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Advent Calendar Day 24: Turkey Carving, Live!

2016-12-24T08:00:00+00:00

It's Christmas Day, 1936. Almost two months ago, the �� had officially launched the world's first high definition television service from its studios at Alexandra Palace in North London.

What better way to kick-start the Christmas Day programming for the few and lucky television viewers than... a live demonstration of turkey carving at 3:15pm, pictured above, followed by a newsreel and a talk by Edward Shackleton about his Lonely Christmas in the Arctic.

And with that depiction of life in 1936 we leave you, not without first wishing you a very Merry Christmas. Don't forget to unwrap our Christmas present and download a PDF version of the 1941 Christmas Radio Times by clicking on this link.

Meet Helen Clare, wartime �� star

2016-10-31T11:48:38+00:00

Of all the letters we get from people who have found themselves through the �� Genome listings, one of our favourites is the one that brought us to the attention of wartime �� star Helen Clare, who will be 100 in November and was a regular broadcaster with the �� through the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

You might have just seen her at the ��'s The One Show, as she was visited by Petula Clark.

Helen Clare on Calling Gibraltar

Her friend Simon Robinson wrote to tell us about her past, and she subsequently featured in a Radio Times article and was interviewed by the ��. We were also able to play her some of her old recordings we found in the �� archive.

She thinks efforts like �� Genome are vital to the history of broadcasting.

"We didn't think of a programme's significance at the time of making it, or that people would ask about it years after. Now there is a permanent and accessible online resource to benefit not only historians but the public in general. In my time with the �� from 1936-1960 the world changed a great deal and the �� programmes were part of that change and history."

"Now it is possible to see not only what was popular in a specific year but what was actually broadcast on a particular day. I could look and find out for instance what I was broadcasting on this day in 1938, 1944 or 1954, it's unbelievable", she added.

Helen Clare on the Radio Times cover, third from the right

One look at the �� Genome listings shows you the scope of her career. She is first listed in the 1930s making frequent appearances on radio singing with Jack Jackson and his Band at the Dorchester Hotel. Helen Clare was also one of the pioneers of early television broadcasts appearing in Cabaret Cartoons in 1937. During the Second World War, she made it to the cover of the Radio Times in September 1940 as one of the "three heroines of salvage".

She was a well-known voice on radio shows broadcast to the forces abroad. She sang and compered It's All Yours, a programme featuring children sending messages and songs to their fathers, uncles and brothers serving with the British Forces in remote areas around the world; she sang soldiers' requests on Calling Gibraltar.

Helen Clare was shown the more than 900 �� Genome listings that mentioned her and said it was a surprise to see just how many programmes she had been on.

"It really does bring back memories and recollections of all the people I have worked with in the past. So many wonderful performers and most of them are gone now, but they live on in this. I'm currently contributing to my biography due out in 2017 and it has been wonderful as an aid for checking details of key programmes I was involved in."

You can find out more information about Helen Clare on her website, helenclare.com

The recording of It's All Yours, 1944

Man of mystery

2015-09-30T09:00:00+00:00

Kuda Bux made several appearances on �� television in the 1930s and 40s

What is the gentleman in this photograph doing? And who is he?

This is a moment from the early days of �� television before the outbreak of World War Two. The man was called Kuda Bux, and one of his appearances in 1939 was treated with a meaty write-up the listings - quite rare at the time. In more brief listings, he was always known as The Man With X-Ray Eyes.

"With his eyes completely bound up he is able to see exactly what is going on before him," it enthuses.

Kuda Bux was born in Kashmir in 1906 and became famous for his feat of covering his eyes with wads of dough and swathes of bandages - but was able to copy pieces of text and even light a set of candles, apparently without the power of sight. His repertoire of tricks was extensive.

The entertainer and illusionist - sometimes referred to as a 'mystic' - went on to be feted in the US and lived there for much of his life. By some cruel irony, he lost his sight to glaucoma in old age.

We'll occasionally bring you more from the sometimes weird and wonderful world of early TV entertainment here...

On This Day, 1950: Television crosses the Channel

2015-08-27T08:10:13+00:00

Laying of the television camera cable across the railway track at Calais Maritime.

