Today, 30 January, is the anniversary of the State Funeral of , who died aged 90 in 1965. 

There are a number of occasions in recent years – for example the death of Princess Diana and 9/11 – where the Ö÷²¥´óÐã schedules were necessarily abandoned or radically altered on the day itself and some days following. Of course these last-minute changes could not be reflected in the magazine, which was already printed, so the Genome listings are different from the actual transmissions. 

Because Sir Winston died on a Sunday, and the funeral was set for the following Saturday, the planned edition of Radio Times could be scrapped, and a new version published with a .

However, the television listings in the magazine for that Saturday only list the , not any other programmes, although much of what was scheduled was actually still broadcast.

When the 50th anniversary of the funeral came round two years ago, we decided to rectify the omission – partly to see what issues might arise when we went about fixing similar problems on other problematic dates, and also to see what sort of thing we could do with Genome in the future – displaying the actual transmission details instead of just the scheduled programmes. 

We were fortunately able to source a rare copy of the original version of that week’s Radio Times, with the planned schedule, which gave us the synopsis and contributors for those planned programmes which were still transmitted on 30 January.  Other information, such as the exact transmission times, came from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã records of what was shown on the day.

Sir Winston Churchill's funeral was a historic event, and one of the most memorable television occasions of the 1960s.  It was also one of the last major state occasions commentated upon by , the veteran Ö÷²¥´óÐã reporter, war correspondent and presenter, who sadly died the following December.

Here at we've decided to give you an early Christmas present: the chance to the 1941 Christmas issue of Radio Times. This slimmer magazine is a poignant reminder of life under World War II, as the Both Sides of the Microphone column on page 2 attests:

"No need to stress the obvious fact that Christmas 1941 will be, in a material sense, only a shadow of the Christmases most of us have known. The family table will not groan as of old under a weight of good fare. There will be vacant chairs at the table, more poignantly vacant on the great day of family festival than on any other day. Nevertheless, it is Christmas, and none can escape it, even if there were any Scrooges still around so foolish as to wish to. Christmas 1941 may be all too different from other Christmases: it will still be different from every other day in 1941."

But we'll let you discover this fascinating historical document by yourself.  Download a PDF version of the 1941 Christmas Radio Times by  It's our way of saying thank you for your loyal following, for sharing your discoveries with us, for helping make Ö÷²¥´óÐã Genome a better data source by editing it, and for being so patient with the latest technical problems. We hope you enjoy it!

 (And yes, this would be Advent Calendar Day 19)

Today's calendar window opens up to reveal a poem. It featured in the of the Radio Times magazine and then again in 1927 as part of a collection of poems about broadcasting. "It is not a strange thing", the introduction to the collection claimed, "that men have
made poems about broadcasting for this new magic, which pours the music of the concert room into the stillness of the cottage and brings the song of nightingales into the heart of Town, is of the very stuff of poetry."

BROADCASTING AT CHRISTMAS
by

What is it, fleeter than the bird,
That flies unfluttering far and near,
And is not seen, and is not heard,
Until it finds the listening ear?

It is the multitudinous voice,
That brings the good news far and wide,
And bids good people to rejoice
In town and in the countryside.

Of old, the angels bore the great
Tidings of joy from the high skies,
But here's a messenger of late
Bears Christmas tidings as he flies!

And through the speech and violin
There is a lovelier message swells,
And they have broadcast ChristmasE'en,
The voices of the Christmas bells.

Ever enamoured with the magic of the wireless, here at Ö÷²¥´óÐã Genome we feel it's still magical. Do you agree?

Forty-nine years ago, on 30 September 1967, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã launched . It was not the first time the Ö÷²¥´óÐã had started a new service to cater to a specific audience, but unlike, say, the , it was not begun for its own sake, but to replace the ‘pirate’ radio stations which had sprung up in the early 1960s, and which had been outlawed in August 1967.

Commercial radio in Britain was not to be sanctioned officially until 1973 with the launch of LBC in London, but calls for it dated back to the 1930s. Faced with the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s diet containing plenty of serious music and talks, occasionally leavened with lighter fare, many people sought something else to listen to, especially on when the Reithian ideal of sober contemplation meant that there was little of what could be classed as entertainment.

was the first of a number of stations which grew up to feed this demand, and they were funded by advertising, which the Ö÷²¥´óÐã had rejected even before it became a public corporation in 1927. The original British Broadcasting Company was paid for by licences to receive transmissions and by a levy on radio sets sold. Despite it being a conglomerate of commercial businesses, the Post Office, who then oversaw broadcasting, decided not to fund the Ö÷²¥´óÐã by sponsored programmes – a model that remains to this day.

Although commercial broadcasting ceased during the War, with the continental stations used to disseminate propaganda by the Nazis, they began again afterwards, and were still popular. The Ö÷²¥´óÐã had started the in 1940, which carried a far greater proportion of popular material, and it eventually morphed into the in 1945. However by the 1950s, with the advent of teenagers as a recognised demographic category, it was clear to many that this section of the population was not being catered for by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã.

The few programmes playing rock and roll music, such as on radio, and and on television (and their ITV competitors such as Oh Boy! and Thank Your Lucky Stars) failed to satisfy the youthful audience. Entrepreneurs realised that there was a loophole in the law which allowed them to set up radio stations outside British territorial waters. Thus the likes of Radio London and Radio Caroline were added to the ranks of the continental commercial stations (whose signals had notoriously variable reception).

These 'pirates' were able to play a diet of almost continuous pop music, interspersed and paid for by commercials and fully sponsored programmes, with no Ö÷²¥´óÐã or ITA to tell them what to do. Influenced by American radio stations, the style was fast and chatty, and far more eccentric styles were sanctioned than the Ö÷²¥´óÐã allowed. The new DJs were recruited from various sources, including some people who had experience in America and other parts of the world where broadcasting styles were less formal than the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s. Some could have worked for the Ö÷²¥´óÐã but preferred the freedom of the 'pirate' stations.

