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	80 years of BBC shows to go online (11 June 2008) Every TV and radio programme ever made by the BBC could be placed online as part of an ambitious project unveiled today. The scheme will see a webpage created for nearly every programme broadcast on BBC radio and TV in the past 80 years. Initially, pages will contain information, clips and links about the show, but it is hoped that whole programmes will eventually be made available as part of a massive internet archive. This will either be via the seven-day catch-up service iPlayer or as a new online archive service. It is unclear whether the archive service will be free. The new details were revealed by Jana Bennett, director of BBC vision, at the Banff television festival in Canada. However, a number of episodes from shows including Hancock's Half Hour, Doctor Who, Steptoe and Son and the Goon Show have been lost. During the Seventies many tapes were destroyed or taped over to make space in the BBC's storage facilities or because they were considered a fire risk. Others, such as the Quatermass series, were broadcast live and not recorded. Ms Bennett said: "Eventually we will produce pages for programming stretching back over nearly 80 years - featuring all the information we have on the richest TV and radio archive in the world. The BBC is committed to releasing the public value in that archive." more....
	Nat Temple, clarinettist and dance-band leader who frequently appeared on radio and television has died aged 94 (5 June 2008) Nat temple was one of the best-known bandleaders of the post-war period, particularly celebrated for his work in radio and television; he was also an exceptionally gifted clarinettist, whose talent received far less recognition than it deserved. He turned professional at 16, joining the band led by the singer and comedian Sam Costa. In 1940 Temple joined the Grenadier Guards and played with service bands for the rest of the war, including periods in North Africa and Italy. While still in the Army he contrived to play from time to time, and even record, with numerous other bands. A chance meeting with the Canadian actor and comedian Bernard Braden led to Temple's becoming musical director of a new, "oddball" radio show, Breakfast With Braden. This was followed by the late-night Bedtime With Braden, which gained a sizeable cult following. Temple was cast as the bumbling bandleader, a part he played so convincingly that he got taken on in the same role by other shows – Michael Bentine's Round The Bend, Dick Emery's Emery At Large and Peter Ustinov's In All Directions. From these, Temple graduated to children's television, acting as genial music-master for Jack In The Box, Telebox and, most famously, Crackerjack, with Eamonn Andrews. more....
	Humphrey Lyttelton, broadcaster and jazz musician, has died aged 86 (26 April 2008) After spending the Second World War as an officer in the Grenadier Guards, Lyttelton became a pioneering figure in the British jazz scene. He formed his first band in 1948 after spending a year with George Webb's Dixielanders, a band that pioneered New Orleans-style jazz in the UK. The Humphrey Lyttelton Band quickly became Britain's leading traditional jazz group, and continental tours gave them a following in Europe. In 1949, he signed a recording contract with EMI which led to a string of records in the Parlophone Super Rhythm Style series and which have become highly sought after. By the late 1950s he was branching out, enlarging his band and experimenting with mainstream and non-traditional material, and shocking his established fans in the process. In 1959, the band made a successful tour of the United States. He was a keen amateur calligrapher and birdwatcher, and in 1984 formed his own record label, Calligraph. He composed more than 120 original songs during his career. In 1993 he won the radio industry's highest honour, a Sony Gold Award. He also won lifetime achievement awards at the Post Office British Jazz Awards in 2000, and the inaugural BBC Jazz Awards the following year. It was in 1972 that, against his better judgement, he took on the chairmanship of Radio Four’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. Nobody imagined that his role, somewhat like a naïve and despairing schoolmaster who was forced to read out double entendres that he never understood, would last for the rest of his life. His sharp humour was hilarious and yet without malice. more....
	Richard Willcox, producer of musical and variety radio programmes, has died aged 69 (5 January 2008) The first love of BBC Radio producer Richard Willcox was music hall and variety, and for many years he produced the famous Billy Cotton Band Show. The programme, which was broadcast from 1949 to 1968, became a national institution and was as much a part of the traditional Sunday lunchtime as roast beef. Cotton, a former racing driver, was a larger-than-life character who started each show with the cry “Wakey-Wakey!”. This was followed by the band's signature tune, Somebody Stole My Girl. Willcox revealed that Cotton's catchphrase originated in the days when the band had toured the country the week prior to Sunday morning rehearsal. Cotton would arrive in the BBC studio to find weary band members nodding off. “Oi, come on,” he roared. “Wakey! Wakey!” Noting its effect on everyone, it was suggested by a BBC executive that that was how the show should begin. When the series finished Willcox's knowledge and love of light entertainment made him a natural choice for producing other radio series such as The Windsor Davies Show and The Impressionists. During his long career with BBC Radio he held several posts including assistant head of light entertainment and, prior to taking early retirement. more....