"Tonight brings another exciting moment in the history of the �� Television Service", announces the listing on the Radio Times, August 27, 1950. "Exactly a hundred years after the first message was sent by submarine telegraph cable between England and France, the first television pictures are transmitted across the sea from one nation to another."

On that day, the first outside broadcast from the continent was made in a one hour special called Television Crosses the Channel, presented by Richard Dimbleby.

Richard Dimbleby.

The audience were able to watch live images from the Hotel de Ville in Calais, and a long programme of civic celebration and entertainment.

An article on the Radio Times warned: "On Sunday, August 27, the pictures might not be as good as we would like. They might cease. But if they do come, then think as you watch the French faces, as you hear the French voices, of what there is in this moment. In the floodlit square will be television, the new wonder. In the shadows beyond will be stirring the excitement that men felt one hundred years ago when a message passed along a rubber-covered cable laid slowly and painfully on the bed of the sea, the thoughts of the Guards fighting their way back to England, the history of centuries. Even if the hour planned becomes only the glimpse of a moment, it will still be a great moment."

And 65 years later, you can still watch a clip about how the transmission was achieved. Just go to the �� Genome listing and click on the link to watch it on the �� iPlayer - this is just one of the more than 8,500 radio and television programmes that you can now find while browsing through our listings.

The Sunday Post: Cookery

2015-08-02T09:00:00+00:00

Philip Harben

Demonstrating the arcane and byzantine processes of cookery has been one of the mainstays of broadcasting since its earliest days. The first definite instance of a cookery programme listed on Genome is in 1924 on 5SC Glasgow, where a Miss Dunnett of the Glasgow and West of Scotland College of Domestic Science gave a talk on the subject in the series Topics for Women.

In 1923 Mrs C.S. Peel had given a talk entitled Kitchen Conversation but it is not clear exactly what that was about… All the early cookery programmes were of a similar nature, with speakers, all female, discussing the subject in series such as Women’s Half-Hour from 5NO Newcastle and 5IT Birmingham’s Women’s Corner, and Ada Featherstone giving her Cookery Talk to Women programmes from 6BM Bournemouth. The first mention of a man in relation to cooking is in Children’s Hour from 6FL Sheffield on 15th December 1926, in which one of the 'uncles' was to begin a cookery class.

Gardener C.H. Middleton and Chef Marcel Boulestin

Some of the earliest radio and television personalities were cooks and chefs, from the suave and sophisticated M. Marcel Boulestin, the pre-war French restaurateur who instructed in the mysteries of dishes from 'salade' and 'khebab' to exciting flambéd creations that threatened to set light to your curtains (in a rare holistic approach, he even presented some shows along with the TV gardener C.H. Middleton, to show where the ingredients came from) – to the presenters of post-war cookery shows on radio like Marguerite Patten, who advised on making the most of your rations, then TV chef Philip Harben, the eccentric Fanny Cradock, and through the 70s, 80s and beyond with Delia Smith and the current cornucopia of culinary experts… not forgetting Jimmy Young and his daily recipe on Radio 2.

Fanny Cradock

You have to take your hat off to the early TV cooks, who were risking their reputations by trying to make dishes live. Television of course lent itself far more to the demonstration of culinary skills, as radio had to confine itself to the straight talk, with only the fluency of the speaker to excite the appetite. M. Boulestin first broadcast in 1927, giving a talk entitled Wastage in the Kitchen.

He is credited with popularising French cuisine in Britain, ran several successful and acclaimed restaurants and wrote several cook books. Tragically, he was in France when that country fell to the Germans in 1940, and died in 1943 before it was liberated. The earliest television cookery programmes included Boulestin’s series Cook’s Night Out which gives a clue as to the income bracket of the first television viewers. There was a simplicity to the recipes attempted, given the time available.

Sometimes programmes verged on the bizarre, with a Christmas Day programme on how best to carve your turkey – were people having Christmas dinner in front of the television even then?

Every Sunday, Andrew Martin will be guiding you through the history of broadcasting by digging out archive gems and information from the �� Genome listings.

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