The Cashman was born in Hertfordshire in 1942 but his family moved to Vancouver, Canada - hence that mid-Atlantic twang that was long evident in Dave's voice -  when he was a young lad. He got his break into broadcasting at station CFUN in Vancouver where he'd started making the coffee but eventually ended up hosting the overnight show from midnight until 6 am. It was whilst working as a holiday relief at CJAV in Port Alberni in 1964 that a mate of his mentioned that he should "get to England now" and join one of the new pirate radio stations that had just started up.   

Dave landed a job at the recently launched Radio London. There he broadcast under the name of Dave Cash, rather than his given name of Dave Wish, in honour of his one of his favourite singers Johnny Cash. He soon forged an on air partnership with fellow DJ Kenny Everett - the Kenny and Cash Shows became required listening.   

Dave jumped ship long before the Marine Offences etc. Act came into force, though it was quite by chance; an operation to remove kidney stones in early 1967 meant that he couldn't immediately return to the MV Galaxy, so his agent Chris Peers managed to get him some relief work at Radio Luxembourg and on the BBC Light Programme as one of the presenters of Swingalong. This led to further work introducing the Ray McVay Sound and guests on Monday, Monday and meant he was in prime position to join the new swinging Radio 1 when it launched in September.

As part of the launch team at Radio 1 - Dave's pictured in the famous All Soul's photo between David Rider and Pete Brady - he continued to host Monday, Monday as well as taking turns on What's New and then Midday Spin before gaining a regular weekday afternoon slot in July 1968 presenting "a swinging selection of studio sounds and the best of the rest on records", i.e. in BBC-speak for a show with minimal needletime. Dave's ever-so sixties catchphrase of "Groovy Baby" led to the unlikely hit (though it only reached number 29 in the hit parade) of the same title under the name of Microbe - the young voice provided by the 3-year old Ian Doody, son of Radio 1 and 2 newsreader Pat Doody.

In September 1969 Dave's show was shifted to a teatime slot to make way for the incoming Terry Wogan and then from April 1970 he was back to occasional duties on What's New and Radio 1 Club as well as Sunday afternoon chat show with musical guests Cash at Four. Dave left the Beeb in 1971 but continued to appear on both radio, working with his old ex-pirate chums Tommy Vance and Kenny Everett at Radio Monte Carlo International, and on ITV in the HTV produced The Dave Cash Radio Programme.

Early 1973 saw Dave briefly back at the BBC presenting Radio 2's Up Country. Later that year he was hired by Michael Bukht as part of the launch team at Capital Radio. At the station he was able to rekindle his pirate radio days on The Kenny and Cash Show at breakfast before moving onto lunchtime with the hugely popular Cash on Delivery.  

During the 1980s and 90s Dave worked on numerous commercial stations. He helped launch Radio West as Programme Director in 1980-82, was Deputy MD and presenter of the weekend breakfast show (1987-89) at Invicta Radio in Kent, again working for Michael Bukht. It was back to Capital on their Gold service 1989-1994 and brief stints at RTL Country 1035, Liberty Radio and Manchester's Fortune 1458 and its later incarnation Lite Radio. He also presented a weekly country music show on Primetime Radio. Dave's experiences in radio fed into his early 1990s novels The Rating Game and All NIght Long.

Dave returned to the BBC in 1999 working for Radio Kent on shows that were eventually heard on a number of stations in the south-east. Most recently he continued to pursue his love for country music on Dave Cash Country and the retro chart show The Dave Cash Countdown. What were to be his final shows only aired last weekend.

In 2014 Dave celebrated 50 years on the radio in this BBC Radio Kent special linked by Adam Dowling. This was broadcast on Monday 25 August 2014 and gets a repeat on a number of BBC local stations in the south-east this evening. 



Dave Cash 1942-2016 'Groovy Baby'   

Thursday, 4 September 2014

Dickie the DJ

Amongst all the plaudits for the cinematic highlights in the career of the late Richard Attenborough there was mention of some other interests: his lifelong support of Chelsea FC, his chairmanships at Channel 4 and the BFI.

There were also fleeting references to his involvement in Capital Radio. In fact his chairmanship of the station, when it launched in 1973, was key to getting it, and keeping it, on air; to the extent that he was prepared to sell his own paintings to help bankroll Capital when it struggled to hit its revenue targets in the opening months. Here’s Attenborough in conversation with Paul Burnett in 1993:
 


Famously he was the first voice heard on Capital when it launched in October 1973 (audio courtesy of Paul Easton):
 


Of the obituaries for Lord Attenborough that I’ve read only The Times mentions the rather surprising revelation that, for a while in the 1950s, he was “an immensely popular disc jockey”. He’d already made a small number of radio appearances as an actor. One of the earliest I can trace is the Light Programme drama The Silver Lining alongside his wife Sheila Sim (broadcast 16 September 1948).  In 1950 he appeared in Our Mutual Friend and Fairplay for Fatherhood. 

 
But that same year Richard was in front of the microphone with a Saturday night Record Rendezvous. Not that he was playing that many discs, the show ran, in not untypical BBC fashion at the time, for precisely 26 minutes from 11.30 to 11.56 p.m. It seems listeners and BBC bosses obviously liked him as later in 1950 he had a slightly longer programme from 6.20 to 7.00 p.m. each Friday over on the Home Service. Billed in the Radio Times as “playing some records from his collection”, though no doubt, in fact, carefully selected and scripted by Anna Instone’s Gramophone Department.   
 
We can only wonder what these shows sounded like but it seems that, as The Times said, he was “immensely popular” enough to feature some six years later as one of the faces in “A Cavalcade of Disc-Jockeys”, sandwiched in between Jonah Barrington and Sam Costa in the Radio Times illustration by Bob Sherriffs.  The accompanying article describes him as having “the happy knack of making difficult classic music sound easy”.


As an aside that same illustration includes actor Dirk Bogarde who was also doing the odd bit of record presenting. Posters to the DS radio forum constantly sniping that radio bosses, and in particular Radio 2, only seem to appoint TV stars as DJs might like to take note!

Anyway that week (in December 1956) Richard was one of the contributors to the Light Programme’s Record Week, a series of shows celebrating the popularity of gramophone record, with an appearance on Stay up with Sam in which Sam Costa and Jean Metcalfe “meet some of the personalities who, over the years, have brought you record entertainment.” 

At far as I can tell his stint as DJ lasted just a year. But who knows, if the acting career had taken a nose-dive, perhaps we’d have had Richard Attenborough as the housewife’s favourite or picking the pops.

Photo of Richard Attenborough from the Picture Show Annual 1951 published by The Amalgamated Press

Sunday, 29 December 2013

Radio Lives – Paddy O’Byrne


Paddy O’Byrne was a “giant of South African radio”, one of the best-known and much-loved broadcasters in the country over four decades.  Not bad for a lad from Dublin who only went to South Africa when he was posted there by his insurance company employer.

