JACKSON, JACK (1907–1978). Jackson was originally a band leader in the 1930s, with a series on Radio Luxembourg sponsored by Oxydol which started in January 1939 and introduced a new style of dance music combined with zany humor. After the war, Jackson turned more to radio record shows, including his highly successful Record Roundabout. Produced in his own studio, it was this program that developed his new style of intercutting comedy recordings to make a dialogue between the records; it was highly innovative and predicted the later developments of presenters such as Adrian Juste and Kenny Everett. On Radio Luxembourg, after the war, he presented a series of Decca-sponsored music shows. In the late 1960s, he was heard in a highly popular Saturday lunchtime slot on Radio 1. It might be said that Jackson was, for some years, the only exponent in Britain of a U.S.-style music presentation.
JACOB, IAN (1899–1993). Sir Ian Jacob, who was director-general of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) from 1952 to 1959, succeeding William Haley, came from an army background, having served as military assistant secretary to the British War Cabinet. In 1946, he was invited by the BBC to run its European Service, from which his responsibility extended to the management of all Overseas Services. After a period out of the corporation, working at the Ministry of Defence in 1951, he returned as director-general in 1952, with an emphasis on corporate planning rather than direct involvement with programs. He was a popular figure within the BBC.
JACOBS, DAVID (1926– ). Jacobs’s varied career has included work as a disc jockey, actor, and quiz show host. After serving in the Royal Navy from 1944–1947 (during which time he made his first broadcast, in Navy Mixture), he joined Radio Seac in Ceylon in 1945 as chief announcer, becoming assistant station director prior to his departure for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Overseas Service in 1947, where he worked as a newsreader before going freelance. He narrated Journey into Space as well as contributing a number of small parts to the series. It was, however, as a music presenter that he made his most enduring mark; he hosted numerous programs, including Housewives’ Choice and Pick of the Pops. More recently, he has presented The David Jacobs Collection on Radio 2. He has been voted “Top DJ” six times, and other radio awards include BBC Radio Personality of the Year (1975) and the Special Sony Award for an Outstanding Contribution to Radio (1984). He has also established himself as a major television personality. Jacobs was awarded the CBE in 1996, and was inducted into the Radio Academy Hall of Fame in 2004.
JENNINGS AT SCHOOL. This series of plays came from the pen of a former prep school teacher, Anthony Buckeridge, at the suggestion of the Children’s Hour producer, David Davis. Jennings was a young boy in the fictitious “Linbury Court” school, and he and his friend, Darbishire, and their teachers, Mr. Wilkins and Mr. Carter, became household names to British children in the late 1940s and the 1950s. The first program in the first series was broadcast in October 1948. So popular did the series prove that from September 1954 the plays were broadcast in adult schedules as well as in Children’s Hour. Today, the few extant recordings and their situations might seem anachronistic, given the stories’ clearly “upper-class” origins, but in their time they were hugely successful and remain the object of some affectionate memories among the older generation. Among the actors to play the part of Jennings was Glyn Dearman, later to become a distinguished British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio producer.
JOAD, CYRIL (1891–1953). The philosopher C. E. M. Joad, a scholar of Plato and Aristotle, and one-time head of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, came to popular public attention as a member of the team of thinkers on The Brains Trust in 1941. Together with Julian Huxley and Commander A. B. Campbell, he became a household name, with a distinctive high-pitched voice, and a habitual proviso, presaging everything he said, “It all depends what you mean by . . . ,” which became a national catchphrase.
Such was his fame from the program that he became a celebrity, opening bazaars, giving after-dinner speeches, and even advertising tea. His fame lasted until April 1948, when he was convicted of boarding a train from Waterloo without a ticket. He was fined £2.00, but the event reached the press, and he was withdrawn by the BBC from The Brains Trust.
JOHNSTON, BRIAN (1912–1994). Johnston joined the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1946 as a member of the radio Outside Broadcast team. From 1948–1952, he had his own outside broadcast feature, Let’s Go Somewhere, within the magazine program, In Town Tonight. He became the BBC’s first cricket correspondent in 1963, working initially in television. In 1970, he switched to radio as part of the Test Match Special presentation team, and became notable for his gaffes, his rather school-boy interplay with the other presenters, as well as his propensity to “break up” on air. From 1972–1987, in addition, he presented Down Your Way on Radio 4 and was a familiar voice over the years on many outside broadcast commentaries, including the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. He retired in 1993 and died the following year.