Though the 'pirates' were highly popular, their unregulated use of radio frequencies caused problems, and there were complaints from shipping and other maritime users. Long before the UK joined the EEC, there was a Europe-wide agreement that such stations needed to be regulated. The British government, in the person of , the Postmaster General, stepped in with the Marine, &c, Broadcasting (Offences) Act in 1967. The act had the practical effect of making it illegal to run any part of the pirate operation from the UK, which made staffing, supplying and administering the stations impractical.

Because it was recognised how popular the 'pirates' had been, and to fend off growing complaints about the lack of coverage of popular music on Ö÷²¥´óÐã radio and television, as part of a review of its radio stations at this time, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã decided that a new service aimed at young people, and featuring large amounts of pop music, would be created.

As the existing Ö÷²¥´óÐã station names were to be discarded (though they in fact remained on the billings for a while after the official change-over to allow people to get used to the new names), it was decided to allocate the prominent name Radio 1 to the new service.  would replace the Light Programme,  took the place of Network Three (which incorporated the Third Programme, Music Programme and other services) and the old Ö÷²¥´óÐã Service would become .

Because of the shortage of wavelengths however, and lack of money to create the new service, Radio 1 at first (and for a number of years as it turned out) was to share output with for part of each day, most prominently in the early evening. There was also a limit on the amount of recorded music (i.e. commercial records) that could be used, due to the 'needletime' agreements with the Musicians' Union. 

One effect of this restriction though was that some programmes were able to get specially recorded versions of songs by the original bands, and so the legendary '' were born. These have become a sought-after source of alternative versions of material by many of the best acts of the period, with a rawer and more authentic sound than the original records.

Until the 'needletime' agreement ended in 1988, Radio 1 bolstered the schedule as well with news, features, and even comedy and drama from time to time, as well as a far greater degree of chat between the records than had been the norm on the 'pirates' – though of course there were no commercials to fill up the airtime on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã.

The original personnel of Radio 1 were a mixed bunch. As airtime was shared, as mentioned above, with Radio 2 for part of the day, the musical content was not all chart pop, there was also jazz, folk, blues, even easy listening, as the station was charged with encompassing all non-'serious' musical genres. 

Disc Jockeys from the pirate stations were the most obvious imports to the Ö÷²¥´óÐã roster of presenters, and their anarchic style was the freshest element of the new service. Names such as Tony Blackburn, (who famously opened the service with Flowers in the Rain by the Move), , , and contrasted with more familiar or less outlandish or 'alternative' voices such as , (the former host of Six-Five Special) and an import from Ireland who had been broadcasting for only a year on the Light Programme beforehand, – the last three would become more identified with Radio 2 as time went on.

, who had become one of the most popular 'pirate' DJs, was only given occasional shows, perhaps because since earlier in 1967 he had been hosting his own chat show on Ö÷²¥´óÐã television. One other notable absence from the new service was any female DJs, and it would not be until 1970 that became the first woman to present a regular show. It would be some time before there was a second, , in 1982, and female DJs have gradually become less of a novelty.

One sensibility that was carried over from the 'pirates' was the notion of publicising the new service, to an extent that the Ö÷²¥´óÐã had not indulged in before. Certainly, a lot of fuss was made at the launch, with a colourful Radio Times cover plugging Radio 1, and there was coverage on the television news. Another novelty for the Ö÷²¥´óÐã was the use of jingles – insisted on by the DJs who had experience of the way they helped establish the identity of pop stations.

One innovation that had immediate success when it was launched on 21 October 1968 was the , which was both an actual club and a programme. It was presented from around the country, but it had its 'base' at the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's Paris Studio on Lower Regent Street, London. In time this evolved into a national institution – the , where the network would visit different parts of the country and stage live outdoor shows. These ended in 1999, and have eventually been succeeded by the . Radio 1 has also ventured abroad, such as its regular visits to the club scene on Ibiza.

Obviously the mainstay of Radio 1 soon became a succession of shows playing pop music, and it became identified with that genre alone. That said, it did retain specialist music shows, such as the heavier or progressive sounds of , or the , as well as John Peel who was with the station from the start until his untimely death in 2004, a champion of new music whose like it is difficult to imagine emerging again.

Radio 1 has however always varied the music diet with other material, especially in the evenings once it got a frequency virtually all to itself in January 1979 (only the 5-6 am and post-midnight hours were then shared with Radio 2). It has featured comedy shows, from the early Kenny Everett shows (when he was not getting himself fired) through Eric Idle’s post-Monty Python series , to later series such as and Lee and Herring’s .

The station has also been notable for its campaigns aimed at younger listeners, using its popularity to put over messages about drugs, health issues such as , and help with careers and the search for a job, especially when youth unemployment was very high. There have also been regular 'agony aunt/uncle' programmes like ' .  Radio 1 has also had its own news programme, , since 1973, which like Newsround on television has presented a more accessible version of current events, though as the target age is older, the normal news agenda is covered.

One programme however perhaps encapsulates Radio 1 more than any other, it is the Breakfast show, the highest-rated show on the network. It has been the ultimate accolade for some, and a bit of a disaster for others whose style as a presenter just does not work in that slot. From the early days with Tony Blackburn, succeeding generations have had their own favourite presenter, whether , , , or the present incumbent, Nick Grimshaw.

In channels with more generalised broadcasting, series come and go over time, but with this kind of radio, the only real change comes when one presenter is replaced by another. If ratings are good, or reasonable, it can be a brave move to change the presenter and risk losing listeners who are used to a familiar voice, unless it is the presenter who wishes to go, or there are other reasons to dispense with them.