When I first wrote about Paddy for my post on Radio 2 newsreaders I only knew a little about his time in South Africa. Earlier this month I was contacted by Jean Collen who told me that Paddy had just passed away and this news set me off to uncover more about the man once described as “the best known Irishman in South Africa”.
Paddy was born in Killiney in County Dublin in 1929 and educated at St Mary’s College, Castleknock College, where he won prizes in English and was active in the performing arts, and University College Dublin.  He, somewhat reluctantly, followed his father – Supreme Court Judge John O’Byrne - into law, being called to the bar in 1952. But his main love was the world of entertainment and he gave up law after a couple of years and left for London, joining the George Mitchell Singers (he was considered to have a “first rate bass” voice).  

On tour in Llandudno he met his wife-to-be, Dublin-born singer and dancer Victoria Fitzpatrick, his beloved “Old Vic”. They married in 1956 and Paddy obtained a steady job working for an insurance company. Within a couple of years they had posted him to South Africa. But like the law, insurance wasn’t really for him either and in 1961 he took part in the Voice of South Africa competition organised by the South Africa Broadcasting Corporation, which he won. Part of the first prize was to read a serial on the English service of the SABC. Thus his course was set for a career in broadcasting.
Paddy’s work for SABC was extremely varied on both the English language public service and the commercial Springbok Radio as an announcer, newsreader, presenter and quiz-master. For a while he played Mark Saxon in the adventure serial No Place to Hide. Other shows for which he was remembered are Sunday at Home, Twenty One, Quiz Kids and Deadline Thursday Night.
Springbok Radio Revisited posted this short tribute to Paddy:


In the early 1970s Paddy returned to the UK (for reasons I’m unable to establish) and in 1974 was employed by Capital Radio as one of the presenters of Night Flight and as the voice of Capital Jobspot. Those overnight shows proved far from satisfying as a lack of needletime meant the playlist consisted wholly of library music. By 1976 he was now at BBC Radio 2 as an announcer and newsreader. This role also gave him presenting opportunities on shows such as Music from the Movies, the Northern Radio Orchestra shows, Marching and Waltzing, You and the Night and the Music and, between March 1979 and January 1980, Saturday’s Early Show.
From my own collection of recordings here’s Paddy on Capital and Radio 2:


In 1980 Paddy was back in South Africa for a second time, initially helping to launch Channel 702 (now known as Talk Radio 702) and then returning to SABC with his daily Top of the Morning with Paddy O’Byrne. It was known that during the latter years of his imprisonment Nelson Mandela was a regular listener to Paddy’s shows. The O’Byrne’s got to meet him at a Gala Banquet and subsequently Mandela’s daughter Zindzi became a family friend. There was a sad irony that Paddy and Nelson Mandela both died within a day of each other.    

In 1995 Paddy mentored a young broadcaster, Vuyo Mbuli, and for a while they co-hosted an afternoon show on the renamed English service, SAfm. Mbuli (pictured left with Paddy) went on to become a household name in South Africa but tragically collapsed and died shortly after his 46th birthday in May of this year.

By 1996 Paddy had retired from SABC but continued to broadcast on the community station 1485 Radio Today, at the request of station chairman and former Springbok Radio presenter Peter Lotis, as well as Radio Veritas in Johannesburg and Fine Music Radio in Cape Town.
The O’Byrne family returned to Ireland, to Mullingar in County Westmeath, in 2001. For a while Paddy was still doing the occasional show on the classical station Lyric FM and some recorded shows for Fine Music Radio back in South Africa.  In 2010 he was inducted into the MTN Radio Awards Hall of Fame with the citation on the website reading: “Another giant of South African Radio, and an accomplished newsreader and presenter.  After a long stint at the SABC, he was also one of the founding voices of 702 before settling in Ireland”.

In January of this year Paddy’s wife died and he made a brief return to South Africa for a memorial service in honour of the “Old Vic”. During the visit he made a couple of guest appearances on the radio, on 1485 Radio Today and on Classic FM’s People of Note, reminiscing with Richard Cock. Here’s an edited version of that conversation.


Not long after his wife’s death Paddy was diagnosed with lung cancer. Though the treatment was successful he died of heart failure on 4 December. His death was widely reported in the media in both South Africa and Ireland. His friend and former writer and co-star on No Place to Hide, Adrian Steed remembered him as “a wonderful man in very many ways. The measure of the man was his humanity, his generosity, and his warmth to the many friends he made via radio”.

Paddy O’Byrne 1929-2013 

Thanks to Jean Collen. The 702 Launch Audio comes from Primedia Broadcasting and People of Note from Capital FM 102.7

Monday, 23 December 2013

Radio Lives – David Jacobs


In my late teens you may have found me browsing the record racks of Sydney Scarborough in Hull not just for the latest pop offerings, but flicking through the Frank Sinatra back catalogue. The reason for my loitering in the Easy Listening section? It was down to the musical education I received every Saturday morning from David Jacobs and my introduction to the world of the American songbook and the voices of Ella Fitzgerald, Vic Damone, Keely Smith, Tony Bennett and co.

Yes, I did follow the latest trends in pop music, and develop a love for jazz and big band – with thanks to Alan Dell, Benny Green and Humphrey Lyttelton - but over the years it was the tunes that David called “our kind of music” that stayed with me. So it was a very sad moment in August when he presented his last show, illness now robbing his voice of the tone and fluency that had set him apart from many other broadcasters.  

Reading the obituaries for David you might think that his career was bookended by Juke Box Jury and The David Jacobs Collection. In researching this post I’ve been amazed by the sheer volume and variety of shows that David has been involved with, both radio and TV. As far as I can tell from 1948 to 2013 there wasn’t a single year he wasn’t on the radio and from the late 1950s and through sixties he remained a constant on the nation’s TV screens. Sadly, of course, little remains of his radio and TV work from the early years as most shows were live – only two editions of Juke Box Jury survive for instance. I can’t, of course, include every programme that David worked on – guest appearances on Hello Cheeky or the infamous Fred Emney Picks a Pop and so on - but I trust that this post includes all the significant ones in what was a remarkable career.

David was born in Streatham Hill, South London on 19 May 1926. He had a good ear for voices and at an early age would entertain his family with impressions of film stars, radio performers and local characters such as the milkman. The performing bug led to local talent shows and amateur dramatics. Early jobs included working at a pawnbrokers, a gents outfitters, a warehouse and a tobacco company. He joined the Home Guard as an officer cadet before plumping for the Navy in the summer of 1944.

