Grace and Fervour
September 1955, exactly sixty years ago – a momentous month for popular culture that drew a line in the sand, signalling the division between the old world and the new; in the case of the latter, it momentarily seemed it had been strangled at birth when Hollywood’s hottest property and poster-boy for the new juvenile delinquent, James Dean, steered his wheels up the stairway to heaven. However, a week before the Rebel without a Cause crashed his car, those two worlds clashed in the arena of British broadcasting on a night that marked the last dramatic hurrah of the old world before it surrendered to the future.
Despite the surge in TV set-ownership during the 1953 Coronation, two years later (when one in three homes possessed a set) it was still the radio that the majority of Brits turned to for education, information and entertainment. Although this was the age of the BBC monopoly of the airwaves, the three networks – Home, Light and Third – provided an impressively diverse service that seemed to have something for everyone, a principle the BBC struggles to maintain to this very day. When it came to listening figures, however, there was already a pattern developing that would be familiar to the twenty-first century TV viewer. The continuing drama serial was the genre that prompted most to tune in every evening, and the most popular of them all was an everyday story of country folk situated in the imaginary village of Ambridge.
‘The Archers’ had been on air for almost five years by the autumn of 1955, and though many of its characters adhered to the plummy RP of the era, the fact the series was produced in Birmingham enabled a rare opportunity for regional accents to be heard around the country, even if there was an abundance of ‘Oo-arrs’ from the likes of Walter Gabriel. ‘The Archers’ didn’t take long to establish itself as a British institution and by the mid-50s was drawing daily audiences of 20 million. In 1955, Phil Archer and his new wife Grace were radio’s golden couple, a less tempestuous equivalent of Den and Angie Watts in terms of the public profile they enjoyed, and listeners looked forward to following their married life for years to come.
As Phil and Grace were tying the knot before the nation, radio’s snotty-nosed sibling was about to undergo its most seismic shake-up in its twenty-year history. Commercial television had initially been proposed by Churchill’s Government in 1951, though fears of British viewers being exposed to what was regarded by many as vulgar American-style programming led to the formation of the Independent Television Authority, a regulatory body to keep the new network in check. The passing of the 1954 Television Act gave the green light for commercial television, though rather than the newcomer being a London-based corporation in the BBC mould, it was decided that ITV would comprise a series of regional companies that would share schedules only during prime-time slots.
The first two companies awarded the ITV franchises were Associated-Rediffusion, which would provide London with its weekday service, and ATV London, which would do the job at the weekend. Associated-Rediffusion essentially wanted to replicate the BBC Television Service and even poached announcer Leslie Mitchell to introduce the opening night, just as he’d done for the BBC in 1936. Mitchell’s greeting was followed by a five-minute London travelogue film with typically stiff-necked narration, describing ITV as ‘a New Elizabethan Enterprise’. The aim was to allay lingering fears that ITV would be a down-market poor relation of the BBC and show the new broadcaster intended to compete on level terms with its rival. The debut of ITV was pencilled-in for Thursday September 22 1955, although only viewers in the capital would receive the inaugural transmission of Associated-Rediffusion. ITV wouldn’t be seen outside of London until ATV Midlands went on air five months later.
The starting time for the end of the BBC TV monopoly was set for 7.15pm, precisely thirty minutes after that evening’s edition of ‘The Archers’ ended. But those in the capital who attempted to switch on their sets after listening to the latest events in Ambridge were most likely too distracted to pay much attention to the arrival of ITV, for the Beeb had played a blinder that night.
Grace Archer, Phil’s bride of five months, had rushed to rescue her horse from a fire that had broken out in the Brookfield stables. As Phil yelled at her to get out, a wooden beam weakened by the heat fell on top of Grace and killed her. Unlike the more contrived, post-‘Who Shot JR?’ TV soap deaths today, no word of warning had leaked out to the press about this melodramatic assassination of a popular household name. It had come completely out of the blue as far as the country was concerned, and the BBC switch-boards were jammed as Fleet Street hurriedly composed its obituaries in time for the morning dailies. Amidst this chaos, who would even notice a new television service had begun the same day? Few did. It was perhaps the last time in British broadcasting history that a radio programme stole the limelight from TV.
At the time, it appeared to be a calculated effort to rob ITV of its opening night headlines, and it certainly succeeded. Nobody has ever confirmed whether the death of Grace Archer, which had been secretly planned for months, was rearranged to coincide with ITV’s arrival; but the decision to axe the character has subsequently been revealed as a consequence of the actress who played her, Ysanne Churchman, encouraging her fellow ‘Archers’ cast-members to rebel against the BBC paying them Equity minimum rates. However, the legend of Grace Archer’s death lingered, so much so that when the 1964 launch-night of BBC2 was aborted by a huge power failure across West London, the rumour surfaced that this was ITV’s revenge for events nine years earlier.