One of the most controversial eras in the history of Radio 1 was when Matthew Bannister was appointed to take charge of the network.  He saw that the DJs broadcasting were generally far older than the target audience, and decided to start trying to ease them out of their familiar and unchallenging jobs. One person who he saw as part of the answer was Chris Evans, then an independent radio DJ and television host, and Bannister appointed him to host the breakfast show.

After a period of upheaval when Radio 1 was often in the headlines, things quietened down, and in 1997 Chris Moyles was established as the new 'saviour of Radio 1', a title bestowed on successive new talents who came in when things were deemed to be looking difficult for the station.

In more recent time, digital broadcasting has led to innovations such as sister station and podcasting. The station has been a 24 hour network since 1991, the sharing of airspace with radio 2 having been phased out by 1982, and in 1994 Radio 1 became an FM only service, having only had dedicated FM coverage over the whole country since 1988.

Having had its fair share of ups and downs over the years, Radio 1 is often attacked for doing something that its commercial rivals also do – the same charge in some ways that is levelled at Ö÷²¥´óÐã One, and is the inevitable price of being a popular channel. It struggles sometimes to attract listeners in its stated target age range, with a good chunk of listeners having stuck with it even when they are not 'supposed to' – but the notion that people would evolve into listeners of more sophisticated matter perhaps owes more to paternalistic idealism than an understanding of human nature.

Radio 1 is now established as an essential part of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s output. There were those who viewed it as an abomination when it began, a sign of a decline in the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's standards.  It has however provided a lot of enjoyment to its listeners, and even done some good with its education and advice programmes, and at times by featuring innovative music rather than just the most popular chart material – though that has never stopped criticism that it does just that.

What are your thoughts, feelings, memories and criticisms of Radio 1? Is there still a place for it in the internet age of downloads and streaming?  Over to you, pop-pickers...

Woman's Hour in the Light Programme on October 7th 1946. It made it to the cover of the magazine, and a feature inside explained the programme would include "talks on household management, cookery, fashion, beauty culture, child care, housing, and pensions." The presenter was Alan Ivimey, a "London-born journalist who specialises in writing for and talking to women" - he was replaced three months later by Joan Griffiths.

featured  subjects such as "putting your best face forward', "how to take care of your feet", coupon savings and pensions. The listing for each day of that first week on air was highlighted in a beautifully illustrated box.

 

The first programme was followed by hearing the programme in Broadcasting House. The panel consisted of "Miss Margaret Bondfield, who was Minister of Labour from 1929-1931, Miss Deborah Kerr, the film star, and Mrs. Elsie May Crump, a butcher's wife from Chorlton-cum-Hardy."

Five years later, deputy programme editor Joanna Scott-Mancrief summed up some of the controversies stirred by the programme through their listeners' letters. She describes how  "brought hundreds of brickbats and bouquets" including the letter from a listener at Gorleston-on-Sea: "Englishwomen cook what their menfolk want to eat. The average husband, faced by some delectable French concoction, will view it with grave suspicion and enquire: 'What's this?'"

She also highlights a letter asking Woman's Hour to start a "vigorous campaign". "We as women of the country are everlastingly referred to as 'housewives.' The Government, the newspapers, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã, the shopkeepers, all and everyone call us housewives. Couldn't we find some more attractive noun for ourselves? Please talk it over and see what you can do."

The deputy editor wrote again in 1956 about how the programme had evolved in the first ten years of life: "In 1946 housewives' problems were so many and pressing that the stress in the first programmes was inevitably on practical matters. In ten years listeners have, however, shown us that their interests are as wide as the world itself: accordingly,  abroad and acquired its own correspondents in five different countries."

Fast-forward to 1967, when Woman's Hour with a series of "birthday fortnight" special editions.  "Although those of us who produce the programme had not planned any special celebration, listeners have been writing to us throughout the year to remind us of our birthday, sending greetings and suggesting items they would like to hear", wrote Monica Sims, editor of the programme at the time.

Items that week included  a couple  and

She announced some favourite guests and broadcasters would be " and hoped that for the next 21 years listeners would "enjoy many happy returns of Woman's Hour."

 

Woman's Hour did indeed continue on air in 1986 and made it to the cover of Radio Times for its 40th anniversary. The main article described the programme as "the first to break the Ö÷²¥´óÐã taboos surrounding such things as   and ". Programme editor Sandra Chalmers added that "we would never do something purely for the sake of shocking people, "but if it's in the interests of our listeners, there's nothing that can't be discussed."

The was celebrated in 1996 with a cover featuring a semi-nude photograph of actor Helen Mirren, at "50 & Fabulous". Presenter Jenni Murray told how in 1992 "the programme came under threat. It was suggested that in a 'post-feminist' era its time, title and focus should change, you the listeners gave the reasons why it should continue - in an unprecedented furore directed at the then controller Michael Green (who now openly admits to travelling in permanent terror of being handbagged wherever he went)". 

"You told him the programme celebrated, informed, entertained and educated women, filling in the gaps that other programmes ignored. Some of you wrote to say how Woman's Hour had changed your life - giving you the courage to apply for a job, or you'd been putting off. Some of you spoke of smears or mammograms you'd had because you heard it on Woman's Hour. The programme had saved your life. Men, too, wrote in to save 'their' programme - explaining how they loved to hear a female perspective, or how they now understood their wife's illness considerably better after hearing it described.

Woman's Hour will be celebrating its 70th birthday on October 10th. The panel will discuss the results of a poll specially commissioned to find out how life has changed for women at home and at work from 1946 to the present day. In the meantime, our suggestion is to search for different topics + the term "Woman's Hour" and organise it by Oldest First - this gives you a fascinating glimpse at how the programme has tackled different subjects through the decades. We've tried  and  What have you found?