His Navy service was all shore-based with training at HMS Royal Arthur in Skegness (at Butlins holiday camp), moving to HMS Ganges in Ipswich and then HMS Valkyrie (a row of boarding houses) on the Isle of Man.

A chance meeting with a young girl called Kay Emerson, who turned out to be a junior programme engineer on the BBC show Navy Mixture, led to David’s first radio appearance. The producer Charles Maxwell was not exactly overwhelmed by his range of impressions but nonetheless asked him to work it up into an act which, in the event, turned out to be imitations of Howard Marshall, Stuart Hibberd, Vic Oliver, Jack Benny and Rochester, Winston Churchill and –“in a crescendo of frenzied quacking” – Donald Duck. Sadly no recording of the show survives.

Coming off stage he was introduced to naval lieutenant-commander Kim Peacock (later to play Paul Temple) who told him that a career as an impersonator might be limited but had he thought of becoming an announcer in the services broadcasting unit. Within a couple of weeks he found himself at ORBS, the Overseas Recorded Broadcasting Service, in Drury Lane. There he met Jon Pertwee – they would become life-long pals – George Melachrino, George Mitchell, Sidney Torch and Eric Robinson, names that would become familiar in post-war broadcasting. David’s first announcing duties were for Services Music Hall.  

In May 1946 David was posted to a new station being set up in Ceylon, Radio SEAC (South Eastern Asia Command). It had immense coverage and could be heard in India, East Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Indo-China, Japan and even the west coast of the States.

David was the station’s senior announcer but had no experience of live broadcasting. His instruction came from Captain McDonald Hobley - later one of the BBC’s team of in-vision announcers – and he was finally let loose with his first live announcement: “This is Radio-Seac, Ceylon, broadcasting on 6.075 megacycles per second in the 49 metre band.”

Also at Radio-SEAC were Desmond Carrington, who like David would have, and continues to have, a long radio career, future BBC radio producer Charles Chilton and Alexander Moyes, who would join the BBC’s Overseas Service announcing team. David continued to have links with Radio Ceylon, as SEAC became after hostilities ended, until the mid-50s, providing batches of scripts for a weekly record feature.

Posted home in January 1947 - a somewhat enforced return following an unfortunate dalliance with a married woman - David had been due to return to the Army Broadcasting Service when he was invited to join the BBC’s Overseas Service who were short of announcers. Working alongside Jack de Manio, Jean Metcalfe and Mary Malcolm the strait-laced corporation didn’t seem to be the place for someone who, by his own admission, was an uncontrollable giggler. In his autobiography David recalls how his job was cut short following a Home News bulletin:

At that moment one of the sub-editors came over with what was evidently an urgent piece of lately-arrived news. He slipped it into my hand and I glanced down at it. It was simply a photograph of a remarkably unclad young woman. And it was so unexpected and incongruous that I began to laugh. And having once begun to laugh, I couldn’t stop. I managed to take a deep breath and stay straight-faced long enough to get out ‘That is the end of the news’. It had finished five minutes too soon.

After just nine months on the staff David went freelance, and his career flourished. Poetry producer John Arlott asked him to narrate Book of Verse, sharing the duties with John Whitty. Book of Verse was a weekly programme that went out on the Eastern Service, and later also on the Light Programme. Meanwhile he was also busy on English by Radio and Radio Newsreel.

By the late 40s/early 50s David had established himself as both an actor and a disc jockey. For the independent producer Harry Alan Towers there was the marathon 150 episode serial The Scarlet Pimpernel, playing Lord Tony Dewhurst to Marius Goring’s Sir Percy Blakeney. This series was syndicated in North America and on Radio Luxembourg. For the BBC, written and produced by his old Radio SEAC colleague Charles Chilton, was Journey into Space (1953-58). Famously Jacobs played all the roles not taken by the four principal characters: a total of twenty-five. He recalled that on at least one occasion “I found myself having a conversation with myself.”


As ‘DJ the DJ’ he joined the roster of presenters on Housewives’ Choice, getting his first booking for the fortnight beginning 25 January 1949. He left nothing to chance and after a week wrote himself lots of letters from various imaginary people telling him how good he was. He needn’t have bothered: “the BBC, scrupulously refraining from poking its nose into other people’s business, politely forwarded all the letters to me – unopened”. Nonetheless he continued to present the show at intervals until 1966.  

Meanwhile David was also doing commercial voiceovers and recording shows in London for transmission on Radio Luxembourg, most running at just 30 minutes each. Some of his 1950s shows were sponsored by Bournvita and during the 60s he fronted some EMI-sponsored shows produced by Ken Evans, who would later produce his Radio 2 shows in the 1980s. (Ken died just last month). Shows on 208 included Roxy Time, Woodbine Quiz Time, Lucky Couple (an early version of Mr and Mrs), Record Roulette, Pops Past Midnight, David Jacobs’ Startime, David Jacobs Plays the Pops and, not unnaturally, The David Jacobs Show. He worked on and off for Radio Luxembourg until 1968, when such recorded shows were faded out.   


The Amazing Adventures of Commander Highprice (1947 BBC TV)
A programme starring Jon Pertwee and David’s first TV appearance.
Little Women (1950-51 BBC TV)
Playing the part of Laurie
Jazz Club (1940s Light Programme)
Both the BBC’s biography of David and Gillian Reynolds writing in the Daily Telegraph list Jazz Club. I can’t be certain when he presented the programme as it tended to have a different compere each week. 
Puffney Post Office (1950 Light Programme)
Comedy series with Jon Pertwee and Eric Barker
She Shall Have Music (1954 Home Service)
Providing the announcements for this show featuring Gracie Cole and her All Girl Orchestra
Purely for Pleasure (1954 Home Service)
On the Brighter Side (1950s Home Service)
David’s first show with producer Derek Chinnery
Grande Gingold (1955 Home Service)
A series starring Hermione Gingold
Paradise Street (1954 Light Programme)
Comedy with Max Bygraves, Peter Sellers and Hattie Jacques
Saturday Show (1954-55 Home Service)
Featuring Cyril Stapleton and the BBC Show Band, Alfred Marks and Rikki Fulton. Produced by Johnnie Stewart, later of Top of the Pops.
The Man About Town (1955 Home Service)
Star vehicle for Jack Buchanan with Vanessa Lee, Pat Coombs and Hubert Gregg
Curiouser and Curiouser (1956 Home Service)
Reading humorous verse along with Peter Sellers
My Patricia (1956 Home Service)
Radio show with Pat Kirkwood and Hubert Gregg. When Hubert died in 2004 it was David that presented the tribute version of Thanks for the Memory.
Movietone News (1955-56)
David had previously voiced newsreels for the BBC and had stood in for Leslie Mitchell at Movietone. When Leslie joined ITV full-time in 1955 he suggested David for the job.
Dateline London (1950s BBC)
Programmes for the North American Service of the BBC in which David interviewed big name US stars visiting the UK.
Top Town Tournament (1959-60 BBC TV)
A Barney Colehan produced show in which towns round the UK competed in a talent contest to find the best variety acts, a kind of early It’s a Knockout and Britain’s Got Talent hybrid. The series ran from 1954 to 1960 but David Jacobs is only credited in later series.

