The British Broadcasting Century with Paul Kerensa

30 October 1938 - 88 years ago precisely before this podcast lands - something else landed too, according to Orson Welles. US radio listeners were terrified as his adaptation of HG Wells' War of the Worlds brought Martians to American ears, via fake news reports and other immersive drama. But how terrified were they, and had they heard the show? Our guest Dr A Brad Schwartz is author of Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News (Hill and Wang, 2015), shining a new light on one of the most famous moments of radio history - but perhaps one of the most misunderstood? Oh but it does mean that for one episode only, we jump the Atlantic, so The British Broadcasting Century becomes The American Broadcasting Century. We even look at the next moment of our chronological timeline - December 1923 - by seeing what American radio was up to then, with the first presidential address via radio thanks to Calvin Coolidge. And the spooky season seemed the perfect time to tell you a ghost story that we've been sitting on for some time. Not read out on air (that we know), but a personal reminiscence from a 1930s BBC announcer, this is Uncle Ajax (TCL Farrar) recounting a strange encounter while introducing the BBC Symphony Orchestra from the pre-Maida Vala home at No 10, Big Tree Wharf. Thanks for this to Carina Saner, great-granddaughter of first radio dramatist Phyllis Twigg. Phyllis met Ajax at a function post-WW2, and he told her this tale then gave her a copy of it, which gladly Carina found in Phyllis' shoebox of correspondence. (Look out for a biography of Phyllis Twigg by Carina and myself, coming soon!) I'll post Ajax's text to Substack soon - link below. Copyright is certainly not mine, and will belong to the estate of TCL Farrar - whoever they may be! Farrar family: get in touch if you like, especially if you have issues with us using this... but what a tale. So thank you, without reaching you. SHOWNOTES: Brad's book Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News is a great read, or listen on Audible. (That's an affiliate link, you click, you buy, I get a shiny sixpence or something) Hear the entire War of the Worlds broadcast from 30 Oct 1938 Witness History on BBC Sounds - Orson Welles broadcasts The War of the Worlds Read on Substack, soon, the text of Ajax's ghost story: paulkerensa.substack.com More on the BBC's (haunted?) studio at No 10, Big Tree Wharf Email the podcast at: https://paulkerensa.com/contact.php Review the podcast on Apple Podcasts etc? Thanks! Find us on BlueSky: bsky.bbcentury.social Join Paul's mailing list Paul's show is on old radio is on tour and available for booking - book it!: paulkerensa.com/tour This podcast is not made by today's BBC. It's just about the old BBC. Any clips from War of the Worlds are copyright CBS Radio Network, and used minimally as a fair use excerpt. Or something like that. Original podcast music is by Will Farmer. Unoriginal music is by someone else. Soon: A talk on the origins of the BBC at Guildford Institute: https://www.guildford-institute.org.uk/event/from-the-pips-to-the-proms-how-the-bbc-began-t425/ Support us on Patreon? £5/mth, and get extra videos, writings, readings etc: patreon.com/paulkerensa - thanks! Or support this project with a one-off tip: ko-fi.com/paulkerensa - thanks too! Please share/rate/review this podcast if you like - it all helps. Next time, Episode 130: BBC TV at Alexandra Palace Turns 90. More on this broadcasting history project at paulkerensa.com/oldradio

In the first week of December 1923, the one-year-old British Broadcasting Company gave us two notable firsts, from different cultures: Its first Gaelic broadcast, and its first Muslim broadcast. Neither are widely reported, but they offer a glimpse into an early BBC that might be more diverse and eager to share different voices than it's often thought. We've done some digging, and although there are no clips, we've found a few details - including some of the text. Plus when do you think the BBC first broadcast the Muslim call to prayer? Earlier than you might think... Here in our moment-by-moment timeline, we share what we know about these landmark moments, with guest Remona Aly joining us to cast her eye over the recently rediscovered text of that earliest known broadcast about the Islamic faith. It was by high-profile Muslim convert Shaikh Rahmatullah al-Farooq, aka Lord Headley, aka Rowland George Allanson Allanson-Winn (yes, posh white British nobleman seems to have been the acceptable voice of minority religion at this point). First we meet Rev John Bain, from the High United Free Church in Aberdeen, a