 

Here at Genome we face a lot of challenges with our extensive database. One of them is the days and weeks of schedules and individual programmes that do not currently appear on the website.

There are a number of issues behind these gaps in the record.  For example, prior to the start of Radio Times in , there were about nine months of Ö÷²¥´óÐã programmes since the Company (as it then was) was founded, which we have not yet been able to include.  These will probably have to be pieced together from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s records of its actual transmissions.

We also have some gaps where no issue of Radio Times was published for other reasons – there is a full list in the , but here are the details:

14 May 1926 was the first time Radio Times was not published. This was due to the General Strike, which saw almost all newspapers and periodicals stop publication for the duration. 

21 and 28 February 1947 saw the next gaps, as the very severe winter led to a fuel crisis, which also saw the recently returned television service and the new-born Third Programme closed temporarily. 

A printing dispute meant that the 8 September and 13, 20 and 27 October issues in 1950 did not come out.  A similar dispute in 1956 meant that RT was printed in France in broadsheet newspaper format, though at least in that case the details are available.

There were no problems for some time after that, apart from a few occasions where national editions were published due to limitations on printing facilities. An issue was missed on 1 August 1981, the issue following the week of Royal Wedding of Charles and Diana – luckily missing the huge demand for that number. In 1983, printing disputes meant that issues from 2 and 9 April and 3 December did not appear.

As well as whole weeks being absent, there are also days where problems have arisen due to unforeseen circumstances, when planned programmes did not go out. These include momentous world events like 9/11 and the death of Princess Diana, which resulted in the schedules being abandoned or severely altered not just on the day the events occurred, but for days or even weeks afterward.  Past events of a similar nature include the deaths of monarchs and the outbreak of wars.  

For example, Radio Times was published as usual on 1 September 1939, only for it to be superseded by the outbreak of World War Two.  An amended schedule was presented on the following Monday, , though the preceding weekend was incompletely presented as a result, with the replacement of the National and Regional Programmes by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Service, and the closure of the Television Service, on 1 September.

In another instance, the assassination of President Kennedy on 22 November 1963, the was only slightly changed though there were some additional programmes, proving controversial when the scheduled episode of the Harry Worth comedy Here’s Harry was transmitted despite the grim news.

There are also many individual programmes which were not transmitted for one reason or another – and unscheduled programmes that were broadcast in their place.

At the moment, we are confined to publishing what was scheduled in Radio Times, and then only what was listed in a single regional issue, usually the London or South-East of England area.  The original Radio Times covered the whole country in one edition, but this gradually refined into smaller areas of the UK, before in recent years the number of regional editions was scaled back again.  We’re still working on the best way of displaying . 

We are also missing some television listings from the 1930s, when they were in a supplement or a special page in RT, and then not in every copy (because television was only visible in the London/South East of England area), so we have not always had the data available.  But there are records of that information so it will appear on Genome in time.

Finally, let’s look at some specific examples of unscheduled programmes…

1936 - The Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s television service was scheduled to begin on 2 November, but just after staff had been appointed in August, senior producer Cecil Madden was instructed to start work on programmes to go out that month.  The exhibition was having difficulty selling stands, and the Ö÷²¥´óÐã was asked to help out by organising a demonstration of television. 

Although they only had a few days to prepare, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã team was able to mount a basic service of live programmes and film material for the duration of the show.  None of these programmes was billed in Radio Times, nor were several weeks of experimental shows, including the first edition of long-running magazine Picture Page, which went out during October (notwithstanding the billing for saying that it was the first…)

September 1938 – Television outside broadcasts from Heston Aerodrome of the return of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain from Berchtesgaden and Munich were speedily arranged.  The second was especially historic as Chamberlain delivered his infamous ‘piece of paper’ speech.  These were also the first occasions when a Prime Minister spoke on television, though they were also captured by radio and newsreel cameras.

1972 – As we detailed a couple of weeks back, the pilot episode of was unscheduled when it was first shown. Cancellation of some necessitated programmes being quickly found to fill the gaps, and that included this Comedy Playhouse episode.

27 May 1974 – Due to being cancelled, an omnibus version of the Doctor Who story , which had previously been transmitted at Christmas 1972, was given another airing.

7 November 1986 – As part of Ö÷²¥´óÐã2’s TV50 season, celebrating the half-century of television, the first episode of Not Only… But Also was to be screened.  However at the last minute clearances could not be obtained so an early Likely Lads and a 1962 edition of Points of View were substituted, separated by an Interlude, The Kitten dating from 1954.

There have been various occasions since when a programme or film has been deemed unsuitable for transmission at a particular time because of a news event which would make it in poor taste; also when a particularly famous star or personality has died, sometimes a special showing of one of their films or programmes is hurriedly repeated before it can be advertised in Radio Times.

Also, there are many occasions when because of an over-running sporting event, or an extended news bulletins, programmes have been cancelled or postponed.  With some sporting events there are published, and obviously only one of these alternatives would actually have come to pass on the day in question.

We love creating the Genome database, and we look forward to being able to add even greater levels of detail in the future – though our first task is still to correct OCR errors which arose from scanning the Radio Times.  Of course, we couldn’t do it without the support of our dedicated band of crowd-sourcing editors – please continue to contribute, we greatly appreciate your efforts!

The greatest show on Earth has come to an end, with glory for Team GB and thousands of hours of Ö÷²¥´óÐã coverage in the bag.

But there weren't always wall-to-wall, multi-channel broadcasts of the Olympic Games. In the early days of radio, there were only scant references to the event. In 1928, there was no live coverage and a sense that Great Britain was only going to compete after in a talk from a former sportsman.