Here's David with a Movietone News report in December 1955. You can listen (and see) more on the British Movietone website.


An honorary mention must go to the one-off (and deservedly so) 1955 BBC show Music, Music, Music in which the panel had to identify tunes tapped out with a pencil, played backwards, speeded up or other disguised. At Jacobs recalls, “it might have kept a couple of schoolboys amused for part of a wet afternoon but it had no general appeal at all.”

Focus on Hocus (1955 ITV)
David presented this short-lived series featuring the magic tricks of David Berglas
The Vera Lynn Show (1956 ITV)
Make Up Your Mind! (1956-8 Granada TV)
“Competitors with an eye for value have a chance to show their skill by saying which is worth more-an object or a certain sum of money. There are prizes for viewers as well as for studio challengers”
Tell the Truth (1957-58 ATV)
With regular panel John Skeaping, Jacqueline Curtis, Roberta Leigh and Bill Owen.

Although we think of David as mainly a BBC man he became one of the early star names on the fledgling commercial television channels in the late 1950s. He got this break thanks to an offer to compere Focus on Hocus from producer Tig Roe who’d worked with David on the Scarlet Pimpernel radio series. 

David was chairman of Make Up Your Mind!, a kind of early The Price is Right with valuations provided by Arthur Maddocks. Tell the Truth was the more successful show, coming as it did from the Goodson-Todman stable, and enjoyed a UK revival in the 1980s. When David left the show the next host was McDonald Hobley (1958), his old Radio SEAC colleague, and then Shaw Taylor (1959-61)   

Juke Box Jury (1959-1967 BBC TV)
The Wednesday Magazine (1959-62 BBC TV)
A daytime show aimed at the housewife – it had previously been billed as Mainly for Women and though having a female production team was fronted by John Whitty.
Top of the Pops (1964-66 BBC1)
David was one of the quartet of hosts of when the show started in January 1964 with Pete Murray, Alan Freeman and Jimmy Savile.


It was Juke Box Jury that made David Jacobs a household name and the show became a Saturday teatime fixture throughout the 1960s. When the show was first muted the idea was that David would be on the panel but he pointed out that he had considerably more experience as a chairman so he ended up in the hot seat. In fact three of four years earlier he’d already suggested to the BBC a similar show under the title Hit or Miss but they demurred. But Hit or Miss stuck in one way or another as it’s the title of John Barry’s theme for the programme.  
 
David puts the early success of Juke Box Jury not down to the opportunity for the TV audience to hear the latest pop records or hear the opinions of the panel but to his mock feud with panellist Pete Murray. This had started on the radio when David was on Saturday night’s Pick of the Pops and plugged Pete’s Sunday night show, Pete’s Party.

The introductory music faded down: I began to introduce the panel; and when I came to Pete Murray I said ‘And now it is my pleasure-or, at least, my duty- to introduce Pete Murray.’ Pete, keeping his face perfectly straight, looked at the camera and said: ’Oh, I’ve nothing against David Jacobs. I think the world needs men like him: in fact, there’s a very good job going for him in the gentlemen’s lavatory in Leicester Square Underground Station.’ I raised my eyebrows and replied: ‘Thanks – mention my name and you’ll get a good seat.’
To my consternation and embarrassment, hundreds of letters began to come in, protesting at Pete’s ‘ill-mannered and completely unprovoked attack’ on me. Thanks to all this undeserved criticism of poor Pete Juke Box Jury was kept on long enough to settle down and become one of television’s most unexpected and apparently unshakeable successes.  
Earlier this year David spoke to Shaun Tilley for Top of the Pops Playback about his time presenting the Pops between 1964 and 1966.


Roundabout (1958-59 Light Programme)
David was the Tuesday host of this new daily show, in what we would now call a drivetime slot. Looking after the other days of the week were Peter King, Alan Dell, Ken Sykora and Richard Murdoch. The programme ran until 1970 though David only appeared for the first couple of years or so.
Pick of the Pops (1956-61 Light Programme)
David succeeded Franklin Engelmann and Alan Dell to become the third host of POTP. Nearly 40 years later he’d take over from Alan Dell again on Sounds Easy.
The DJ Show (1961 Light Programme)
A Monday night show in which he “spins The Top of the Pops”
Late Night Saturday (1963 Light Programme)
Twelve O’Clock Spin (1964 Light Programme)
The DJ Show (1964 Light Programme)
On Sunday afternoons with “news and views of current records”
Follow That Man (1964 Light Programme)
Jacobs plays Rex Anthony, a BBC producer “caught up in a curious and violent train of events”. Each week a different set of writers take up the story. Those producing the scripts were Edward J.Mason, Eddie Maguire, John P. Wynn, Lawrie Wyman, Philip Levine, Ted Willis, Bob Monkhouse & Denis Goodwin, Gale Pedrick and Frank Muir & Denis Norden.
Midday Spin (1965 Light Programme)
Music Through Midnight (1966/67 Light Programme)
Eurovision Song Contest (1960, 1962-66 BBC TV)
David provided the television commentary. His involvement in Eurovision actually goes back to 1957 when he hosted Festival of Popular British Songs, a series of heats to decide that year’s UK entry (All sung by Patricia Bredin). 
Hot Ice (1963 BBC TV)
This series had started in 1961 with Alan Weeks introducing. The competition catered for “ice-skating enthusiasts and for lovers of pop records.” Seven days before each show the competing teams were supplied with records, chosen by a listening panel, to which they had to rehearse a routine.
The Cool Spot (1964 BBC1)
Similar to Hot Ice it was filmed at the Ice Stadium in Nottingham and as well as the skating there was music from the likes of The Yardbirds (in the first programme on 7 July), Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen, Shane Fenton and the Fentones and Lulu and the Luvers.
Hot Line (1965 BBC1)
A live Saturday night show in which “viewers have the opportunity to discuss any subject they like with any member of the panel via the Hot Line telephone”.

As a lad David whiled away many an hour at the Streatham Ice Rink. His brother Dudley became a professional skater and his best chum Freddie Tomlins went on to win World and European silver medals in figure skating. Perhaps then, it’s not surprising that David was chosen to host Hot Ice and The Cool Spot, though there’s no evidence that he went on the ice for these shows. However, he did for a December 1955 edition of Television Ice-Time (from a time when television seemed obsessed with shows on ice).  He’d suggested that he should jump a row of barrels during the programme. The BBC insured him for £10,000 which helped to boost publicity for the stunt. “The inevitable happened,” he recalled, “at rehearsals I soared over the barrels like a bird; on the broadcast I clipped the last one and went scudding across the ice like a tipsy penguin. Fortunately the result was only breathlessness and bruises.”   
 