Although it took until 1962 before every geographical region of the UK has its own ITV service, the impact of commercial television had already dealt quite a blow to the BBC, especially the December 1960 debut of ‘Coronation Street’, which took the serial format of ‘The Archers’ and gave it an almighty Salford kiss. The Beeb response was the appointment of a dynamic new Director General, Hugh Carleton-Greene, who dragged BBC TV kicking and screaming into the 60s with a string of ground-breaking new series including ‘Z-Cars’, ‘Steptoe and Son’, ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘The Wednesday Play’. Just as the individual ITV companies competed against each other to grab the prime-time schedules and thus increased the quality of ITV programming as a result, healthy competition also gave the BBC the kick up the backside it needed to enter a golden age of television broadcasting.
During this long-overdue flowering of BBC TV, BBC radio went into a swift decline. Listening figures plummeted from their mid-50s peak, including those of ‘The Archers’; indeed, by the time twenty years had passed since the death of Grace Archer, the audience for the show had dropped to three million a week. The success of the Pirates had forced the rebranding of BBC music radio by the comparatively late date of 1967, but it took far longer before the BBC’s spoken-word services regained some lost ground. Today, sixty years on from the moment radio won its last key battle with television, ‘The Archers’ is still with us and probably always will be, whereas ITV exists in name only, a vastly different broadcasting animal from the one that flourished up until the 1990 Broadcasting Act that brought about deregulation. But I suspect that’s another story for another day.
Petunia Winegum
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September 18, 2015 at 9:25 am -
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September 18, 2015 at 12:02 pm -
From what I’ve read, Nelson was quite a nasty piece of work!
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September 18, 2015 at 1:31 pm -
I remember him as being a bit of a lad, right enough, but the only one of the cast who seemed to have any real pretensions to sophistication.
So, with the honourable exception of Gildas, possibly, a bit like here, really.
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September 18, 2015 at 9:42 am -
I used to be quite a fan of the Archers. I first encountered the programme when I used to stay with my grand parents in the early 1960’s. My favourite character was good old Walter Gabriel – “me old pal me old beauty”. As I got older I went through several long term periods of tuning in, depending on school and work patterns. The last phase was about 12 years ago. I was shocked and upset to discover that the show had gone very PC. The final straw was the daft storyline about the “turkey baster” and the only two gays in the village. I got banned from the Archers forum, and haven’t bothered with radio since – I’ve not missed it one bit.
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September 18, 2015 at 9:48 am -
You forgot to mention the early commercials on ITV – those wonderful slots of delightful (to me as a child at any rate) escapism into an imaginary place populated with impossibly perfect characters and their memorable songs and slogans.
“You’ll wonder where the yellow went / when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent,” still lingers after all this time.
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September 18, 2015 at 12:04 pm -
Interesting that a lot of the people who made those memorable ads, like Ridley Scott and Alan Parker, went on to become distinguished movie directors. Maybe that’s why they stick in the memory?
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September 18, 2015 at 1:35 pm -
I have spent 50 odd years trying to get the jingle for ‘Zal’ out of my mind, and I would probably not shed a tear to find that the producer of that abortion had subsequently been summarily executed, preferably being hung, drawn and quartered with his mortal remains then pickled in the wretched stuff.
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September 18, 2015 at 12:30 pm -
The very first ad on ITV was for another toothpaste, Gibbs SR, bubbling mountain stream and all. Why do I know this ?
At my grammar school, the standard form of address was surname followed by initials – thus ‘Smith AB’. An officious prefect once gave me a punishment (probably for smoking) and, when he took down my name, I gave it as “Gibbs SR” – which the out-of-touch idiot promptly wrote in his punishment book. I never wrote those 100 lines.
A few years later, at my elder sister’s wedding, the Best Man turned out to be that very same ex-prefect – when he saw me, recognition was instant and he roared in front of the church “Gibbs – I’ve been looking for you for some time”. Still never wrote those 100 lines. But that’s why I remember Gibbs SR with such affection.
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September 18, 2015 at 9:51 am -
A really beautiful piece of writing. Informative, nostalgic, analytic and graceful. Thank you Petunia Winegum.
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September 18, 2015 at 10:06 am -
Radio 4 Extra is the go to place for a lot of nostalgic radio listening. They have such gems as Round the Horne and Steptoe and Son.
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September 18, 2015 at 12:01 pm -
In terms of archive broadcasts, it seems to be the radio equivalent of BBC4.