	British actress Pat Kirkwood, star of stage and screen, has died aged of 86 (26 December 2007) Pat Kirkwood's career spanned more than six decades and she played the lead roles in the West End shows of Noel Coward, Cole Porter and Leonard Bernstein. After appearing in a talent contest on the Isle of Man she was invited to an audition with the BBC in Manchester She made her professional debut, aged 14, as a singer on the BBC radio programme The Children's Hour. A year later, in April 1936, she made her first stage appearance at the Royal Hippodrome, Salford, billed as The Schoolgirl Songstress. The following year she starred in her debut film - Save a Little Sunshine. After the success of the revue Black Velvet at the London Hippodrome in 1939 she was hailed as "Britain's first wartime star". She became the first female to have her own television series with The Pat Kirkwood Show in 1954 and also appeared in various TV plays. In Our Marie (1953) she played the music hall star Marie Lloyd; she also appeared in Pygmalion (1956) and The Great Little Tilley (1956) as another music hall star, Vesta Tilley, which was directed by Hubert Gregg and subsequently became the film After The Ball (1957). In 1953, she was reunited with George Formby on the panel of What's My Line but was seen on screen feeding Formby questions to ask the contestants. more....
	Moira Lister, actress who excelled in sparkling comedy roles ranging from Shakespeare to the moderns, has died aged 84 (29 October 2007) As an actress, Moira Lister was once compared to the American comedienne Lucille Ball, because of her way of turning glamorous women into witty commentators on life. Whether it was in a play, musical, film or television drama or even as a guest on such TV shows as What's My Line?, Call My Bluff and Life Begins at Forty, she stood apart with her slim figure, bright blue eyes and delicate, upper-class voice. She was an accomplished actress whose regal bearing found her often cast in patrician roles, though she also had a splendid sense of humour and a versatility that ranged from acclaimed performances in Shakespearean tragedy to her award-winning display of farcical expertise in Move Over, Mrs Markham. In 1954, Moira first teamed up with Tony Hancock in the second series of "Star Bill". She was brought into "Star Bill" to replace Hancock's previous lady foil of the first series, Geraldine McEwan. With considerable film experience behind her, Moira's strong personality proved her to be an ideal match for Hancock. Her distinctive, husky voice made Lister a radio stalwart in such series as Simon and Laura and A Life of Bliss, and in South Africa her radio roles included the leading parts in Rain, The Deep Blue Sea (she had earlier played a supporting role in the film version) and The Millionairess. On television, she was a sparkling critic of record releases in Juke Box Jury, and she was a guest on such shows as Danger Man, Call My Bluff and The Avengers. For three years, 1967-69, she starred in her own series, A Very Merry Widow. In 1971 she was the subject of This Is Your Life, and her autobiography, A Very Merry Moira, was published in 1969. more....
	Peter Tuddenham, actor, has died aged 88 (9 August 2007) Peter Tuddenham's earliest television appearances included parts in Clara, The Maid of Durham: Or Home Sweet Home (1955) and the BBC's "Musical Playhouse" Ivor Novello productions The Dancing Years (as Franzel, 1959) and Perchance To Dream (as Lord Failsham, 1959). He also had several roles in soap opera, on radio in Mrs Dale's Diary (as Dr Mitchell, who famously once sat on Mrs Freeman's cat) and Waggoners' Walk, and as George Banham in ITV's East Anglian vets serial Weavers Green (1966). On television, Tuddenham was a regular as the pub landlord in Backs to the Land (1977-78) and as William in Double First (1988). He also guest-starred as priests in the sitcom Nearest and Dearest (1968) and the P.D. James thriller A Mind To Murder (1995), and played doctors in Quiller (1975), The Lost Boys (1978) and Nanny (1981, 1982) and an auctioneer in Lovejoy (1986). At the age of 60, after spending more than half his adult life as an actor, Peter Tuddenham became most familiar to television viewers as the voices of three computers in the cult science-fiction serial Blakes 7. more....