In 1936, the opening ceremony of the Berlin games was for a "description of the scene". But it wasn't until the first post-war Olympics in London that coverage of the games really came into its own.

The Ö÷²¥´óÐã was the host broadcaster and the event was televised for the first time. The Radio Times reflected this great occasion by creating its first Olympic front cover (above).

The home advantage was short-lived, however. For the Helsinki and Melbourne Olympics in the 1950s, television was in its infancy in the host nations, so it was back to quite limited radio coverage. An Australian games with its vast time difference and distance meant that UK listeners made do with recordings.

But the lull would not last long...

The Rome Olympics in 1960 saw coverage on Ö÷²¥´óÐã radio and TV reach a new level, with a striking cover for the Radio Times and a magazine packed with side panels and schedules to guide viewers. With another distant games from Tokyo four years later, recorded Olympic action was flown over the Pole by jet in an era when satellite technology wasn't yet the norm.

The 1968 Olympics from Mexico City was another watershed for the Ö÷²¥´óÐã. It coincided with the advent of colour (initially on Ö÷²¥´óÐã2) and the Radio Times cover mirrored this. The magazine even changed its regular title font for the occasion. This was a growing era of satellite broadcasts and schedules which dealt with a time difference similar to Rio 2016.

From the 1970s onwards, blanket coverage of the Olympic Games emerged. Radio Times covers switched from striking design to the sports personality, with the likes of Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim and homegrown superstars like Daley Thompson, Sir Steve Redgrave and Sally Gunnell (pictured).

A notable absence from the line-up of Olympics covers is Moscow in 1980, which was beset by a boycott led by the US. Great Britain attended but stayed away from the opening ceremony, while the Olympic flag was raised for gold medal winners.

So Tokyo 2020 beckons. How will the games be covered? More wall-to-wall coverage or a dedicated Olympics channel? Let us know your thoughts on games past and future.

Andrew Collins is a broadcaster and writer with numerous credits to his name.

He has written scripts for EastEnders, co-wrote the first two series of sitcom Not Going Out, and along with Stuart Maconie co-hosted a show on Radio 1. Andrew still maintains a connection with the current Radio Times as its regular film editor. He also hosts a on UKTV's YouTube channel.

Here he takes a trip through his career by way of his listings in Genome - an estimated 450 (including credits in the magazine).

_____________________________________________________________________________

What was your first job in radio or television? My first appearance on television was in 1980. My schoolfriend Paul Garner and I were invited to guest on Ö÷²¥´óÐã news programme Look East to talk about the caricatures we’d started drawing for local Northampton newspaper the Chronicle & Echo.

It was an exciting day. The school gave us time off, my dad drove us to Norwich, we pre-recorded an interview with presenter Ian Masters, then repaired to the green room, where soft drinks were free, and drew a caricature of Masters and fellow presenter Tony Scase, which we presented to them live at the end of the broadcast.

Only one of our friends, Craig, had parents with a video recorder, so we were able to watch our appearance back and soak up the fame the next day. I was paid an £8 appearance fee, which to me was a fortune! Dad got £38 travel expenses, which he kindly split between me and Paul.

My second appearance was 10 years later with my family when we were by which time I worked on the NME. We made it through to the semi-finals and were knocked out by the Allman family. As a self-consciously “cool” music journalist, I ought to have been embarrassed by this, but I wasn’t. Not at all. I even wore an NME t-shirt on our final appearance.

My first job on television was as a scriptwriter on Family Affairs, brand new Channel 5’s soap in 1997. My day job was editor of Q magazine, but I was getting itchy feet. I’d never written a script, but with five episodes a week, they needed to run in new writers, and I was lucky enough to be one of them. I ended up writing around 33 episodes over the next three years. And yes, I did leave my day job.

Do you remember the first time your name appeared in the Radio Times? My first solo mention must have been when I formed a comedy double act with my NME colleague and great friend Stuart Maconie. We had our own comedy series called on the youth-aimed Radio Five – this was before it became news-and-sport Five Live. Although technically my name appeared before that, in 1988, when, as an avid Radio Times reader, I had a letter printed in the magazine and was chuffed to bits.

How did you feel when your photo was first published in the magazine? It was quite disarming. When Fantastic Voyage started, the magazine ran a small interview with an amusing press photo in which I am sucking on a plastic cigar. The Radio Five publicist, ever resourceful, brought it along to the photographic studio, and I was playful enough to use it.

Can you tell us your memories of the following programmes which you are associated with in the listings?

 After Fantastic Voyage, suddenly our names were in the title of a brand new Radio 1 review show. We used smart, funny journalistic types as our regular guests like Caitlin Moran, Miranda Sawyer and David Quantick. It was such fun to do – we also interviewed famous pop stars and had bands playing unplugged. This led to Stuart and I being asked to host Radio 1’s live coverage of the Brits and the newly-minted Mercury Prize for at least two years running. It seems almost surreal that we were part of of the nation’s favourite radio station at such a relatively early stage of our tenure, but this was the 90s of Cool Britannia – anything could happen!

 My apprenticeship at Family Affairs directly led me to EastEnders. Its launch producer Mal Young moved to the Ö÷²¥´óÐã and put my name forward. I tried out via the regimented induction process for new writers. They give you a storyline document and you have to write a number of scenes based upon it. You then hand this in, like an exam paper, and they decide whether they want to develop the relationship further.

I’ve just looked at the script I submitted – in it, Roy goes into the shop and asks Terry, “I’m in a bit of a hurry. Do you sell drawing pins?” Terry replies, “Over there with the Sellotape.” With dialogue like that, it was a forgone conclusion! Seriously, to my great delight, I was accepted.

