On 12 November 1925, the BBC broadcast one of its most bizarre programmes yet:

'MASS TELEPATHY: An Experiment in Thought Reading in which every Listener will be invited to assist'

On 12 November 2025, we present a dramatic re-enactment, based on newspaper articles of the day, and brought to life with a cast of marvel and a guest radio drama producer.

Appropriately, the one believer on the celebrity panel was the first BBC dramatist - Phyllis Twigg. We first landed on this story on episode 72 of this podcast, exploring her tale, her innovations and her interest in spiritualism.

Alas no one else on the panel took it seriously. Like The Celebrity Traitors of 1925, a bunch of celebs (a Shakespearean actress, a panto star, the BBC's drama critic, the BBC's Director of Education, an MP, and so on) gathered in a fancy hotel with a gothic atmosphere and played a spooky game around a table, with a glass or two of fizzy rosé.

Or is it more Derren Brown: Mind Control?

Either way, the celebrity jury mostly played it for laughs - and enjoyed the hospitality of the Savoy Hotel a little too much. The listeners weren't happy - especially those taking it seriously at home, beaming their thoughts into the ether.

With no recording, we bring it to life for the first time in a century. In exactly a century.

If you enjoy this dramatisation, do let us know (paul at paulkerensa dot com) and/or consider joining us on Patreon.com/paulkerensa - if you like it, and if we can afford to, we'll do more like this, in and amongst our regular episodes - which right now is meant to be telling the tale of November 1923. We'll pick that up next time... For now, we have a centenary drama to bring you! So concentrate your thoughts, open your mind, and open a bottle. They did.

MASS TELEPATHY: RE-ENACTED

THE CAST

Sir Alfred Robbins - Adrian Mackinder

Cecil Lewis - Will de Renzy-Martin

Lady Tree - Helen Lloyd

Zena Dare - Natalie Chisholm

Phyllis Twigg - Carina Saner (playing her own great-grandmother)

Dorothy Warren - Marta da Silva

Lt Commander Kenworthy MP - Will Harrison Wallace

James Agate - Paul Kerensa

J.C. Stobart - Anthony Hewson

Roger Eckersley - Anthony Rudd

Written by Paul Kerensa

Produced/Directed/Edited by Helen Quigley

A Soundliness co-production with the British Broadcasting Century

1. Letter - K:

James Agate IOU

Dorothy Warren, F then G, then K

Lady Tree Z

Miss Zena Dare G

Kenworthy B 

2. Day - Saturday:

Four guessed Sunday, one Friday

3. Number - 7:

49-13-300-13-19-33-9400

4. Playing card - Three of Diamonds:

Stobart – 4 of Diamonds. Others failed to follow suit...

5. Shape - Triangle:

Circles or polygons, a shilling (Lady Tree), a rugby ball... and an isosceles triangle (Dorothy Warren)

6. Uncategorised - The Game of Bridge:

Charlie Chaplin? Lamp on the Cenotaph? A banjulele? A white leghorn pullet?

SHOWNOTES:

Next time: Episode 109: Reith invites the PM and the King on the air - and other Directors-General over the century...

More on this broadcasting history project at paulkerensa.com/oldradio

October 1923: The BBC's on-air critics go national...

These aren't critics OF the BBC (there were - and are - plenty of those), but critics ON the BBC - a literary critic, a music critic, a drama critic, a film critic... Think Front Row, Barry Norman, The Old Grey Whistle Test, but decades earlier.

These weekly shows went national via simultaneous broadcasting - SB - and the BBC's London-centric regular programming started to take over the regional schedules.

On London 2LO from 14 June 1923 - and nationally on Thursdays from 18 October - was music critic Percy Scholes.

On London 2LO from 18 July - and nationally on Fridays from 19 October - was film critic G.A. Atkinson ('Seen on the Screen').

On London 2LO from 8 August - and nationally on Wednesdays from 17 October - was drama critic Archibald Haddon ('News and Views of the Theatre'), and later James Agate.

On London 2LO from 3 September - and nationally on Mondays from 15 October - was literary critic John Strachey.

And in more recent years, we add comedy criticism to the list - with some comedy writers. James Cary has written BBC sitcoms for TV and radio, inc his own Bluestone 42, Hut 33, Think the Unthinkable, and for others Miranda, My Hero, My Family and more. He joins us with his opinions on comedy, the BBC, and what he'd do if he were DG.

And Miranda Hart - once our boss (I also wrote for the show Miranda) - joins us in a conversation I had for my previous podcast, The Heptagon Club (a podcast of conversations with 7 guests per episode - it was exhausting, so I stopped, for the simpler task of chronicling the history of the BBC...)

And our latest clue to our audio festive treat. Ooh...

SHOWNOTES:

Next time: Episode 108: An Evening of Mass Telepathy - a centenary dramatic re-enactment of a lost legendary broadcast! 

More on this broadcasting history project at paulkerensa.com/oldradio

SHOWNOTES:

Next time: Episode 107: The early BBC criticism programmes: Drama, Music, Film, Books...

More on this broadcasting history project at paulkerensa.com/oldradio

SHOWNOTES:

Next time: Episode 106: The launch of 6BM Bournemouth, and an interview with radio futurologist James Cridland.

More on this broadcasting history project at paulkerensa.com/oldradio

SHOWNOTES:

Next time: Episode 105: The launch of Aberdeen 2BD. Advance reading: see Gordon Bathgate’s book Aberdeen Calling: https://amzn.to/4pi9FBW

More on this broadcasting history project at paulkerensa.com/oldradio

Back in 1923, between SB and RT - that's 'Simultaneous Broadcasting' (networking nationally via landline) and The Radio Times (the BBC listings mag still had the 'The' back then), a month went by...