	Phil Drabble, 'One Man and His Dog' presenter, has died aged 93 (1 August 2007) A countryman through and through, the writer and naturalist Phil Drabble shared his love of nature and rural ways in dozens of books but, most famously, as the original presenter of One Man and His Dog, which provided the spectacle of working sheepdogs demonstrating their skills at rounding up flocks in lush, green fields and meadows, moving them around fences, gates and enclosures while following their handlers' whistles and commands. He had made his radio début with a feature on the Black Country's bull-rings and bull-stakes for the BBC Midland Region in 1947. He continued to make contributions for the next 13 years, especially to the rural programme Countrylover, before presenting its successors, Countryside and In the Country, himself. Drabble's television baptism came in 1952, when he was invited to show off his tame badger for a live broadcast and he was soon in demand for children's programmes. Then, in 1961, he left his day job to pursue writing and broadcasting full time and, three years later, began a weekly column in the Birmingham Evening Mail that ran until 1990. One Man and His Dog, screened on BBC2, brought him national fame, as well as more television work, beginning with the rural magazine programme Country Game (1976-79), presented by Julian Pettifer, then Angela Rippon, with Drabble as a contributor. more....
	Aileen Mills, radio actress and author, has died aged 96 (13 June 2007) Aileen Mills was one of radio's earliest soap stars, playing in At The Luscombes, which began as a West Country forerunner of The Archers; for a time, the Luscombes and their brood were the nation's favourite radio family. She was cast as Dot, a well-meaning but rather tiresome young woman, worrying mostly about what she was going to wear at the next dance, but whose character developed during the early 1950s into that of a responsible wife and mother. Launched in September 1948, in the days of valve-powered Bakelite wireless sets, and heard only in the West Region of the old Home Service, At The Luscombes was not the first radio soap opera (that was The Robinsons, later The Front Line Family); however the serial predated The Archers, which was piloted as a Midlands regional fixture in May 1949 before being networked on the Light Programme from January 1951. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s she contributed plays and stories to BBC radio. These included dramatisations of historical episodes for schools radio or Children's Hour, versions of old favourites such as Treasure Island and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and adaptations of HE Bates and Thomas Hardy. more....
	Dame Vera Lynn celebrates 90th Birthday (20 March 2007) Lords and ladies turned out to pay their respects to Britain's Forces' Sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn, who has just celebrated her 90th birthday. The House of Lords hosted a special party sponsored by the Royal British Legion in the first of half-a-dozen parties for a woman whose singing inspired the nation during the darkest days of war. As one of the guests told her: "You put a smile on everybody's face, even in those terrible times. Our wireless was always on." A sprightly Dame Vera, who said she felt like she was aged 60, was in chatty mood as she mingled with her friends. Even now she is engaged in charity work for many causes, not simply those involving ex-servicemen. She said: "I don't know where the years have gone. It is amazing what you can do for others. It is up to everybody to utilise whatever talents they have to use to help others inasmuch as they can. I hope I have spent my life well. I tried to do what I could to help others." more....
	Bill Threlfall, tennis player and commentator, has died aged 81 (12 March 2007) Following a career in the Fleet Air Arm during the War, Threlfall's life behind a microphone began with ITV in the 1950s. A spell with BBC Radio followed. His last broadcasts were done with Sky Sports, for whom his annual trips to New York for the US Open were always a highlight of the year. Threlfall will best be remembered, however, as a member of BBC-TV's commentary team at Wimbledon, where for some 30 years his mellifluous voice could be heard describing the action. As a former player who was still active as a coach, Threlfall spoke with authority about the game he loved and brought a sense of fun to his commentaries. more....