I managed to earn consistent script commissions from 1999 to 2001, and had my name on 11 episodes, something I remain inordinately proud of. I even got to kill off a regular character: Nick Cotton’s son Ashley. It was hard work: you are expected to write up to six drafts of each script. I used to compare writing an episode to producing a single slice of salami that would fit perfectly into a whole sausage.

And yes, I did get to walk round Albert Square, but only once – you’re too busy writing to hang around the set! However, Barbara Windsor did give me a kiss after an official Ö÷²¥´óÐã drinks party.

 Being put together with Lee Mack was the most significant blind date of my career. He’d been developing a sitcom based on a live show, and I was drafted in to help with the structure. I clicked with Lee and we were quickly set to work in a rented office in Central London.

I thought of the title, so was really hoping nobody would come up with a better one! Luckily nobody did. It was hard graft for six months’ solid, but Lee and I found a good, symbiotic working relationship, which included each of us coming up with five suggestions for each punchline and choosing the best one.

Because it was shot in a studio, I was present for the entire recording, which I soaked up. I co-wrote the whole first series with Lee, then the majority of series two with him, and a couple of episodes in series three and four, after which they decided to streamline the writing process. And Not Going Out is re-run on a constant loop, so it’s lovely to have had a hand in something that’s endlessly repeated.

You are also noted in the listings for your work as a screenwriter. What is it like to breathe life into new characters and add to existing ones? I could barely believe it when I first got to write dialogue for iconic EastEnders characters like Dot, Nick, Phil and Peggy. But these characters already had voices, your job was to stay true to them. A completely different job to creating a character, which I was able to do in my first solo-written sitcom Mr Blue Sky for Radio 4. It’s a treat to have actors as skilled as Mark Benton, Rebecca Front and Claire Skinner, as they will do things to your words that you might never have envisaged. But the very act of typing words to be read out by professionals is hard to beat.

How important do you think it is to preserve the history of TV and radio listings? I live for printed TV and radio listings. Because I now work for Radio Times, I get sent a contributor’s copy, but if I’d never set foot in the building of the magazine I’d still be a subscriber. Online listings are fine if you want to do a quick search, but on a week by week basis there’s nothing to beat literally flicking through a magazine, browsing, happening upon the odd gem. I am a child of the analogue age, but as an adult, I am totally wired – and certainly not a Luddite. At the Radio Times office there is an archive of every copy of the magazine, which I am lucky enough to be able to use. Paper archives are unutterably romantic to me. I am hugely impressed by the digitisation that the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Genome project has achieved, because it’s available to all, as it should be in an information democracy.

Have you ever searched for your own name in the Genome database? I have, of course. I’m pointlessly troubled by the fact that there is another Andrew Collins in the world who seems to have quite a following – he’s an author and speaker who specialises in ancient Egypt, Atlantis, UFOs, that kind of thing – but it’s not a competition. There’s a well-regarded writer of gay travel guides with the same name, too, and an actor in LA. But I think I may be the only one to be listed in the Radio Times archive, so that’s something.

From eating breakfast with Beckham to watching Pele in your pyjamas, there’s always something special about a football tournament on television.

Every two years, millions of people put everything on hold to watch top players in action morning, noon and night. As Euro 2016 heads towards its climax, how has the Ö÷²¥´óÐã covered previous football tournaments?

Things have certainly changed since the early days of football on TV. Of the first European Championships, held in 1960, only the second half of the final was shown on British screens, quaintly and vaguely billed as

At least it was broadcast live, though. For the held in Chile, satellite broadcasting was still in its infancy, and the Radio Times explained the logistics of bringing the games to British TV screens:

"Each film must be flown from Santiago to Lima, Peru - from Lima to Panama - Panama to Miami and Miami to New York. That takes approximately 14 hours. Then the 90 minutes of film must be processed in New York and rushed to Idlewild Airport to be put on the first available transatlantic jet.”

The aim was to get them on air within 48 hours, “if there is no fog on the route”.

By the 1970s, coverage had expanded somewhat. One odd side-effect of the limited coverage of domestic football in that decade is that during an international tournament, you’d often see more live football in a week than you would for the rest of the year put together.

Both the Ö÷²¥´óÐã and ITV provided extensive coverage of the 1970 World Cup. Ö÷²¥´óÐã One Controller Paul Fox bullishly announced in the Radio Times that the channel would not alternate matches with ITV because “When Ö÷²¥´óÐã1 and ITV show the same event, the large majority of the public prefer to watch it on Ö÷²¥´óÐã1. Whichever set of figures you look at, this is an unchallengeable fact.”

This blanket coverage was quite different to the rest of the year. Fearful of the spectator deciding to abandon the terrace for the armchair, no live coverage of league football was permitted, bar the hour of on a Saturday night - plus a further hour on ITV the following afternoon. Only the biggest occasions like the FA Cup Final and the annual England v Scotland game could be seen live as they happened.

In the tournaments, there were no such problems – both the Ö÷²¥´óÐã and ITV could show as much as they liked, and they made the most of it. In 1978, the action from Argentina and even the Nine O’clock News found itself demoted to Ö÷²¥´óÐã2. 

Such was the excitement over that tournament – especially in Scotland where Ally’s Army were flying the flag for the whole of the UK – that the Hamilton by-election was to avoid voters staying at home glued to the TV.  

In the 1980s, though, British football was in the doldrums, with concerns over increased hooliganism and tumbling attendances, and none of the home nations qualified for the 1984 European Championships. This meant the tournament was virtually invisible on our screens, with only two live matches and the rest relegated to late night highlights. 

With England, Scotland and Northern Ireland all qualifying for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, coverage returned to more familiar levels – but a number of matches had only their second halves shown live on TV, ensuring Ö÷²¥´óÐã1 could screen regular ratings winners like Wogan.