native Gaelic speaker from Big Sand, Gairloch, Wester Ross. He gave a 15 minute sermon in Gaelic on Sunday 2 December 1923. (It may even have been the BBC's first church service, contrary to the historical record that St Martin-in-the-Fields began such services under Rev Dick Sheppard in early 1924.) Meanwhile Wireless Weekly magazine discuss English-speaking announcers struggling to introduce songs like Mo Ribhinn Chaoimhneil. Two days later on Tuesday 4 December 1923, according to the Radio Times listing: "The Rt Hon Lord Headley, the famous Moslem Peer, will Talk on his recent experiences at Mecca." We've found a write-up in the RT of his 'Pilgrimage to Mecca' - enlightening about the man himself and his travels, as guest of King Hussein of Hejaz. See the show notes below to read the full text, and hear some of it on the podcast. And hear of other early Muslim BBC broadcasts, including the 'Call from the Minaret' in July 1925 and a reading from the Qur'an ten years later. Journalist and broadcaster Remona Aly guides us through his experiences and gives her thoughts on reconnecting with a century-old tale of the Hajj pilgrimage. And we have a bit of a chuckle at how he kept fumbling his Magic Lantern show at his live events - yes, the Powerpoint fail of 1923. Oh indeed, the early BBC wasn't all Christian sermons - whether in English or in Gaelic... Plus we pay tribute to broadcast historian Tony Currie and TV presenter Dame Esther Rantzen, daughter of Harry... Who? Hear more here. Plus a newly uploaded gramophone record parodying the early BBC, Paul's PhD is underway at Loughborough University, and we've been nominated for Best History Podcast at the Independent Podcast Awards. Aw, thanks! SHOWNOTES: The text of that first Muslim broadcast, as published in the Radio Times on 18 April 1924, can be seen on our Facebook page. Richard Jeffrey-Gray, aka Hoxa on Youtube, has polished and uploaded to Youtube 'London and Daventry Calling, 1926' by The Savoy Orpheans with Norman Long. We play a little on the podcast, and find the rest online. Email the podcast at: https://paulkerensa.com/contact.php Review the podcast on Apple Podcasts etc? Thanks! Read free posts on Substack: paulkerensa.substack.com Find us on BlueSky: bsky.bbcentury.social Join Paul's mailing list Paul's show is on old radio is on tour and available for booking - book it!: paulkerensa.com/tour This podcast is not made by today's BBC. It's just about the old BBC. Original podcast music is by Will Farmer. Support us on Patreon? £5/mth, and get extra videos, writings, readings etc: patreon.com/paulkerensa - thanks! Or support this project with a one-off tip: ko-fi.com/paulkerensa - thanks too! Please share/rate/review this podcast if you like - it all helps. Next time, Episode 129: Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast + an early BBC ghost sto

The BBC's first: in-house drama for adults non-Shakespeare drama comedy drama studio production of a modern stage play drama to be reviewed on air writer to be on two channels at once ...however you phrase it, Gertrude Jennings' Five Birds in a Cage deserves far more attention than it's had for the past century and a bit. In our moment-by-moment British broadcasting timeline it's 29 November 1923 when the BBC set the template for the modern radioplay with this adaptation of Jennings' satirical stageplay about five Tube passengers trapped in a lift. Will they get out? Will they throttle each other first? What does it have in common with Blackadder Goes Forth? The BBC had broadcast a drama aimed at children (The Truth about Father Christmas by Phyllis Twigg - see episode 72 of this podcast), some Shakespeare plays (see episode 55 of this podcast), an excerpt of GK Chesterton and the occasional on-location panto. But the in-house modern radio drama was a new idea. Although Richard Hughes' A Comedy of Danger from 1924 is credited as the first original radio play for adults, Five Birds in a Cage was an impressive adaptation of Gertrude Jennings' 1915 stage play of the same name - and it was reviewed on air too. In this episode, three experts bring you everything you never knew you needed to know about Jennings and her work. Professor Tim Crook is Emeritus Professor at Goldsmiths University of London, and author of Writing Audio Drama among many other books, as well as the superb blog at kulturapress.com. Nicola Morgan and Dr Caroline Rance host the excellent and vital She Wrote Too podcast, elevating and amplifying under-appreciated female writers from the early twentieth century. Plus hear that first review of a radio play by Archibald Haddon the first BBC drama critic. We tell of other forgotten