	Wally Ridley, EMI record producer, has died aged 93 (24 January 2007) In 1948, Wally Ridley persuaded the BBC to broadcast a radio series live from a theatre. The series starred Donald Peers and his signature tune, which Ridley found, was "Powder Your Face With Sunshine". Ridley expected the BBC to mock his suggestion of a radio series featuring a ventriloquist, but Educating Archie with Archie Andrews and Peter Brough captured 20 million listeners and made household names of Beryl Reid, Max Bygraves, Harry Secombe and Tony Hancock. "I always think that Eric Sykes was the genius behind that series as he wrote the scripts and created the catchphrases," said Ridley: "Max Bygraves stumbled over long lines and so he gave him short, little lines and it worked perfectly. When I made records with Maxie, I did exactly the same thing. I found him songs with short lines that he could punch in and we had lots of hits". The same year Ridley joined EMI Records to build up a popular catalogue for the HMV label. The label, decimated by shellac shortages during the Second World War, only had regular releases from Joe Loss and George Melachrino and their orchestras. Very soon, Ridley was having success with Peers, Bygraves, Ronnie Hilton, Malcolm Vaughan, Bert Weedon and Don Lang. There was also Alma Cogan, known as "the girl with the giggle". more....
	City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Concert - Workers' Playtime (posted 12 October 2006) Friday 1 December, 7.30pm at Symphony Hall, Birmingham Join the CBSO as they travel back across the airwaves to the bygone the age of the gramophone and wireless. In a glorious evening of British light music nostalgia, the Orchestra pays tribute to the long-running BBC radio programme Workers' Playtime on its 65th anniversary. Take a trip down memory lane with Elgar's Chanson de Matin, Wood's London Cameos, Sullivan's Iolanthe Overture, the theme tunes from The Forsyte Saga, In Town Tonight, Desert Island Discs, Dick Barton Special Agent, Workers' Playtime, and many more jaunty and well-loved British gems. Every composer featured in this concert has a fantastic gift of melody - come along tonight and you could be humming right through to Christmas! more....
	Sir Malcolm Arnold, composer and trumpeter, has died aged 84 (25 September 2006) Sir Malcolm Arnold had been composing since childhood, inspired, he once said, by a chance meeting with Duke Ellington in a Bournemouth tea room. Louis Armstrong was another influence. He wrote something like 130 film scores, ranging from his first. Avalanche Patrol, in 1947, to David Copperfield in 1969. Along the way, he collected a Hollywood Oscar, for his score for David Lean's film of The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). Other films on which he collaborated were I Am a Camera (1955), The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), The Angry Silence (1960), Tunes of Glory (1960) and Whistle Down the Wind (1961). He once claimed that he only wrote film music so that he could conduct it himself and so gain experience in this area. He may just have been teasing, because many of these scores were highly effective. During this period he also composed three operas and three ballets as well as a quantity of works for the concert hall. more....
	Frank Middlemass, character actor, has died aged 87 (12 September 2006) Florid-faced, bewhiskered and with a rich fruity voice, Frank Middlemass was one of Britain’s finest character actors. In a career that spanned more than 50 years, he appeared in seasons with the Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare companies, starred in numerous TV dramas and was best known on radio as Dan Archer in The Archers. His television career began in the early 1950s in series such as Dixon of Dock Green and Z-Cars, and he also starred in early live TV dramas. By the 1980s he was one of television’s busiest actors, appearing in a host of series including The Avengers, Soldier Soldier, Dr Finlay, Miss Marple and others. In 1992 he was one of the original cast of the crime series Heartbeat, playing Dr Alex Ferrenby for 21 episodes. "I very much regret being killed off in Heartbeat," he said. "It was one of my favourite roles." In 1993 he played Clive Parrott in the series A Year in Provence, opposite John Thaw. Middlemass’s film appearances were few but they were usually in distinguished productions such as Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975), in which he played Sir Charles Lyndon, and the award-winning Second World War drama, One Against the Wind (1991), starring Judy Davis. more....
	Archie Andrews is to make comeback (9 September 2006) Legendary ventriloquist’s doll Archie Andrews is set to return to the stage for the first time in nearly four decades, after his new owner revealed he is scripting a stage play charting the puppet’s life story. Colin Burnett-Dick, who bought Archie at auction for £34,000 last November had already also found a new ventriloquist to perform as part of the show - Eastbourne-based entertainer Steve Haylett. According to Burnett-Dick, the newly-announced production will be “a celebration, a tribute, a walk down memory lane” into the puppet’s past and will feature actors playing many of the famous names who appeared on Archie’s radio show in the forties and fifties, including Tony Hancock, Max Bygraves and Julie Andrews. He added: “We’re at the writing stage now. It’s going to be an autobiographical journey. It starts at the auction house where I bought Archie and will look back on his career up to then with ventriloquist Peter Brough.” The show will also include the performance of a complete episode from the Educating Archie radio series. Burnett-Dick is now looking for a producer for the show, which he hopes to have up and running in 2007 more....