After the twin successes of Italia 90 and football's homecoming in Euro 96, coverage was bigger than ever before. So when it came to Euro 2008 and no home nation representation, a was shown and there was no 1984-style snub.

But it’s not just the matches that are the lasting legacy of a tournament. The stars, the presenters and the theme tunes all make an impact, even among those who have no interest in football. Pavarotti gained a new fanbase when Nessun Dorma became the theme of the 1990 World Cup.  

The same tournament spawned , but it also helped make a star of Des Lynam, whose constant appearances on screen saw him reach a new audience. Indeed, when Arthur Smith wrote a TV play set during Euro 96, the icon of the tournament was not Alan Shearer or Stuart Pearce, but Des himself.  

Major tournaments also see regular routines thrown out of the window as football swamps the schedules. In 1970 and 1986, it was a month of late nights for British football fans as the matches from Mexico ran late into the evening. The latter tournament saw a added to the schedules, partly so football crazy kids could keep up with the action.

It was back to the witching hour again with the 1994 World Cup from the USA with British fans operating in a totally different time zone for post-midnight kick-offs.

In 2002, it was  as the World Cup in Japan and Korea saw bleary-eyed supporters set their alarms for the early hours. The normal breakfast fare of news, weather and travel was binned for Denmark v Senegal and many lives were turned upside down for a month.

The big challenge for Radio Times over the years has been explaining to its readers what’s actually being broadcast. The knockout stages mean schedules are subject to extensive changes at the last minute, and a host of are drawn up. 

Genome sometimes has trouble representing these listings thanks too the confusion caused by  Those tuning in for religious series Sweet Inspiration during the 1994 World Cup, for example, weren’t sure whether it was being broadcast at

With the exception of a few memorable moments, the home nations haven’t had much to cheer about in major tournaments. But the Ö÷²¥´óÐã have always made it to the final, and ended up on the winning side.

Steve Williams is an Editorial Curator for Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer and writes about television for  

At the end of June 1960, the new Ö÷²¥´óÐã Television Centre sprang into life with great fanfare.

The to come from the new purpose-built facility was a variety extravaganza called First Night starring the likes of Arthur Askey and magician David Nixon.

While the television service went to town on welcoming the futuristic building in west London, the Radio Times that week also accorded it great fanfare. The cover illustration (below) featured its curved lines along with some of First Night's star turns.

The magazine had a two-page spread about TVC, with a detailed plan of this "giant bowl of bricks and glass and concrete and mosaic", and described how it had been built to serve the needs of a rapidly expanding industry.

You can download a PDF version of the original article in full  Feel free to share your thoughts about it at the end of this post.

1) The arrival of a was marked with this cover shoot by Lord Lichfield. Can you name both mother and baby?

2) This extract of a Radio Times cover from 1999 of a much-loved duo. But which one?

3) This cover star from the latter part of 1991 went to great lengths to of a popular Ö÷²¥´óÐã1 show. Can you name the person behind the brightly-coloured pixellations?

4) This is a small segment of a which took place in 1994. Can you name this courageous pair?

5) Finally this week, a star on a 1990 Radio Times cover who is still very much at the top of his game more than 25 years later. At the time he was the host of a .

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Can't quite join the dots? Here are the answers:

1) Ben and Kathy Mitchell

2) French and Saunders

3) Esther Rantzen

4) Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean

5) Phillip Schofield

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1) This 2007 drama was rewarded with a wraparound Radio Times cover in April. Name the series.

2) This pouting temptress was photographed by David Bailey to mark a for her screen persona. Name both actress and character.

3) This made the front cover of the Radio Times in April 1983. Name that show.

4) These cute doggies are the stars of this 1978 cover for a of its day, but who is their human companion here? And name the show too.

5) And we finish back in 1964 for the of today's phenomenally popular Strictly. It was a slightly different beast then and with a different host. Can you put a name to the face?

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Still need a helping hand? Here are the answers:

1) Life on Mars

2) Patsy Palmer (Bianca from EastEnders)

3) Fame

4) Christopher Timothy, All Creatures Great and Small

5) Peter West

Soap opera, so called because the early examples in the US were sponsored by soap powder companies, are a staple of broadcasting. 

While the exact definition of a is hard to pin down, it tends to be the sort of thing that you know when you see (or hear) it.  It can of course be used pejoratively if a non-soap series is seen to be spending too much time exploring people’s domestic entanglements, but soaps have been rightly praised for highlighting issues in society – such as the recent domestic abuse storyline in The Archers.

Unsurprisingly, the earliest continuing dramas on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã were on radio.  The whole practice of episodic fiction can be traced back to the publication of novels by Dickens as partworks in the 19th Century, where readers would eagerly await the next instalment of each story.  When Dickens’ works were they were already structured to lend easily to episodic production.

The idea of the same characters appearing in successive stories also owes something to literature, with writers like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his tales.  Radio’s early recurring heroes included the likes of Francis Durbridge’s classic hero , but these were episodic thrillers, not soaps.

The first programme that can be called a soap on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã was Front-Line Family, which was broadcast to the USA on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Overseas Service from 1941.  Post-war, it was also heard at home on the Light Programme, now under the title .  The series was intended to make American listeners empathise with the plight of the British public, and did so in a way that was familiar in the States - though Ö÷²¥´óÐã executives were extremely sniffy about the lowering of standards involved in creating a popular series, and derisive of the intellect of their intended audience. 

One of the first great serial hits on radio after the war was , a fairly lurid thriller series, concerning the daring adventures of Barton and his sidekicks Jock and Snowy, and any number of foreign spies and Nazis and scientists being kidnapped.