radio drama moments, including Howard Rose's recollections of a dramatic broadcast on 2 September 1922, pre-BBC. And you'll hear Peter Eckersley and Rolls Wynn on their Cyrano de Bergerac broadcast from 17 October 1922. Plus the bizarre quirk that makes her the first writer to have two different productions on two different channels at the same time... for five minutes anyway. Gertrude Jennings wrote quite a play - a social satire, a farce, a character comedy, with sound effects and a point to make. We're delighted to shout about it here - and see our shownotes below for She Wrote Too's podcast about her too, as well as Tim Crook's writing about her and other forgotten female writers. SHOWNOTES: She Wrote Too podcast on Gertrude Jennings: https://shewrotetoo.substack.com/p/five-birds-in-a-cage Tim Crook's blog about Gertrude Jennings: https://kulturapress.com/2022/08/10/gertrude-e-jennings-bbcs-pioneering-one-act-playwright/ Tim Crook's academic article 'Rewriting the Beginning of BBC Audio Drama History- Three Women Playwrights and Their Contribution to British Radio Drama Culture': https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19376529.2023.2257184 Sutton Elms website on Howard Rose: https://www.suttonelms.org.uk/dspenser9.html Alan Beck's 'The Invisible Play' on Gertrude Jennings: https://www.savoyhill.co.uk/invisibleplay/body/3a1.html (some of his website is missing/broken - help in finding the missing pages would be appreciated!) Listen to The Truth about Phyllis Twigg on BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002ntmx Catch out first interview with Tim Crook, on Phyllis Twigg, on episode 72 of this podcast: https://bbcentury.podbean.com/e/the-first-radio-dramatist-the-truth-about-phyllis-twigg/ Email the podcast at: https://paulkerensa.com/contact.php Review the podcast on Apple Podcasts etc? Thanks! Our latest Substack is on: What have BBC promos ever done for us?... paulkerensa.substack.com Find us on BlueSky: bsky.bbcentury.social Join Paul's mailing list Paul's show is on old radio is on tour and available for booking - book it!: paulkerensa.com/tour This podcast is not made by today's BBC. It's just abo

26 November-2 December 1923, and the BBC and the USA had a little conversation. Well, a big conversation, across an ocean, across a week, heard by listeners east and west of the Atlantic. Our moment-by-moment timeline of British broadcasting has reached this momentous moment (aren't all moments momentous?) when British ears heard America, and American ears heard Britain, via radio. It was all Radio Broadcast magazine's fault/idea. Its co-owner, Frank Doubleday of Doubleday, Page and Co, thought it would be nice for the two countries to hear each via some organised tests - and while US radio had reached the UK, the time difference made it trickier for the signals to be heard the other way around. It meant BBC staff setting their alarms for a few days of 3am broadcasts, and Biggin Hill Aerodrome proved the ideal place for the engineers to pick up what America was sending. So this episode comes live (well, recorded) from Biggin Hill Aerodrome. You can even hear the odd plane. It was here that BBC Deputy Chief Engineer Captain West and team listened for US radio - and ate Mrs West's fried sausages. Oh yes, we bring you all the details, including Reith and Eckersley singing God Save the King... ...and we bring you a guest: BBC producer and presenter Josephine McDermott has made an Archive on 4 documentary on international shortwave radio - The Sound of Soft Power. Link below, have a listen, and hear her tell us of the joy of finding such archive. A second part of the 1923 experiments came after Christmas that year, so a second part of this story will be on the podcast in a few episodes time - around ep 132, when Prof Simon J Potter will enlighten us on the BBC's global reach, linked to the Pittsburgh and Paris broadcasts heard on the BBC in late 1923. SHOWNOTES: Hear Josephine McDermott's Radio 4 documentaries for Archive on 4: The Sound of Soft Power - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002wskb - and https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0026tw0 Research this episode is thanks to a variety of places, inc. Andrew Barker our Newspaper Detective (see his daily posts on our Facebook group), Thomas H white's website https://earlyradiohistory.us/, Myles Eckersley's book Prospero's Wireless, and Edward Pawley's book BBC Engineering 1922-1972. Email the show at: https://paulkerensa.com/contact.php Review the show on Apple Podcasts etc? Thanks! Our latest Substack is on: What have BBC promos ever done for us?... paulkerensa.substack.com Find us on