	Margaret Hubble, radio broadcaster, has died aged 91 (9 September 2006) Margaret Hubble was a stalwart of the airwaves for some 30 years, first as chief announcer for the BBC African Service and later on such programmes as Forces Favourites, the wartime record-request show, and Family Favourites, its immensely popular peacetime successor. She was also a friendly velvet-voiced presence on Woman’s Hour, Children’s Hour and children’s television. She trained the presenter Jean Metcalfe before her debut. “Maggie showed me what to do,” Metcalfe recalled later. “ Turn the big black knob to open the microphone; talk sense with one half of your brain, while the other is reading the clock; never pause more than 15 seconds or the enemy will jam your wavelength; play Lillibullero before every news, and remember in an emergency ‘a good announcer has at hand a stirring military band’ .” She was a contributor to Children’s Hour on the Home Service and introduced a series called Saturday Excursion, a TV programme about travel to interesting places, which ran from 1953 to 1957. more....
	Maurice Bevan, baritone with the Deller Consort who also sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star on Listen with Mother has died aged 85 (21 July 2006) Maurice Bevan was for more than 40 years the baritone with the Deller Consort, the vocal ensemble that heralded the renaissance of English Baroque and pre-Baroque music. His singing career was rich and varied, and included a similar period with the choir of St Paul's Cathedral as well as contributing regularly to the BBC Home Service's programme Listen With Mother. Midway through Listen with Mother, a plummy voice would ring out: "And here is Maurice Bevan to sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." What followed would be a deep and resonant rendition of the nursery rhyme that would embed itself firmly in the psyche of many an impressionable toddler. So varied was Bevan's professional life that the same evening he might also be heard singing Compline - in an era when the BBC considered the service of the day worthy of broadcast. more....
	Hugh Latimer, radio, TV and stage actor has died aged 93 (24 June 2006) Hugh Latimer' was a handsome, unambitious actor familiar to West End playgoers and television viewers for several decades. In parallel with his busy stage career, Latimer appeared in the film spin off from the wireless series PC 49 and in Mrs Dale's Diary, playing Bob Dale in the latter. He was in television's Dixon of Dock Green and The Adventures of Robin Hood, Warship and Hunter's Walk, as well as The Dickie Henderson Show and Two in Clover, with Sid James. After making his film debut in Corridor of Mirrors (1946) he appeared in Stranger at the Door (1951), The Last Man to Hang (1956) and the crime story The Gentle Trap (1960). more....
	Richard Bebb, actor and connoisseur of the recorded voice, has died aged 79 (20 April 2006) Richard Bebb was an erudite actor on stage, screen and radio whose deep interest in the history of acting turned him into a distinguished collector and student of the recorded theatrical voice. In 1950 he began working regularly in radio and television. He shared the narration with Richard Burton in the original wireless production of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, and appeared in more than 1,000 broadcast plays. A prolific TV and film actor he often played doctors or upper-class figures. He made his TV debut in 1951 playing Octavius to Walter Hudd’s Julius Caesar and appeared in a string of drama series including Dangerman, Softly, Softly, Z Cars and Dixon of Dock Green. For several years he played Dr Harvest in the ITV lunchtime soap, Compact. He was Dr Orlov in Anna Karenina (1977) and Dr Stanhope in The Barchester Chronicles (1982). In recent years he was a regular face (and voiceover) in the Poirot series. more....
	William Davies, virtuoso pianist and master of the theatre organ, has died aged 84 (18 April 2006) Willaim Davies was a household name for listeners to the BBC Light Programme. He was one of the most versatile musicians of his time, equally at home at the piano or organ, or when composing, arranging and conducting. He made his first broadcasts for the BBC as accompanist for the “interludes” that were a feature of live wireless and became organist of the Gaumont Theatre, Wolverhampton, and later the Gaumont, Finchley. In 1953 he joined the Jack Hylton organisation as pianist, conductor and arranger — in particular at the Victoria Palace, where he worked with the Crazy Gang — while maintaining a very busy freelance career. This was the heyday of “Tin Pan Alley” and the golden age of light music. By 1956 he was a member of the London Studio Players, had his own quartet and went on to become the keyboard star in programmes such as MusicBox, Friday Night is Music Night and The Organist Entertains. With his own orchestra he made several series of Strings by Starlight. His extraordinary ability to improvise material to split-second timing was still in evidence in his seventies when he did a series of At the Piano broadcasts, playing fluently for precisely the required time, without rehearsal. more....