Was Hot Line Britain’s first phone-in? I’m not sure but such broadcasts were rare at the time. Only running for three weeks in May 1965 the Radio Times proclaimed that “David Jacobs presides over a team of personalities who will answer questions on the telephone put to them by members of the public”.  The first programme gave viewers a chance to quiz Peter Ustinov, Randolph Churchill, Italian painter Pietro Annigoni and fashion house director Ginette Spannier. However, this was the mid-60s so the public couldn’t just phone in on the night as “the jamming of the Shepherd’s Bush telephone exchange could interfere with essential services.” Instead they had to write into Television Centre giving their details and the question they wanted to pose. Hot Line wasn’t exactly live; BBC engineers had to introduce a tape delay in case of any choice language from a caller.

David Jacobs' Words and Music (1966 Rediffusion TV)
Series looking at trends in music. Guests included Georgia Brown, Dennis Lotis and Millicent Martin.
The David Jacobs Show (1968 Tyne-Tees)
A Wednesday night show in which David meets ”show business personalities, politicians, and members of the public who have a point of view to put.” Broadcast in some ITV regions April-July 1968.
The Wednesday Show (1968 BBC1)
A live early evening show with guests and music. Each week there was a song from folk singer Deena Webster. Broadcast from July to December.
It’s Sunday Night (1969 LWT)
A late-night chat show for which the executive producer was LWT’s Head of Variety Tito Burns. Tito had been a warrant officer in the RAF and had guested on one of David’s SEAC shows as an accordionist. The programme ran in most ITV regions from June to September 1969.
The David Jacobs Show (1967-68 Radio 1 & Radio 2)
Surprisingly David was a Sunday night fixture on the new pop station when it launched in 1967 although the accent was more on the “tuneful end”, playing LPs and featuring music, in the first show from the BBC Radio Orchestra and the Mike Sammes Singers. He also talked to ‘People of Choice’, the first being Julie Andrews.
Any Questions? and Any Answers? (1967-1984 Radio 2 then Radio 4)  

For someone so closely associated with popular music Jacobs was, perhaps, not the natural choice for the role of chairman on Any Questions? Since the programme’s inception in 1948 Freddie Grisewood had been in charge of proceedings but by the winter of 1967 he was unwell and his doctor had ordered rest for a week or two, in the event he didn’t return to the show apart from a one-off to celebrate his 80th birthday. Five different chairmen were given a try-out, one of whom was David Jacobs. Producer Michael Bowen, writing in 1981, recalled the circumstances that led to his appointment:

The first thought that David might be the next chairman of Any Questions? came from Bobbie my wife. She heard him doing Desert Island Discs in which he revealed his love of horses, and to Bobbie that is always a prime, indeed an essential, attribute to anyone seeking high office. She was very impressed by the whole broadcast and told me about it. I put the idea forward that we should invite David to be one of the chairmen during the interregnum and Robin Scott, for one, was enthusiastic.  
That Desert Island Discs appearance had, in fact, been some three years earlier, but it makes a delightful story. David became the permanent chairman from April 1968 and remained with the programme until July 1984. He was masterful at dealing with some occasionally rowdy audiences, notably the 1976 Enoch Powell incident and this interjection in 1980.       


After Seven (1971-73 Radio 2)
David hosted the Tuesday evening edition of this hour-long show. Other nights were, at least initially, covered by Michael Parkinson, Alan Freeman, Ray Moore and Michael Aspel. After Seven ran from 4 October 1971 to June 1973.
Christmas Morning later David Jacobs’ Christmas Crackers (1972-77 Radio 4)
Every Christmas Day morning for six years David provided the links for a miscellany of seasonal comedy clips and music. Writers included Barry Pilton, Pete Spence and David Rider. There were also other holiday shows in a similar vein such as Spring Into Summer (May Bank Holidays 1976-78), Fall Into Summer, The August Jacobs and so on. The Summer Show on August Bank Holiday in 1977 featured sketches written by Alastair Beaton performed by Bernard Cribbins, Sheila Steafel and Royce Mills. From Christmas 1978 the shows were replaced by Christmas Briers with Richard Briers.   
Melodies for You (1974-84 Radio 2)
David was the third presenter of this long-running show playing light classical music.
David Jacobs with Star Sounds (1978-90 Radio 2)
Starting on 11 December 1978 this was a two-hour Saturday morning show featuring the kind of music that would later make The David Jacobs Collection. The Star Sounds title was eventually dropped and the show cut down to an hour when Sounds of the Sixties was introduced.
David Jacobs (1985-91 Radio 2)
Weekday show from 1 to 2 p.m. running from 7 January 1985 to 20 December 1991.

Here’s the man himself coming in for some light-hearted criticism on Radio 4’s Feedback in 1983.


Those Radio 2 weekend shows of the late 70s/early 80s (Star Sounds and Melodies for You) were recalled by former Radio 2 presenter and newsreader Charles Nove, writing shortly after David’s retirement:

When I joined Radio 2, David was presenting two shows every weekend. On a Saturday morning, he’d be offering a mix of Sinatra, Torme, Sammy Davis et al, while the Sunday show would be the classical repertoire. As David put it, in a turn of phrase that may in part be lost on today’s CD and MP3 generation, “I’ll turn myself over and play you music from my other side.” Or, as the late, great Ray Moore would have it: “On Saturday David will play you songs from his front side, and then on Sunday he’ll turn over and show you his……..”. David took this weekly ribbing in good part.

The lunchtime shows that ran between 1985 and 1991 were, in fact, the first time in his career that David had presented a regular daily programme (indeed for five years he was on six days a week!). They came at a time when the network music policy was more melodic and less pop-orientated, ideal for David but sounding a little out of place elsewhere in the schedule.  

In 1972 David was part of the Capital Radio bid for an ILR licence. Programme proposals show that he was penciled in for a Sunday lunchtime show: “The period between ten and two o’clock will be in the hands of David Jacobs and apart from providing an appreciable music content will take advantage of Mr Jacobs’ talent and experience as a programme moderator. One o’clock Sunday lunchtime is traditionally the time for the family to be together and David Jacobs will direct the show towards them in a spirit which includes those listeners who are unable to enjoy the company of their own families.”

David didn’t make it on air at Capital. Instead Sunday lunchtimes would eventually feature that other old smoothie Gerald Harper with his Sunday Affair.

