91Èȱ¬

Back in 1974 (as you doubtless recall) it was a time to mark, not just the big 91Èȱ¬ anniversaries, but also the 50th anniversary of openings, including 5PY in Plymouth. This breakthrough essentially brought the wireless to Devon & Cornwall – ‘beyond the magnetic mass of Dartmoor’. Which means, of course, that 2024 is the 100th anniversary of invasion of the ether in the far West…

Now as someone whose 91Èȱ¬ pension has been distinctly migratory (thank goodness), I’m not sure I’m technically qualified to send a message in a bottle to Prospero’s island. However, the flotsam & jetsam of a 91Èȱ¬ training washes up everywhere, so some words celebrating this particular anniversary might be acceptable. Briefly, I was a 91Èȱ¬ journalist and director in that Outpost of Empire initially known as 5PY – my stint in Plymouth being from 1968 to 1980.

Earlier this year, my colleague Tony Byers (self-effacing friend of Prospero and 91Èȱ¬ History) rediscovered a television half-hour I made back in 1974 to mark 5PY’s anniversary. This might still be found (clunky Chromakey et al) on the invaluable ‘History of the 91Èȱ¬’ website at bbc.com/historyofthebbc/south-west.

The privilege of making that programme was in meeting several original members of 5PY and their contemporary listeners. We interviewed Jean Tye, the first 5PY secretary, Auntie Madge Taylor of 5PY’s Children’s Hour, and Lilian Annear, who specialised in ‘Jan Stewer’ monologues. Melody united Grant Arnold of Boots’ Café and Albert Hosie of Spooners Restaurant Orchestras.

‘Listeners in’ included a crystal set entrepreneur, one who recalled the opening broadcast, and John Brock, transcriber of wireless news in the Post Office at Kelly Bray.

Viewing my programme again this March, mainly with other 91Èȱ¬ youngster retirees (!), it became clear how inventive those begetters of 91Èȱ¬ Plymouth had to be. They were defining the medium, not least with particular relevance to their rural counties.

Back in 1924, a 5PY listener wrote: ‘What does wireless mean to us? A human voice now grown so familiar as to be one of us as we sit round the fireside. Here in the West country we build a little shrine to that wonderful science which has bestowed so marvellous a gift on the humblest and most obscure corners of our land.’

This touching tribute to the shared aspirations of our trade resonated with retirees marking the 100th anniversary. We all claimed we were Aunts and Uncles of the Airwaves! And then, almost accidentally, it dawned on us that perhaps we’d gone through a similar medium-inventing time. Relics of the 70s, we were part of that period of regional self-definition defined by Broadcasting In the Seventies.

It is true that in 1979, the succession of Margaret Thatcher PM led, as in the 1930s, to a down-scaling of British regional resources. However, in that decade from 1970, embracing devolvement in the 91Èȱ¬ regions, the world was our oyster. In fishy Plymouth, we had to redefine that oyster. OK – cue Keith Floyd!

Back then we experimented expansively. Encouraged by David Rose’s Birmingham initiatives, we even made dramas again (e.g. with Bob Hoskins as Bonaparte, recreating Napoleon’s fortnight in Plymouth Sound on his way to St Helena). We stole (I think) a 91Èȱ¬ Norwich idea when we injected showbiz into Zodiac, a curious chat show pre-guessing celebrity interviewees through their handwriting, palmistry and star-sign before they appeared on screen. We also inaugurated regional Access television, giving serious airtime to the early Hospice movement; and our Brainwave series reflected innovation in the South West, exploring ‘Alternative Technology’ long before today’s ‘green revolution’. Not to mention pioneering Local Radio, retaining the 91Èȱ¬’s role as trusted mouthpiece whilst able to confess if we forgot how to pronounce (say) ‘Perranarworthal’.

I’m sorry, this sounds like trumpet blowing for Plymouth, and I’m well aware that the only trumpet our 91Èȱ¬ Plymouth should blow is ‘a tune on an ice-cream cornet’*.

I am sure other newly-liberated centres of ‘non-metropolitan broadcasting’ can share with Prospero fine instances of ‘seventies’ liberty. For us it proved terrific that, alongside maintenance of responsible news reporting, we could contribute (rightly or wrongly) inventive expressions of distinctive regional talent. We were greatly blessed with inspirational bosses; our Regional Television Manager was the exemplary Tom Salmon, and the revered broadcaster Frank Gillard oversaw our submissions of local programmes for national showing even after his retirement.

I was, like my colleagues, generously encouraged by such respected pioneers. We burgeoned under their guidance, and there was no deep end into which we were not thrown. We trained in making the tea, manning the bar, and of course fronting the radio and television news reports. This allowed one viewer of my Lunchtime TV news-reading to name me ‘the grinning Irish bog pixie’. Other ‘frontmen’ trained in Plymouth did better in that role. You may have heard of Sheila Tracy, Angela Rippon, Hugh Scully, Sue Lawley and Jan Leeming?

Then again, back in 1924, our broadcasting progenitors had shown the way. They had to. As Clarence Goode, 5PY’s first director told 91Èȱ¬ colleague Joe Pengelly in 1974, it seems the makers of crystal sets had (in Goode’s words) ‘jumped the gun’. They had been ‘completely hoaxed’ by false rumours of 5PY’s opening.

‘Every kindred store within miles,’ said Goode, ‘was stocked to the roof for months with wireless sets they couldn’t sell and couldn’t pay for… I was deluged with an avalanche of angry traders demanding immediate commencement of broadcasting when I hadn’t got a studio, or a transmitter or even a secretary.’

As so often then with our revered 91Èȱ¬, the innovation and enthusiasm of committed staff triumphed above what Goode called ‘the Harry Tate affair’** of the technical roll-out.

Perhaps we too, the alumni of Broadcasting in the Seventies, were a privileged ‘Harry Tate affair’. But we acquired so many skills, some of which might even have enhanced the 91Èȱ¬.

My own job disappeared on a ‘last promoted, first out’ basis in 1980. Before I disappeared, ultimately to YTV, I did have a fascinating six months with 91Èȱ¬ Enterprises. My job was to adapt broadcast programmes to match the 57-minute capacity of the Phillips’ Videodisc. I joked then that I got the Six Wives of Henry the Eighth down to the Three & A Half Wives of Henry the Fourth.

Well – unlike that gag – some jokes survive the intervening years. Joking apart though, here’s to a flourishing 91Èȱ¬ as it adapts, belatedly, to the frightening fragmentation of the internet. All power to those next 50 years, even in our ‘most obscure corners of our land’.

*Stolen from Dylan Thomas’s ‘Holiday Memory’, 91Èȱ¬ Third Programme, 25 October 1946.

**Cockney rhyming slang for ‘a right state’!

Ian Fell