When this series ended it was replaced by something described at the time as a ‘farming Dick Barton’, complete with cliffhangers to entice listeners back for the next episode.  That show was of course , which has been entertaining the nation for the last 65 years and shows no sign of going away.  

The Archers has had various shake-ups over the years by new editors. One if its most famous ‘stunt’ episodes was in 1955 when was killed off in a fire the same night as ITV launched.  The show’s long lifespan has meant that a huge saga with many characters has unfolded before listeners, though based around the central family of the eponymous Archers. 

For many years this family was headed by Dan and Doris Archer.  Dan was played by four actors over the life of the serial - Harry Oakes, , and – while Doris was always played by Gwen Berryman.  The series has since featured not only their children, but grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  As well as a large cast of regulars (around 60, though with less than half tending to appear in any given week), the Archers is also notable for having a number of ‘silent’ characters – characters who are mentioned but have never appeared, or only occasionally.  One, Pru Forrest, made a brief audible appearance in the in 1989, when she was played by Judi Dench (and interviewed by Terry Wogan).

Each episode is introduced by the theme tune Barwick Green, and to date there have been something in the region of 18,000 instalments.  After a trial run in 1950 the series started fully in 1951, and now has six weekly episodes.  The setting is the fictional village of Ambridge and surrounding countryside, especially the Archer homestead of Brookfield, in the equally fictitious county of Borsetshire (somewhere south of Birmingham, where the show is produced).

In its early days, The Archers had an avowedly informational slant, with Ministry of Agriculture advice woven into the stories, but although such involvement ended in the early 70s the show has continued to raise issues relevant to rural life, although some have criticised it for being a bit too near the knuckle.  When radio was the majority medium, The Archers gained huge listening figures, and while the numbers are less now, it is still capable of arousing passions and getting into the headlines, while remaining a (more or less) everyday story of country folk.

The Archers was actually predated by another daily serial, , which began on the Light Programme on 5 January 1948, about the wife of a GP, Doctor Dale, and the people she came in contact with.  Much parodied for its cosy atmosphere, this ran for 21 years, with various writers including Ted Willis (who once tried to kill off most of the characters in a ) coming up with five new episodes every week. 

There was controversy when lead actor Ellis Powell was sacked in 1963, and replaced by former film star – but the Ö÷²¥´óÐã made various attempts to give it a less comfortable image, including changing the title to The Dales in 1962.  Like The Archers, Mrs Dale’s Diary/The Dales was used to introduce public information messages, and was also one of the first dramas to mention the subject of homosexuality.

When The Dales came to an end, it was immediately replaced by a new serial on Radio 2, (originally Waggoners’ Walk NW).  This was set in North West London (near Belsize Park), and concerned the inhabitants of this urban ‘village’, especially those living at No.1 Waggoners’ Walk, a town house converted into flats.  The serial was to run for a little more than a decade before being dropped in a round of spending cuts in 1980.  It was co-created by Jill Hyem who went on to be one of the main writers of Tenko.

Subsequently radio has struggled to come up with a successful sister soap to The Archers, while that programme has maintained its loyal following.  Radio 4 did attempt another show, , from 1987 to 1991, but this twice-weekly flat-sharing soap never quite gained momentum and was dropped after nearly 400 episodes.

Other parts of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã have come up with their own contributions to the genre.  As with Pobol y Cwm, the Welsh language television soap opera that has run since 1974, there was also a radio soap in Welsh, Station Road, which ran for a few years from the late 1990s.

The Ö÷²¥´óÐã World Service had its own soap, , which ran from 1997 to 2005 (latterly also on Radio 4) and centred around a health centre close to the eponymous main road from London to the West Country.

was a soap which ran from 2004 to 2010 on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Asian Network, and featured the lives of a south Asian community in an unspecified area of Britain.  The ten-minute episodes were presented within other programmes on the network, and budget cuts saw them reduced in length to five minutes later on, before the series was cancelled.

Ö÷²¥´óÐã Wiltshire Sound (the former name for Ö÷²¥´óÐã Wiltshire) earned a place in the record books for its unique soap Acrebury, in which all the characters were played by actor/presenter Gerry Hughes.

It’s ironic that radio has not had more successful soap operas, since producing radio drama is logistically far easier than television drama.  However, the pressure on writers to come up with enough plotlines and scripts to satisfy these long-running productions is intense, and radio audiences can be particularly demanding, if fiercely loyal when they do latch onto a programme.

Who knows whether there will ever be another radio soap opera to rival the huge following that The Archers has amassed over its six and a half decades of life.  We have a kind of love/hate relationship with soap, but they are now firmly part of the national fabric, both those on television, and those that reside on the original home of British soap opera, the radio.

Let us know what you think of soaps on radio , now and in the past.  Are radio soaps better than those on television? Are they becoming too influenced by television’s more sensational values?

1) This pair were featured on the cover of an October 1970 edition of the Radio Times to promote their new series. You can find several clues to their identities in  You just need to name the show.

2) This young actress made the cover for her role in  part of The Wednesday Play strand. You may recognise her more readily from subsequent sitcom that has gone down as a classic. Can you put a name to the face?

3) Talking of sitcoms, this is arguably But this impressive chestful of decorations belongs to which actor's chest?

4) They don't get much more famous than this. But the Radio Times had to settle for an illustration to promote the a showbusiness spectacular which he performed with alongside another great. Who is the cover star?

5) It's all about the hands in this cover photograph of an actor taking on the mantle of Who is he?

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So here are the answers if you want to be transported into a place of knowledge:

1) Steptoe and Son

2) Michele Dotrice (Betty from Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em)

3) Clive Dunn (Dad's Army)

4) Frank Sinatra

5) Jon Pertwee (Doctor Who)