May 24, 2021

#028 The First BBC Entertainers... and Lee Mack

36 minutes

Season 2 begins! So please welcome to the microphone: entertainment! The very first.

Journey back to November 16th 1922 - Day 3 of the BBC - to meet Auntie's first entertainers. But history being history, nothing's easy...

Discover why the BBC's first entertainers weren't the first after all, whether London, Birmingham or Manchester brought us the BBC's first entertainment concert - and why each of them has a claim to it.

Our fabulous guest is comedian, actor, writer and professional liar Lee Mack, with tales from Not Going Out, Would I Lie To You and his earliest memories of broadcast comedy (who remembers Wait Till Your Father Gets Home?).

You'll also hear rare clips of the original broadcasters (there are hardly any recordings from 1920s' broadcasts, so these are clips looking back), including Percy Edgar, Peter Eckersley, Hugh Bell, Leonard Hawke, Helena Millais, Ernie Mayne, Tommy Lorne and the Ziegeld Follies.

Plus BBC Radio Norfolk's Paul Hayes brings us a follow-up from the previous Percy Edgar special, with tales of Barrie Edgar, footballing firsts and archive clips of Jimmy Jewell and Richard Dimbleby.

From Billy Beer to Bobby Ball, via the first BBC song (Drake Goes West - or was it?), the first song about the BBC (Auntie Aggie of the BBC), the world's first radio song (List'ning on Some Radio) and the earliest live British TV football coverage still available (from 1949), we've compiled everything that kickstarted British broadcast entertainment.

SHOWNOTES:

Read more of Billy Beer, the BBC's first comedian, written by his descendant Bill Beer.

Lee Mack joined us as part of a fundraiser for a young woman called Jenny. Read more and donate here.

Your host Paul contributed a guest episode to The History of England podcast - a summary of our season 1 on half an hour, via some new (old) clips. It sums up the story so far - you can hear that here from summer 2021.

Paul Hayes' documentary The Lost Voice of Football can be heard here.

Paul Kerensa's other podcast of interviews, from Miranda Hart, Sally Phillips and Tim Vine (scroll way back for those) to the full Gareth Jones interview, can be found here - do subscribe.

The British Broadcasting Century Facebook page is here. Do like.

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Paul's books are available here or orderable from bookshops.

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Next time: the first listings - nearly a year before the Radio Times.

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By Paul Kerensa

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