What’s My Line (1973/4 BBC2)
The first revival of the early television hit with David in the chair
Where Are They Now? (1979 BBC1)
A four-part series in August 1979 in which David meets “people who made headlines in the past.” Guests were Ruby Murray, Captain Carlsen, Buster Crabbe, Wing Cmdr Robert Stanford Tuck, Billy Hayes, Humphrey Lestocq, Ethel Whittaker, Reita Faria, Sir Alec Rose and Gerald Campion.
Come Dancing (1984-86 BBC1)
In fact it was a return visit to the show as David had been one of the presenters in the late 50s.
Primetime (1989-92 BBC1)
A daytime magazine show aimed at the “more mature viewer”.

The idea for Primetime arose from a letter that Sue Lawley read out on See for Yourself that argued that while youth had Janet Street-Porter to look after their TV interests, older viewers received scant attention and suggested that David Jacobs present such a programme.

Both David and his Radio 2 producer Anthony Cherry saw this programme and set about creating Primetime, broadcast on Wednesday afternoons on BBC1. On-screen alongside David were  co-producer Miriam O’Callaghan and assistant producer Sheila McClennon. The guest on the very first edition was none other than Vera Lynn, neatly linking back to those 1955 shows on ITV.  

This series of clips are taken from some of David’s Radio 2 shows: Star Sounds from 1980, the start of a 1986 daily show live onboard HMS Ark Royal, Sounds Easy, a Robert Farnon concert, Easy Does It from October 1997 and The David Jacobs Collection from September 2007.


David Jacobs (1992 Melody Radio)
Easy Does It (1993-1998 Radio 2)
Taking over this Saturday night show from Bill Rennells on 2 January 1993 the show featured music on record and sessions from the BBC Big Band. Ended 11 April 1998.
Sounds Easy (1994-96 Radio 2)
David sits in for Alan Dell on this Sunday afternoon show when he is unwell and eventually becomes the permanent host when Alan died in 1995.
The David Jacobs Collection (1996-2013 Radio 2)
There were two separate series of The David Jacobs Collection. The first, from 10 to 11 p.m. on Sunday nights from 6 October 1996 to 12 October 1997, and then the return of the much-loved show from 11 p.m. to midnight starting on 12 April 1998.
Frank Sinatra-Voice of the Century (1998 Radio 2)
Narrating a 13-part series
He’s Playing Our Song-The Music of Marvin Hamlisch (2002 Radio 2)
Narrating a six-part series

Following the end of the daily show in December 1991, David made only occasional appearances on BBC radio in 1992. These included a concert with the BBC Concert Orchestra in May (on the occasion of their 40th anniversary), a 75th birthday concert for the arranger and composer Robert Farnon (David went on to present other concerts featuring Farnon’s music and introduced a tribute programme on his death in 2005) and a Boxing Day special.

There was also a return to commercial radio in June and July when David presented weekend shows on London’s Melody Radio. His show producer at Melody, Gary Whitford recalls how he would “start on air at six in the morning and David would usually arrive by seven. During the first hour – while on air- I would pull David’s music and get a cup of tea and some custard creams ready for his arrival. David used the second studio/come production suite to broadcast from and after I read the news at eight I’d fade up the second studio and David would take over.” Gary told me that “David was a lovely man and a true professional. He was old school, an original pioneer.” But he wasn’t one to suffer fools gladly “and some less respectful people found that out quite quickly.”

Meanwhile back the Beeb, it was back to regular shows from January 1993 with Easy Does It and in 1994 sitting in for an ailing Alan Dell on Sounds Easy. But it was the culmination of all those years in the business and meeting all those star names and performers that came together in The David Jacobs Collection: “Hello there. Stay with me from now until midnight so that we can share that which many call Our Kind of Music. All of which comes from within the David Jacobs collection.” Cue I Love You Samantha by the Pete Moore Orchestra.

In The Collection Closes I posted a David Jacobs Collection show from May 2005.

In the last year it became apparent that David was unwell and he missed a number of shows. In July 2013 it was announced that David would step down citing treatment for liver cancer and Parkinson’s disease. His last collection aired on 4 August, by now he was too ill to make it into the studio and his links were recorded at his home by producer Alan Boyd. Less than a month later David passed away.

Tributes to David’s broadcasting longevity, his consummate professionalism, his charm, his sense of humour and his musical knowledge followed both his retirement and his death. After his last broadcast Janice Long’s post-midnight show was filled with tweets and emails from listeners saying how much they’d miss those Sunday night dates with Mr Jacobs. It was noticeable how many broadcasters paid heartfelt tributes when he died. Here are Ken Bruce, Jeremy Vine, Tony Blackburn, Head of Programmes at Radio 2 Lewis Carney, Alex Lester (talking to John Foster on BBC Tees) and a close to tears Desmond Carrington.    


It had been hoped that David would have been well enough to record a Christmas show for Radio 2. As this didn’t come to pass, by way of a substitute, enjoy this Christmas show that was broadcast on Saturday 23 December 1989 (with thanks to Paul Langford for providing this copy). 



David Jacobs 1926-2013


Thanks to Paul Langford, Gary Whitford, Paul Easton and Charles Nove.

Friday, 18 October 2013

Promises Promises

In October 1973 The Observer’s radio critic Paul Ferris wondered what the fledging ILR stations would serve up:

LBC’s original application to the Independent Broadcasting Authority for its franchise talked about a daily breakfast-time programme that would “transmit our own editorial conferences ‘live’ so that listeners can be involved in our news-gathering … with no attempts to conceal our own mistakes”. This has been quietly dropped. Says Mr Cudlipp (Michael Cudlipp, chief editor): “I’ve never been at an editorial conference where journalists do anything other than mutter or swear.”

The programme director of Capital Radio, in which the Observer has an 11½% interest, is a former BBC television producer Micahel Bukht, who says they will be an “adult pop music station in the daytime”.  Between the music will be the usual interviews and news.

Drama will be represented by several soap operas. The Mistresses will be a bit of romance about King Charles II and his girls (Mr Bukht describes it as “thigh-squeezing time”), Bed Sit will be about a London boarding house, and Me and ‘Er will be a topical five-minuter. “If it’s raining outside,” says Mr Bukht, “we can have it raining in the script.”

Wednesday, 16 October 2013

Your Capital Choice

Rewind back to April 1976 for this Capital Radio programme schedule published in the pages of New Musical Express.




It’s Easter time and over the weekend there’s the second Help a London Child charity auction. Helping out with proceedings on Saturday from 9 a.m. are some very familiar names, whether or not you lived in the London area: Roger Scott, Dave Cash, Kenny Everett, Joan Shenton, Tommy Vance (with that moustache looking for all the world like some South American bandit!), Ian Davidson and Adrian Love.