...But did nothing happen in that month? Of course not!

So between these two bigger landmarks, on this episode we bring you some smaller but notable ones. Also on the Beeb in Aug/Sept 1923:

(Thanks to Newspaper Detective Andrew Barker for most of these)

...I think that's everything we cover. You don't have to listen now...

Oh but wait! Then you'd miss our amazing guest. Conductor and arranger of note (and of notes) Gavin Sutherland has a new album out of old TV themes: The Next Programme Follows Shortly. It's a joy.

Hear Gavin guide us through half a dozen or so tracks, from Grandstand to the Channel 4 ident, from the first song on television to the secret code hidden in The Two Ronnies theme.

Have a listen, buy his album - and enjoy our chat. And the first cat on radio. Miaow.

SHOWNOTES:

Next time: Episode 104: The Radio Times is launched!

More on this broadcasting history project at paulkerensa.com/oldradio

On 29 August 1923, the BBC officially launched SB: Simultaneous Broadcasting. 

They'd been testing SB for months, via crossed lines and cross conversations with the General Post Office. It would dramatically change the shape and big idea of what broadcasting was and could be. Using landlines, they linked stations - so a Covent Garden concert could be heard nationally for the first time, as other stations gave over the schedules to big concerts, or news bulletins, or... whatever London wanted. Generally speaking.

Yes, other stations could take over too - Birmingham or Glasgow might offer a concert of play. But questions were asked, even back then, of whether listeners would prefer their regular local programming, or news/concerts from the capital.

Oh but we can provide you big stars, said the Programme Department. It's a move forward. But a move backward for local programming, alas - even if it was pitched to them that they could enjoy a night off. Hmm...

As we explore and unpack that, we also welcome a guest - Mary Englsh, who began at the BBC in 1973 as a studio manager, wrote for The Two Ronnies, and nearly bled over Margaret Thatcher thanks to an editing accident.

We hear from her, including the timely observation that the BBC perhaps win trust by "broadcasting their defeats". (In the week this podcast lands, the BBC has broadcast two of their defeats - with news reports about their Gaza documentary and Gregg Wallace. Would another channel amplify their failures quite so much? Should they? Answers on a postcard...)

SHOWNOTES:

Next time: Episode 103: Aug/Sept 1923 - Rob Roy and the first cat on radio!

More info on this broadcasting history project at paulkerensa.com/oldradio

Episode 101 finds us in late August 1923... 

The first government inquiry into the BBC has just finished four months of interviewing dozens of interested parties about what the Beeb should/would/could be. Should it have a competitor? How do you solve the licence problem? Did the BBC have a monopoly? And isn't it time 'listeners-in' were just called 'listeners'?

We give you a potted summary of Sir Frederick Sykes' inquiry, committee and report - somehow known as The Sykes Inquiry, The Sykes Committee and The Sykes Report. 

And our special guest, talking about three decades earlier, is Dr Inja Stanović of the University of Surrey, Surrey Future Senior Fellow, Director of Performance, and most crucially for us, Director of the Early Recordings Association. She brings reconstructed recordings and info about the Early Recordings Association (join free, click below) and its Conference.

SHOWNOTES:

Next time: Episode 102: Simultaneous Broadcasting, on the BBC in August 1923.

More info on this broadcasting history project at paulkerensa.com/oldradio

It's The British Broadcasting Century's century!

Thanks if you've joined us for the story so far, from Morse and Marconi to Reith and the Pips (before Gladys Knight took over lead vocals).

This special 100th episode is for both the newcomer and the seasoned veteran - being the previous 99 episodes in summary form, BUT with lots of new bits.

So this is no best-of... (alright it's a bit of a best-of) ...this is packed with new things we didn't know, old things we hadn't found yet, new perspectives on the areas we've covered previously, things we left out completely, and much more, or less, depending on how you look at it.

New things include:

And we've been asking you for your favourite moments so far. So we re-bring you:

...You get the idea.

Thanks for joining us for our first 100 episodes - here's to our next 100.

Do share this with people to help make that happen!

.

SHOWNOTES:

Next time: Episode 101: The Sykes Inquiry, and the Early Recordings Association.

More info on this broadcasting history project at paulkerensa.com/oldradio

On the day of episode 99's release, it's exactly 100 years since the death on 17 April 1925 of Godfrey Isaacs - Managing Director of the Marconi Company.

More than that - new evidence shows that he came up with and championed the idea of the one BBC. For years, the British government (via the Post Office) has been credited with the plan for a singular British broadcaster. But lost meeting minutes have been rediscovered....

The academic who found these minutes - misplaced for decades - is David Prosser of the University of Bristol. He joins us to tell us about the 18 May 1922 meeting where Godfrey Isaacs proposed that the Marconi Company share patents and collaborate with its rivals to form one (British) Broadcasting Company.

And Robert Godfrey - Isaacs' great-great-grandson - joins us to give new insights into the life of this under-heralded pioneer in the ways of wireless. Hear tales of the Marconi Scandal, Titanic, business wrangling, broadcasting innovation, battles with the press, and a life cut short.

There's a lot to tell, so this is a longer episode than usual - sorry! Actually I'm not sorry... these chaps know their stuff, and it's an incredible tale.

.

SHOWNOTES:

Next time: Episode 100! Your highlights of the British broadcasting origin story - Marconi, Melba, Eckersley, Reith and more. And maybe the Sykes Inquiry, if we get time (unlikely!)

More info on this broadcasting history project at paulkerensa.com/oldradio