Category: Regional

BBC Radio Shropshire Launch Photos

Here are some photo released for the launch of BBC Radio Shropshire in 1985. Diane Kemp was a launch presenter of the Breakfast show and went on to present Midlands Today. She is now a Professor at Birmingham City University (BCU). David Holdsworth was a reporter on Radio Shropshire and went on to become Controller of the English Regions. Bob Calver was the news editor of the launch of BBC Shropshire, he went on to become Home Duty Editor for the corporation’s national radio networks, and later a Senior Lecturer of Broadcast Journalism at BCU. They all look so young in these photos.

WCR Inside Tracks – Tom Coyle

The archive ‘Inside Tracks’ featuring Tom Coyne is being broadcast on Wolverhampton Community Radio (WCR) Sunday evening (9th Oct 2022) at 5pm.
The archive ‘Inside Tracks’ at 5pm remembers the legendary broadcaster Tom Coyne, who died in 2015. Pete Whitehouse met Tom and recorded his ‘Inside Tracks’ programme in 2010 at a time when he was living in retirement in Tettenhall, Wolverhampton.
Tom was originally from the North East of England, having been born in South Shields and was the first new reader on Tyne Tees television in Newcastle. In the programme, Tom talked through his life, and we play music from some of the people he’d met during his long career in radio and television.
Tom was on the first edition of ‘Nationwide’ and also presented many other shows including: ‘Songs of Praise’, ‘Dance Dates’, ‘Come Dancing’ and ‘Top Gear’ plus hundreds of programmes as the Geordie gamekeeper Gordon Armstrong in ‘The Archers’ on radio.
For more about Tom and a video of him in his heyday at ‘Midlands Today’ follow this link: https://www.pebblemill.org/blog/tom-coyne-rip/“

Mikhail Gorbachev and the mobile phone shop

Here is a gem of a story about Mikhail Gorbachev by former BBC journalist, Richard Uridge:
“Many years after the Soviet leader stepped down he was asked to open a mobile phone shop in Cheltenham. To the surprise and delight of the owner he agreed and the event was duly covered by the BBC at Pebble Mill. As a Midlands Today newsreader I introduced the story and back referenced it with words to the effect “funny old world isn’t it? One minute you’re the second most powerful man on the planet. The next you’re opening a phone shop in Gloucestershire.”
I thought it was hilarious. But I got told off by my bosses for editorialising. The shop owner wasn’t too chuffed either. Said I’d demeaned his business. I wasn’t at all sorry. Reckon he got a lot of free publicity.
My other Gorbachev-related comments – on radio rather than telly – are too excruciating to relate here and warranted a grovelling letter of apology.”
Richard Uridge

Creative commons photo of Gorbachev, by John Mathew Smith, 1997

Look! Hear! Fashion Show

Photos by camera operator Bhasker Solanki of a fashion show on the popular, regional entertainment show’ Look! Hear!’, with Toyah Willcox. This section of the show was called ‘College Rags’ and ultimately led to ‘The Clothes Show’. Roger Casstles, was a director on Look! Hear! and became the exec producer of ‘The Clothes Show’.

Photos by Bhasker Solanki, no reproduction without permission