Apparently Kenny initially saw the campaign as “an unwelcome diversion”, according to the recent biography Hello Darlings! “It wasn’t that Kenny was uncharitable, he simply didn’t appreciate how much of an impact radio could have in raising funds and awareness. He assumed it was just tokenism. Once converted, he went on to become one of Help a London Child’s most fervent campaigners, and would spend days preparing special episodes of Captain Kremmen”.   

Looking after Easter Sunday were Graham Dene, Tony Myatt, those two smoothies Michael Aspel and Gerald Harper and rounding off with Ev and Nicky Horne

Friday, 11 October 2013

With an Independent Air

It’s no accident that commercial radio, which is forty years old this week, was referred to as independent local radio. “Commercial” was a dirty word. Excessive profits were frowned on. The White Paper that paved the way for ILR spoke of “public service” and stations being “firmly rooted in their locality”.  

LBC was mainly staffed with ex-newspaper men and women. And well-staffed, indeed over-staffed, too: at the start there were about 150 on the payroll. Its headquarters at Communications House in Gough Square were just off Fleet Street. In the early days it struggled; it was under-capitalised, there were various run-ins with the NUJ and, though it had plenty of newspaper experience, there was little in the way of radio skills, and most of that came from “Antipodean freelancers”.

Capital too had some early issues. The initial music policy with its slant to the more “hippier” stuff was not a success, there were spats with its London neighbour about just how much news coverage it should take and in early 1974 the three-day week hit advertising revenue.

Despite this the stations were a hit with listeners: early audience figures showed LBC had one million and Capital one and a half million. Though the Government’s plans had been to introduce sixty stations they restricted this to just nineteen, at least during the 1970s, with Beacon Radio the last the go on-air on 12 April 1976.

It’s against this background that Ann Leslie wrote this piece, With an Independent Air, for Punch magazine published on 28 April 1976. It offers a somewhat metro-centric view of commercial radio; one suspects she’d not heard anything of the other seventeen stations.  


Elsie of Westminster and I are getting a bit stroppy with each other over the airwaves of LBC’s Nightline phone-in programme, and she’s shouting into my earphones that them coloureds are VICIOUS! VICIOUS” not like us native British what are more placid, not that she’s got anything against black people mind you, there’s good and bad in all of us, granted – but Ann, any spot of bother’ll set the coloureds off fighting an’ that…

And in between shouting back “But Elsie!” I’m coughing and blinking and waving my arms about because I happen to have set the studio on fire.

Behind the glass sits studio engineer Dave, a pleasant, professional lad who nevertheless looks about fifteen and has the somewhat nibbled-looking hair of a typical Bay City Rollers fan. Ciggie stapled to his lip, he gazes on, unmoved, as I flap the air like a fire-dancer with flaming sheets of paper plucked from the melting waster bin.

Had I burnt the Nightline studio down, I’d have cut LBC’s studio-count by half, but oh well, that kind of disaster is just about par for the course for this, the first and most accident-prone of Britain’s nineteen commercial radio stations.

Incidentally, there isn’t an Ann Leslie spot on Nightline. I’d merely wandered down with my notebook that evening into the pokey basement huddled beneath the eighteenth-century elegance of Dr Johnson’s Gough Square and found myself instantly lassooed into ‘guesting’ on the show. Had I been a passing mouse, they’d have doubtless grabbed my tail, shoved a mike in my whiskers and pushed me squeaking onto the air: LBC’s in need of endless free squeaks to fill up the spaces between Alka Seltzer ads. Thanks to phone-freaks like Westminster Elsie, they rarely run short.

Nightline’s host is a nice worthy bearded chap called Nick Page (“yes I’m a practising Christian”) who, every weekday night, dispenses four hours of spiritual Ovaltine in his gentle foody voice to the lonely souls in London’s bedsitter land. (Nightline, he believes, is partly responsible for a decline in suicides in those trackless wastes).

So while I’m beating out the flames, he’s fiddling with his blue cardie and soothing Elsie down with “well, as you say Elsie I think there’s good and bad in everyone and we’ll have to agree to differ on the other pints you’ve made, and now we’ll go down to Putney and say hello to Ray. Roy? Hello Roy? Are you there? Roy? … Well, we’ll come back to Roy in a minute. Over now to Marie in Battersea, hello Marie! Marie? …”

And he and I soldier on into the night with Maggie if Muswell Hill who’s against bingo halls; and Ted of Shoreditch who says Lenin and Jewish bankers are responsible for our “inflammatory money” and the decline-and-fall-of-this-once-great-nation-of-ours; and Charles of St John’s Wood who says there’s too many black faces around and Ann, are you as beautiful as you sound on the phone because if you are, tell Nick to push off as I’m going to put on my pyjamas and come right over…

London has two commercial radio stations – dear, worthy news-and-views LBC and the all-music-all-fun Capital. “Capit-a-al! Capit-a-al” Capit-a-al Radio-o-o!” sings the persistent radio jingle.

Capital has pzazz! Capital has sex-appeal! Capital has MONEY! No apologetic lurking in the basements for them: Capital prances manically about in the glossy splendour of the Euston Tower and Capital has thick carpeting and digital clocks and DJs like Dave Cash-by-name, Cash-by-nature and Capit-a-al! Capit-a-al! is wow! zowie! b-boom!

Easter Saturday morning and Capital is running its marathon radio auction to raise money to “help a London Child” and its huge foyer is full of adenoidal Capital fans gawping at leaping DJs and being frisked by security men and, up in her office, lovely press-lady Sian is being photographed with Cliff Richard’s belt and a Womble blanket and wow! even a Led Zeppelin tee-shirt donated by the luminaries themselves!

And in the studio, Kenny Everett and Roger Scott are howling and shrieking and jamming on records and singing Hello Dolly for a bet and it’s Capit-a-al! Capit-a-al! and thirteen phone lines are blinking and in yet another studio Dave Cash is yelling “Great news! A Mr Crown has just bid £51 for the Garrard record-deck – any more offers on that? – and there’s plenty more wunnerful things coming up for grabs now! A snare-drum from the PINK FLOTD! Twenty tickets to see Emmanuelle! A personal horoscope from Terri King!  And, wait for it, a complete hair-transplant!” Capit-a-al! Capit-a-al! And oops, here come the ads “Try the Big Fresh Flavour of Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum!” and oh, wow! I haven’t the faintest idea what it’s all about, it’s just Capit-a-al! Capit-a-al! Capit-a-al! Radi-o-o!

 
Commercial radio was born at 6 a.m. on the morning of October 8th 1973 with the launch of LBC; Capital took to the air a week later. Originally sixty such stations were planned: the Government has now decided nineteen are enough. Most of the others which have emerged so far have settled for varying combinations of the LBC and Capital styles.