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September 18, 2015 at 7:03 pm -
R4Ex is my background station of choice, with an occasional return to R4 for wallpaper or as anti burglar noise.
R4Ex can be very repetitive, but I’m still not sure I’ve heard all the Round the Horne shows. Rogue Male was well worth the repeat, must be due again soon, & Journey into Space too. Yeah it’s nostalgia, was it 4Ex playing Old Harry’s Game?
I recall listening to the Archers on SW when working in Spain – siesta time, ’90 or thereabouts, time the tanks were outside the Kremlin, news which also came via SW. There was a real World Service then.
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September 18, 2015 at 10:09 am -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p032df1r
This is the ‘mashup’ of the Archers and Mastermind theme tunes…
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September 18, 2015 at 10:15 am -
Ah, 1961, Godalming Grammar School where I was a pupil the headmaster Mr. E P Dewar used to shout Boom Boom Boom followed by our reply of Esso Blue during assembly.
Ah, such happy days, so many great memories.
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September 18, 2015 at 11:53 am -
It is amazing how those early advertising jingles stick in your brain. Murray Mints, Esso adverts and the like. Now it’s mostly crazy actions that do not connect with what is being sold to us…..but I do like the budgie and cat duet! I still don’t know what is being sold.
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September 18, 2015 at 12:00 pm -
I rarely see ads these days. Whenever a break comes on during the rare occasions I’m watching something on ITV or C4, I switch over or mute the TV. But I was lucky enough to catch the budgie and cat duet and think it’s a work of genius. Mind you, I’ve no idea what they’re advertising either!
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September 18, 2015 at 1:39 pm -
In case you have missed this, the best short ad ever
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September 18, 2015 at 11:54 am -
How true, Petunia and we all enjoy a whiff of nostalgia. Sadly we have reached the point where there is a plethora of TV channels to choose from there is also a dearth of good programs to view. Who could have foreseen that?
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September 18, 2015 at 12:20 pm -
Anyone who had encountered TV in the USA would immediately recognise that quantity and quality can be mutually exclusive – their trick of running a set of ads immediately after the opening title sequence, before any action, struck me as particularly mercenary. You get brain-dead channel-hopping to find any quality and, if/when you do, you know you’re certainly only seconds away from another break. Maybe it’s a cause & effect relationship with the attention-span of younger folk, but it ruins any hope of depth in any programme.
I’ve almost given up on TV now – I never watch ITV, usually watch Ch4 News, otherwise very selective – the advertisers are wasting their money trying to pitch to me via the TV, but then I’m not in their target youth demographic and far too poor anyway.
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September 18, 2015 at 12:41 pm -
The Archers : anybody recall the classic ‘Hancock’ episode from the star’s final days at the B.B.C. ?
Tony is ‘Old Joshua Merryweather’ in the long-running country radio soap ‘The Bowmans’. Though he has for years been one of its most popular characters, new research indicates that audience interest is waning, so Ronnie ( Patrick Cargill ), the producer, decides to kill Old Joshua by having him fall into a threshing machine. Hancock is livid, and tries to stay ‘alive’ by overacting wildly in what is supposed to be his death scene. Unemployed, Tony moves into the world of commercials, in particularly those for Grimsby Pilchards. Sales plummet. Just as things look bad for him, the B.B.C. is inundated with fan mail demanding ‘Old Joshua’s’ return, so they reluctantly ask him to come back as the character’s long-lost twin brother ‘Old Ben’…
‘The Bowmans’ is of course a parody of the B.B.C.’s ‘The Archers’ ( even the theme tune sounds similar ), with Old Joshua clearly patterned on Walter Gabriel ( Chris Gittins ), right down to the ‘me old darling, me old beauty!’. Hancock’s country accent leaves a lot to be desired – it incorporates bits of Welsh and impersonations of Robert Newton’s ‘Long John Silver’. He also wears wellingtons, a hat and carries a stick to the recordings – strange considering this is a radio show. The episode takes a real pop at the idiocies of soap operas, so much of the humour is still surprisingly relevant. Characters continue to get bumped off to give ratings a lift.
Funniest moment – Hancock does not get on at all with Harold ( Glaze ), the dog impersonator. So on his death bed, he calls for the animal to be buried alongside him! Glaze’s expression is priceless……
kind regards
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September 18, 2015 at 3:40 pm -
When you mentioned ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ in Para 1, I thought you’d be blogging on about Jeremy Corbyn, but he’s more like ‘Rebel Without a Clause Four’ or even ‘Rebel Without a Clue’.
On balance, the blazing-glory death of Grace Archer is much more important: or maybe it is, in fact, quite prescient ?
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