	Ken Sykora, musician and broadcaster, has died at the age of 82 (13 March 2006) Ken Sykora was, at the peak of his career, one of Britain's most popular radio personalities. A multi-award-winning broadcaster and musician, he made regular appearances on all the BBC's networks. He led his own band in the 1950s, performing with Ted Heath at the London Palladium and Geraldo at the old Stoll Theatre. He was voted Britain's top guitarist five years running in Melody Maker's Readers' Polls. Music led him into broadcasting and involvement in the creation of a veritable treasure trove of popular radio programming. He contributed to Today, Housewives' Choice, Radio Newsreel, Holiday Hour (with Cliff Michelmore), Home This Afternoon, and schools and sports programmes. The latter included the first radio series on sailing. He took part in the first experimental stereo broadcasts and the first use of radio cars on location. Sykora's radio career entered its third decade in the 1970s. He was still working as a regular host on those perennial favourites, You and Yours and Start the Week, when he and his family decided to fulfil an ambition to move to Scotland to run the Colintraive Hotel on the Kyles of Bute. more....
	Ernest Dudley, Crime writer and dramatist has died aged 98. (4 February 2006) Ernest Dudley was the pen name of Vivian Ernest Coltman-Allen. For enthusiasts of classic mystery fiction, his most enduring achievement was the creation of Dr Morelle, 'the man you love to hate!', psychoanalyst-detective and male chauvinist pig, whose detection powers were dazzling, but whose treatment of females, especially his fluttery secretary Miss Frayle, verged on the abominable. Overbearing, sarcastic, patronising, contemptuous, cruel and unusually vindictive, Morelle was nevertheless doted upon by millions of listeners to his adventures on the radio in the 1940s and 1950s. more....
	Phil Tate, who has died aged 83, led a popular dance band in the post-war years. (15 December 2005) In 1950 Tate took up a residency at Hammersmith Palais. His band, which shared the billing with Lou Preager's orchestra, featured the unique blend of three flutes and five saxophones. He began recording ballroom dance music for the Oriole label and, with the launch of commercial television in 1955, made regular Friday night appearances on the Associated Rediffusion show Palais Party. Tate hosted the weekly radio show Non-Stop Pop on the BBC Light Programme, in which he interviewed current pop stars, including the Beatles. He also made regular television appearances with the band on the BBC's Come Dancing. more....
	Ken Mackintosh, bandleader and saxophonist has died aged 86 (29 November 2005) Ken Mackintosh's suave orchestral accompaniments entertained London's West End. To dancers at the great London ballrooms of the Empire, Leicester Square, and the Hammersmith Palais, the name of Ken Mackintosh was synonymous with suave orchestral accompaniments, which he provided for more than 14 years in the 1960s and 1970s. To fans of Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey and Matt Monro, Mackintosh was the bandleader who frequently backed them on national tours. To enthusiasts of big band music, he was a musician who kept the spirit of the great 1940s swing dance orchestras alive, while providing more contemporary fare for younger audiences.
	Archie Andrews dummy sells for £34,000 (23 November 2005) A private collector has paid £34,000 for the original Archie Andrews dummy used by ventriloquist Peter Brough in the 1950s radio show, Educating Archie. The dummy sold for more than double the £15,000 estimate at Taunton auctioneers Greenslade Taylor Hunt on Tuesday, where it was sold by Brough's family. more....
