The Big Question

This month’s question is: ‘This month marks the 100th anniversary of daily broadcasting by BBC Radio. What are your memories of broadcasts? ’

“I have always been impacted by broadcasting. As a child, I used to get upset and shout at the television during Watch With Mother. (The name alone gives away my age bracket!) “NO! Spotty Dog, NO!” I would shout at the Woodentops, when Spotty was about to get into trouble.

“Almost sixty years later, I still shout at the television or radio frequently. Usually, it is news and current affairs broadcasting that sets me off. Newsreaders, politicians, and Question Time guests are all likely to be offered my individual responses to their comments, even if I know they cannot actually hear them.

“If current affairs broadcasting often makes me mad, I can always rely on BBC Alba’s wonderful music programmes to calm me down.

“Broadcasting moments that live with me include the image of a man defying a tank in Tiananmen Square; the fall of the Berlin Wall; Michael Buerk’s Ethiopian famine reports; the Live Aid concert; and Nelson Mandela walking to Freedom. However, in settling for only one, I would choose a four second clip of the late Queen shaking hands with Martin McGuinness, the former IRA commander turned politician. For me that was a sign that a lasting peace in Northern Ireland was possible, but only at huge personal cost. That brief image spoke of reconciliation in ways no quantity of words could equal. It encapsulated the possibility of change and the hope for new beginnings.

“The best broadcasting uplifts and inspires.”

“I learnt about BBC (Radio) World Service while growing up in the late 1990s in Kenya from my father, a retired teacher. We lived in the rural lands and he (my father) used to tune in to BBC Radio to get the latest updates and news on what was happening around the world.

“Hence, as a family it was uncommon at all to tune in to BBC Radio before the emergence of vernacular radio stations. Many programmes were aired and the one broadcast that I have memories about is BBC Radio News in Swahili; (a language spoken by a majority of East African citizens). The unique 30 minutes weekday programme, aired at 6am and 7am called Amka na BBC (Wake up with BBC) and Dira ya Dunia (World News ) also a weekday evening program at 6:30pm EAT.

“Listening to the broadcasts aired in Swahili language was so exciting and entertaining; it could be because of the fluent, sweet and polished Swahili spoken by the eloquent presenters or maybe because the broadcast was always airing news and issues which I would relate and resonate with. Some of it would be local news and updates such as airing the win, record-break or victories by different Kenyan heroes and heroines in World Athletics.

“I also remember in 2007/8 during the post-election violence after the disputed Kenyan presidential elections whereby the Kenyan government imposed an indefinite ban on live radio and television broadcasting we tuned in to BBC Radio to get what was happening.”

“My first memory was staying at my Grandmother’s house on the Isle of Lewis. The radio was a lifeline back then – there was a TV in the house but it carried only two channels even in the 1980s! “No TV was allowed on the Sabbath, but for some reason the radio was.

“I remember coming into the kitchen one Sunday morning and hearing for the first time a sound that was unlike any I had heard in my life – ‘What on earth is that noise Granny?’ I asked. It was the sound of Gaelic Psalm singing on BBC Radio Nan Gaidheal. “Though I could not understand it, there was something deeply spiritual and moving about it and even into my teens my Grandmother and I would gather around ‘the wireless’ (as she referred to it) and listen to the Psalms sung in the language of heaven.

“I read once that Anne Frank wrote in her famous diary ‘we listen to German radio for good music and the BBC for hope.’ It has always fascinated me how much feeling and emotion can be transmitted over the airwaves – from the joyful tears of listening to Andy Murray winning his first Wimbledon, to the sad weeping over the announcement of the death of HRH Queen Elizabeth II while I drove home from a funeral.

“In so many poignant and significant points in our lives over the past 100 years BBC Radio has played a key part in informing, educating, entertaining and occasionally being the collective memory of the nation.”

“I have many memories of BBC broadcasts over the years. My first memory would have been listening, on an old valve wireless to the announcement of the death of King George VI, and the following year watching on black and white TV the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. We then had to move from ‘King’ to ‘Queen’.

“Seventy years on we watched the announcement of the death of Her Majesty, and the formal proclamation of the accession of King Charles III. Beautifully and respectfully presented. Now we revert from ‘Queen’ to ‘King’.

“The ‘news’ on the BBC has always been a major part of my listening. While at St Andrew’s, Nairobi, I got hold of a radio which allowed me to tune into the World Service. Years later while working in Southern Sudan, from a tiny Sony short wave radio I could sit under the wonderful African night sky and listen, sometimes with difficulty to the World Service.

“Worship has been important, especially when isolated. Reflections and worship on a Sunday morning. Often thoughts were offered which could be incorporated in intercessory prayer.

“Time waits for none of us, change embraces all of us, and that is so true of the communication of the BBC and the subjects broadcast. Language, music, theology, worship have all changed, and will continue to do so. Sometimes it is important for the church to be led, but care needs be taken in the choice of path along which she walks.”

“There was a time from around 1977 when there was one radio programme that was required listening for every teenager wanting to hear the latest music releases. It was the only place to hear often obscure bands on new independent record labels – the John Peel Show on Radio 1.

“At school or work the next day there would be conversation about that new record by The Cure or a session by Siouxsie and The Banshees or that 12” dub single by Ranking Trevor.

“The search to track down the vinyl would often lead to Bruce’s Records in Glasgow, or to classified ads in the NME. Twice I wrote to my godmother’s brother who was a senior civil servant in Belfast and asked him to track down new releases by Stiff Little Fingers and The Undertones.

“It was John Peel who brought us eccentric recordings of Ivor Cutler with his Tales From A Scotch Sitting Room sketches and Vivian Stanshall’s hilarious country house satire, Sir Henry at Rawlinson End. It was John Peel who over four consecutive nights played all of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band’s classic Trout Mask Replica album because he thought a new generation deserved to hear this seminal record. I still have my copy that I bought shortly afterwards.

“His love of music and respect for artists famous and obscure really set John Peel apart. He never spoke over the intro, never faded a record out. There were a couple of times when he enjoyed a record so much he played it again immediately afterwards!

“When he died in 2004 aged 65 many of us up and down the land who remembered those nights listening to John Peel, where he curated the soundtrack for that part of our lives.”