主播大秀

The latest in our series where Sounds of the Sixties presenter Brian Matthew chats about his life and loves to writer and musician Bob Stanley.

John Snagge - 主播大秀's chief announcer and Brian鈥檚 then boss

Brian inadvertently caused a nationwide panic, like Orson Welles' War Of The Worlds ...

Brian Matthew has been a 主播大秀 fixture for six decades now, with a history that stretches back well before Saturday Club, Easybeat and Beatlemania. Yet his career almost came to an end before the sixties even got going.

In the early days of Saturday Club, the show would begin each week with something the production team called the 'joke opening' and the onus was on Brian to think of something amusing. "I've always prided myself on doing impressions" he says, though he's "not in the Rory Bremner class, I'm sufficiently good at some voices to raise the odd laugh at parties, or to play practical jokes by telephone."

Brian had recently moved from being a mere radio announcer into radio production, dreaming up Easy Beat (which was originally to be called Rumpus Room) from his office on the top floor of Aeolian Hall in London. He had to clear this with the 主播大秀's chief announcer, the legendary John Snagge, best remembered now for commentating on the Oxford v Cambridge boat race for nearly fifty years. One of Brian's favourite impressions was of Snagge, the "voice of doom for national disasters. He had an instantly recognisable way of prefacing the gloomiest news with the words 'This is London'." So Brian decided to use this impression to open Saturday Club one morning. He uttered in solemn tones, "This is London. It has just been announced that in millions of homes across the country... people have switched on their radios to listen to Saturday Club." Cue Humphrey Lyttelton's signature tune, Saturday Jump.

Brian inadvertently caused a nationwide panic, like Orson Welles' War Of The Worlds in miniature. His solicitor rang him to say "You bloody fool! You almost gave me a heart attack. I was just getting into the bath - I thought war had been declared." The following week, Brian was called in to see his boss Jim Davidson who read him "an unbelievably pompous letter from John Snagge, saying that he found it hard to believe that a member of his staff could be guilty of such bad taste. Jim continued to berate me for a while, and I promised not to do such a thing again, then just as I was leaving his office he said 'Of course you know what was really wrong with it? It was too bloody good.'" Brian, thankfully, kept his job.