	Actress Avril Angers has died aged 87 (11 November 2005) Avril Angers was one of the most zestful, charming and reliable character comediennes in the post-war London theatre; she also appeared in television series such as Dad's Army, All Creatures Great and Small, Are You Being Served?, Minder, Coronation Street and The Tomorrow People. Her comic persona flourished on stage and television, particularly in provincial pantomime and in television partnerships with comedians like Benny Hill, Arthur Askey, Frankie Howerd, Terry-Thomas and Les Dawson, and in shows such as Dad's Army and Coronation Street. She started broadcasting for the BBC radio service in 1944. It was when she was in Cairo with the troops that Douglas Moodlie saw her as a future radio personality, and Variety Bandbox gave her her big chance; followed by more than a year with the Carroll Levis radio show. She had a topical musical slot called Look Back with Angers on the BBC radio show Roundabout, from which she was upset to be "given a rest" in 1959. From the 1930s through to the 1950s, she was a fixture as a cartoon character in Radio Fun, in a comic strip entitled The Adventures of Avril Angers more....
	Archers star Mary Wimbush dies at 81 (1 November 2005) Actress Mary Wimbush, who played Julia Pargetter-Carmichael on The Archers for 13 years, has died at the age of 81. Wimbush, a familiar voice on BBC radio for more than 60 years, died at the BBC's Birmingham studios shortly after finishing recording on Monday night. Julia was the actress' third major role in the BBC Radio 4 soap. She previously played village schoolteacher Elsie Catcher and Lady Isabel Lander. In 1946 she married the well-known actor Howard Marion-Crawford, a favourite of radio drama producers on both the Home Service and the new Third Programme, although the marriage did not last long. But both the Home and the Third were to become second home to her, especially during the 1950s through to the 1970s, when she was seldom out of the BBC studios. Jenny Abramsky, director of BBC Radio and Music, said Wimbush had been "part of the fabric of BBC Radio drama since her first broadcast in 1945". more....
	Comedy actor, Ronnie Barker has died aged 76 (4 October 2005) For more than 20 years Ronnie Barker was one of the leading figures of British television comedy. He was much loved and admired for his appearances in the long-running series The Two Ronnies, with Ronnie Corbett, as prison inmate Fletcher, in the series Porridge, and as Arkwright, the bumbling, stuttering, sex-obsessed shopkeeper in Open All Hours. It was during the 1950s that he broke into radio. He was in 300 editions of The Navy Lark as A B Johnson (also known by the nickname 'Fatso'). Ronnie Barker first worked with Ronnie Corbett in The Frost Report and Frost on Sunday, programmes for which he also wrote scripts. In 1971 they teamed up for the first Two Ronnies. BBC Obituary... Telegraph Obituary Independent Obituary... Times Obituary...
	Composer, trumpeter and arranger Robert Farnon has died aged 87 (24 April 2005) Bob Farnon composed many light music cameos for Chappell Music Publishers, primarily for use as background music in newsreels etc, but many of these pieces were recorded by Bob's and other orchestras, and often became familiar through their use as radio and TV signature tunes. Among his very well known compositions are 'Portrait Of A Flirt', 'Jumping Bean', 'Journey Into Melody', 'Melody Fair', 'Westminster Waltz' and 'Manhattan Playboy'. more....
	Singing star Kathie Kay, 86, dies (9 March 2005) Big band singing legend Kathie Kay, who belonged to a well-known Glasgow family, has died at the age of 86. Her big break came in the 1950s when she was made resident singer on Billy Cotton's Band Show, which later switched from radio to television. more....
	Sound archive calls for lost relics (5 February 2004) The British Library National Sound Archive are hoping that a rummage in the attic might unearth valuable radio recordings from the 1940s, 50s or 60s, or private recordings from earlier. While the archive has plenty of old-fashioned home tape players, gramophones and wax cylinder phonographs, it is keen to get hold of some of the rarer formats. The archive's Noel Sidebottom said: "We are particularly keen to get hold of dictating machines for the extinct tape formats." more....
	Andrew Dodds, prolific illustrator of books, newspapers and 'Radio Times' has died aged 77 (7 January 2005) When, in 1951, the Radio Times wanted an artist to draw characters for the new broadcast serial The Archers, they made a shrewd choice in Andrew Dodds. He had been brought up on a farm and had illustrated for Farmers Weekly. Dodds created faces that would become inseparable from Dan and Doris Archer and their family. His models were close at hand: Dan was based on a neighbouring farmer near his home in Essex, Doris on Dodds's redoubtable mother Margaret, also a farmer. Through to 1970, Dodds produced over 300 drawings for Radio Times. He was included in R.D. Usherwood's book Drawing for Radio Times (1961) and BBC Publications' The Art of Radio Times (1981) and was chosen by Martin Baker for the exhibition "Artists of Radio Times" at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 2002. more....