So how do we assess the results of the last thirty months? Professional radio critics, of course, instantly assume the facial expressions of men with knitting needles stuck up their noses when asked to evaluate the wild pot-pourri of Gary Glitter, fish-fingers, crossed-lines, Fred Kites, National Fronters, Zionists, jew-baiters, corner-shop fascists, loonies who’ve lost their parrots and pensioners who’ve lost their teeth, who’ve all come tumbling and gibbering down out of the ether onto this green and garrulous land.

It’s “boring old do-it-yourself radio”, jumble-sale-radio”, radio-wot-fell-off-the-back-of-a-lorry”, and not what we were promised at all! What were we promised? Well, what we were promised makes for merry reading. What’s quite clear in retrospect – and should have been at the time – was that British commercial radio was sired by a typically British marriage of amateurism and hypocrisy.

Amateurism decreed that those with the least experience in running a radio station should, almost on those grounds alone, be selected for the job. Poor little LBC – dubbed Radio Toytown – was expected to outdo the mighty Beeb in world news coverage; soon virtually hysterical staff were collapsing like exhausted flies. The Gough Square basement became radio’s Ekaterinburg, with the mass slaughter of decent misguided programmes, followed by endless Stalinist purges of idealistic Old Bolsheviks who’d taken their brief seriously and died under machine-gun volleys from cadres of ruthless accountants.

Hypocrisy? Well, God knows there was enough of that. Since admitting that you want to sell anything and actually make money is a fearful social gaffe in this country, the commercial radio lobby had to pretend that the last thing they wanted to do was get rich from selling fish-finger eaters to fish-finger makers. Dear me, what a vulgar, gutter-press interpretation of these noble gentlemen’s aims!

For a start, they did wish people wouldn’t talk about “commercial” radio – it was “independent” radio. Independent of what? Of the pointy-headed mandarins of the Establishment Beeb, of course. Commercial – oops, sorry, independent- radio was to be a collection of brave little Davids slinging pebbles on behalf of the wonderful-little-people-of-our-great-democracy against the Goliath of the Corporation.

Since money-making was, like Queen Anne’s legs, not considered a fit subject for polite conversation, the motives of the commercial radio lobby were draped in yards of swishing verbiage about “community needs”, grass-roots feeling”, “ access”, “participation”, “the British People”.

Christopher Chataway, the Tory Minister who legalised commercial radio, assured the Doubting Thomases that “independent” radio was going to spurn the “pop and prattle” of the BBC’s Radio One, and instead provide “a worthwhile service to the community”. And Brian Young, Director-General of the IBA, movingly pledged his belief that it would not all turn out to be “just the round of pop music and plugs which disdainful critics have predicted”.

The IBA issued “guidelines” to hopeful consortia scrambling for contracts. Like a rich but bashful spinster letting on that she’s partial to chocolate fudge, Auntie IBA then lay back and awaited her seducers.

The seducers, having duly studied her tastes, told her what she wanted to hear and then, the minute they’d bedded the contracts, told her to forget the chocolate fudge promises on account of this is a hard world and such romantic twaddle costs too much.

(Take Capital, for example, which promised sweet music, serials, quizzes – all nice, clean, short-back-and sides stuff. Auntie IBA might have liked it but hip young Londoners didn’t, so it went out the window.)

So where are all the shock horror probes into corruption in the local Parks and Cemeteries Committees? And where the searing exposes of small-town sewerage politics? They’re still there – but tucked away in the stations’ “social conscience” slots at dead, unprofitable areas of the day or night when people are either watching telly or are asleep.

As Tommy Vance, a Capital DJ, told me, “Yeah, well, the, ah, incidence of Social Idealism has to be strictly limited in commercial radio: you gotta make a living right? Right!”

But this large gap between stated aims and actual performance is not perhaps the only reason for much of the critical response to commercial radio. Many genuinely believed in such concepts as “grass-roots participation” and “media access” so long as they remained concepts. I suspect that reality has dealt roughly with much woolly-minded Fabian-bookshop sentimentality about The Grass-Roots and The People. To these romantics, The People were symbolised by a kind of myths, cloud-capped Noble Prole, like one of those chunks of socialist statuary celebrating some Soviet Hero of the Best-harvest Norm.

It was assured that once this Noble Prole was allowed “access”, his stout-hearted, rough-hewn common sense and his natural feeling for fair play would emerge and astonish us all.

Did it heck. What happened when this Noble Prole seized hold of the air-waves was that he gabbed on about deporting blacks in banana boats, sending squatters to labour camps and shooting the Arts Council – in short, he turned out to be no more noble or fair-minded than anybody else.

What’s more he actually liked the “trivia and pap” he was expected to scorn. He produced most of it himself: he wanted to know what blighter in Tulse Hill had nicked his Cortina, and whether fin-rot would kill his guppy-fish, and if any OAP in Willesden wanted an old piano, and if Dave or Kenny or Mike would play Diana Ross’s latest waxing for Tracy, the best wife in the world…



Now while I’m a loyal listener, and indeed contributor to, Radio Four, I’m delighted by the sheer serendipity offered by commercial radio. I love the chaos, the mess, the rudeness, the prejudices, the unstructured, unsanitised anarchy.

It’s occasionally very moving: how else can you describe the sudden upsurges of kindness from listeners who, the night I was on LBC for example, rang in desperate to ease the grief of poor Marlees of Lea Green who’d told us of the cot-death of her baby son?

It even produces bizarre flashes of surreal horror: as when a woman rang George Gale on LBC to say she was worried about her nephew who celebrated May 10th every year by buying a couple of parrots, stuffing them down his wellies, and plodging around on them till they’re dead.  And since it clearly hadn’t occurred to her, George’s advice to send the parrot-plodger to a doctor does strike me as a “worthwhile service to the community”, if only to the community’s parrots.

But the basic joy of commercial radio is that it provides a series of scruffy old pubs-of-the-air where all classes unselfconsciously get together to share gossip, misinformation, tell terrible jokes and say they know for a fact that… It’s no more, nor no less, valuable a community service than that.

In the London area, the various mine-hosts include grumpy old buzz-saw Gale, loony little Kenny, sweet ‘n mimsy Joan Shenton, quirky Adrian Love, my very favourite (passed your driving test yet, Adrian?) and that pompous old wind-bag David Bassett.

Which reminds me, David. I’m Ann of Kentish Town and I’m a cat-lover and I’m furious at what you said to that lady on Easter Sunday who wanted to know if her neighbour was allowed to shoot her Siamese cat for trespassing… What? Hello? Are you there, David? Can you hear me? Hello? I’m Ann of Kentish Town and I’m…

Punch finally closed in 2002 with the archives being acquired by the British Library some two years later. Back issues can, no doubt, still be found in dentist’s waiting rooms. All copyrights acknowledged. Cartoons by Mac and Honeysett.
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