BlueSky: bsky.bbcentury.social Join Paul's mailing list Paul's show is An Evening of (Very) Old Radio: The BBC Then and Now - and in late 2026 it plays Gloucester, Hartley Wintney and more: paulkerensa.com/tour This podcast is not made by today's BBC. It's just about the old BBC. Original podcast music is by Will Farmer. Support us on Patreon? £5/mth, and get extra videos, writings, readings etc: patreon.com/paulkerensa - thanks! Or support this project with a one-off tip: ko-fi.com/paulkerensa - thanks too! Please share/rate/review this podcast if you like - it all helps. Next time, Episode 127: Early radio drama from Gertrude Jennings. More on this broadcasting history project at paulkerensa.com/oldradio

We're back in our moment-by-moment timeline of British broadcasting's early days, and it's just after the BBC's first birthday... 16 November 1923: Sheffield 6FL becomes the BBC's first relay station, rebroadcasting programmes from Manchester. But will there be original local content too? What of Sheffield's pre-BBC radio station? And is it coincidence that '6FL' could link to 'Fred Lloyd' - the man who made Sheffield broadcasting possible? Was it not he who marched into BBC Chief Engineer Peter Eckersley's office and said: "Have you heard the wireless in Sheffield? It's like an insurrection in hell!" ...Discover the truths, the maybes, the pioneering moments and the hidden history of this long-ignored station, from our Newspaper Detective Andrew Barker, who I'm convinced knows more than anyone on the planet about the Sheffield relay station 6FL, and what came before it. Plus exclusive rare audio from Harry Lloyd in 1968, talking about how he and his dad began it all. We're so grateful to today's BBC Radio Sheffield and Sheffield City Archives for permission to share this clip, with an insight into not only how Sheffield broadcasting began in 1923, but the first days of local radio when that interview was broadcast on BBC Radio Sheffield, just months into its existence as the second local radio station of the modern era. Thanks to Fred Lloyd, the Sheffield station achieved far more than the history books might let on - bringing the first educational broadcast to schools before the BBC, and the first broadcasting bishop. A few key dates of Fred Lloyd and the Sheffield station's story, thanks to Andrew Barker... 20 Oct 1922: Fred Lloyd becomes President of the Sheffield and District Wireless Society, unusually giving his inaugural speech by radio from his home, to a packed hall of 800 members - facing an empty stage with just a loudspeaker. 31 Dec 1922: The Bishop of Sheffield, the local MP and a local newspaper editor broadcast from Fred Lloyd's home. That's the first bishop on air! 21 March 1923: Britain's first broadcast to schools, three of them in Sheffield, thanks to Fred Lloyd. 12 April 1923: BBC Chief Engineer Peter Eckersley visits Sheffield, and tests are carried out. Will the BBC take it over? (Yes.) The relay idea is born days later. 9 July 1923: Test transmissions begin at the university, again thanks to Fred Lloyd. 14 August 1923: The first attempt at relaying another station. 17 August 1923: Fred Lloyd says he hopes local programming continues, despite the relaying of other stations. Will it? 1 Sept 1923: Local newspapers run the Sheffield station for an evening. 13 Sept 1923: Fred Lloyd gives the experimental station's farewe... oh that would be spoiling it. You'll have to listen. 16 Nov 1923: Sheffield 6FL opens, under the BBC banner. ...So that's where we are in our timeline. Coming up on the podcast: November 1923 continues with transatlantic broadcasting, relays from France, early drama, an upcoming election, and BBC's first Muslim broadcaster. Stay subscribed and see the shownotes below for our social mediums and the like... SHOWNOTES: Thanks to BBC Radio Sheffield and Sheffield City Archives for permission to use the old clips. They were stars to deal with, and bring me hope that old audio needn't stay on shelves behind closed doors. Thanks, folks! Thanks Andrew Barker for finding the info and sharing it. See his 'On this day 100 years ago in broadcasting history' posts on our Facebook group: facebook.com/groups/bbcentury Email the show at: https://paulkerensa.com/contact.php Review the show on Apple Podcasts etc, and we may read it out on the podcast - and you can 'win' (you can't win) a piece of British broadcasting pretend history (there is no prize, do not believe these words) Our latest Substacks - upcoming, What have BBC promos ever done for us?... paulkerensa.substack.com Find us on BlueSky: bsky.bbcentury.social Join Paul's mailing list Paul's show is An Evening of (Very) Old Radio: T