	Cyril Fletcher has died aged 91 (2 January 2005) Cyril Fletcher delivered odd odes in strangulated Cockney tones and was a surprising hit with television and radio audiences in a broadcasting career spanning more than sixty years. With his distinctive nasal twang and his contagious bonhomie Cyril Fletcher was one of Britain's most popular comedians. In the post-war years, he was a regular in three series of the classic 1950s panel game What's My Line? and appeared in the first religious series, Sunday Story. He and his wife starred in Bob Monkhouse and Denis Goodwin's BBC sketch special Cyril's Saga (1957) and in the six-part series The Cyril Fletcher Show (1959), scripted by Johnny Speight. Fletcher was also a regular member of the panel in the BBC radio show Does the Team Think? As well as delivering his distinctive ditties, Cyril Fletcher was also, in his time, a cabaret artist, gardening expert and proud countryman. more....
	Sidonie Goossens, the celebrated harpist ,has died aged 105 (16 December 2004) Sidonie Goossens had a professional career as an orchestral player which lasted for nearly 70 years, probably an unrivalled achievement. She was the first solo harpist to broadcast, in 1923, and the first to appear on television, in 1936; the same year, she made front-page news in July when she was one of 50 Britons rescued from Barcelona by the destroyer Gallant when the Spanish Civil War broke out. She had been on holiday on the Costa Brava. Who could forget her harp introduction to 'Mrs. Dale's Diary'? more....
	Molly Weir, the actress, has died aged 94 (29 November 2004) At the start of her career, it was her distinctive Scottish accent and talent as a mimic in the 1940s which launched her as a member of the radio sketch show It's That Man Again (ITMA) where she became known to millions of radio listeners as Tattie McIntosh. When the show ended with the death of Tommy Handley, she continued her radio work, and went on to another big success as Aggie in Life With the Lyons, which later transferred to television. She went on to write a best-selling cookery book, eight volumes of autobiography and radio scripts for Woman's Hour, Children's Hour and Home This Afternoon. more....
	Music hall star Billy "Uke" Scott has died aged 81 (23 November 2004) Billy inspired three generations of ukelele players, composing, singing and writing a "teach-yourself" ukelele manual. A popular radio performer (he was one of the biggest variety stars in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s), his ability received its own tribute on BBC radio when, in a Goon Show script of 1954, Peter Sellers says: "Thank you, thank you. Tonight I have included in my repertoire Schubert's violin sonata, guest soloist Billy 'Uke' Scott." more.... Biography website
	Max Geldray, harmonica player with The Goons, has died aged 88 (6 October 2004) Geldray, known as "Conk" to listeners, performed alongside Goons Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Michael Bentine and Harry Secombe on the show. He was frequently introduced with such lines as "Mr Max Geldray will now play his new record in a reclining position", followed by "That was Mr Max Geldray imitating music". On occasion, he also had a speaking part, in which he never felt entirely at ease, not least because the others would ad lib with abandon. After he had stumbled his way through his lines the audience would be amiably assured that Mr Geldray was "the world's worst actor". He was also credited as the world's first jazz harmonica player, performing with Django Reinhardt in the 1930s. more....
	Les Ward - the surviving half of the musical novelty act Albert and Les Ward - has died at his Cardiff home, aged 82. (13 September 2004) The Ward Brothers had appeared on many of variety’s biggest bills from the thirties until the early seventies. They predated artistes such as Lonnie Donegan and Chas McDevitt with their own version of skiffle, playing guitars, bicycle pumps, washboards and virtually anything - from kitchen or garden - that could accompany their country and western songs. Albert and Les Ward became household names in the fifties on the BBC radio show "Welsh Rarebit". They made many comedy records and regularly appeared on radio shows such as "Variety Bandbox" and "Worker’s Playtime" They were regular guests on "Ignorance Is Bliss" being billed as “musical indiscretions with the Foulharmonic Orchestra”. In the late fifties they were regularly featured as a leading support act at the London Palladium appearing with American stars such as Johnny Ray. They also appeared with Judy Garland at the Dominion Theatre. Albert Ward died in 2001.
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