JONES, PETER (1920–2000). Best known to radio audiences for his roles in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Just a Minute, Peter Jones joined the theater on leaving school at the age of 16. Over the early years of his career, he established himself as a comedian and writer, costarring with Richard Attenborough in 1952 in his own play, Sweet Madness. In the same year, he created a successful radio partnership with Peter Ustinov in the series In All Directions, a ground-breaking program in its time, using an improvised format at a time when many programs were still strictly scripted. In the 1960s, he became famous to millions of TV viewers in his role as the put-upon factory manager in the sit-com The Rag Trade; subsequently, he developed further the somewhat confused persona of this character and built it into his own style, carrying it into his most enduring work, that of an avuncular but permanently bewildered member of the team of Just a Minute. As the “Voice of the Book” in the cult series the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, he reached new audiences and generations. He worked almost to the very end of his life and died after a short illness in April 2000.
JOURNALS. The first broadcasting journals were aimed at the enthusiastic market of amateurs who wished to construct their own crystal sets, through which they could “listen-in” to radio experiments on headphones. As curiosity grew, the number of technical journals proliferated, and the first part of the 1920s saw a large number of weekly papers in circulation with the words “wireless” or “radio” in the title. This phenomenon reached a peak by the autumn of 1924, when the Wireless Constructor alone had a circulation of a quarter of a million. Some of those involved in the experiments, such as Arthur Burrows, who was then working for the Marconi Company, cooperated closely with technical radio magazines such as Amateur Wireless, the Popular Wireless Weekly, and the Broadcaster.
As wireless sets became more complicated something of the tinkering quality that had made radios so attractive to some individuals was lost. The market could not sustain the large number of broadcasting titles, many of which had faded away by 1927. Home-construction no longer required extensive technological knowledge, but could be achieved by buying and assembling a pre-prepared kit; in some cases a screwdriver was even supplied along with the component parts. According to the advertisement, the 1928 Melody Maker could be assembled by those with “something less than the average amount of dexterity.” Moreover, greater attention was becoming focused on the nature of the material being transmitted. Initially the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) depended upon the national and local press to advertise its programs, but following a brief boycott, the idea was conceived for the BBC to publish its own journal, and the first number of The Radio Times, published by George Newnes Ltd., rolled off the press on 28 September 1923.
In keeping with its heritage from the technical magazines, its pages featured articles explaining wireless technology, and educational items, in addition to program information. It also carried regular columns, including a weekly letter from the company’s general manager, John Reith, and articles, with photographs, of the broadcasters and artists behind the microphones. Meanwhile, another aspect of radio interest was spreading through the population, that of “distant listening.” With careful tuning and patient listening for the stations’ identifying call signals, the programs being broadcast by foreign radio stations could be picked up. It became quite a competitive activity, with enthusiasts vying as to whom could pick up the most distant signal. In 1925, the BBC launched its Radio Supplement, afterward renamed World-Radio, which listed the program details of foreign radio stations; it, too, included articles for the more technically minded reader.
A third BBC publication, the Listener, was launched in January 1929. The original idea had been to add gravitas to the spoken word by printing some of the more erudite broadcast talks. In fact, the journal soon established its reputation for the high quality of its articles and reviews. In contrast to this “highbrow” publication, Radio Pictorial began circulation in 2 January 1934. This journal, published by the International Broadcasting Company (IBC), was specifically pitched as a populist magazine. The IBC had set up the journal in response to a government ban on newspapers printing the listings of continental commercial radio stations under pressure from the BBC, which was trying to protect its monopoly from the competition of entrepreneurs buying airtime from European radio stations, and selling it to advertisers. In the event, this competition was defeated by the advent of World War II, which eventually forced the closure of the European stations and put the BBC back at the center of the broadcasting map.
After the end of the war, and with the rise of television, radiospecific journals ceased publication, with Radio Times remaining the sole journal to carry radio programs listings alongside an increasingly dominant television section.
JOURNEY INTO SPACE. Written by Charles Chilton, the first series of the Light Programme’s highly successful science fiction serial opened on 21 September 1953, with Captain Jet Morgan, played by Andrew Faulds, leading his crew into an adventure that originally was intended to last for no more than eight episodes. In fact, so great was the program’s grip on the public imagination that it went through a number of series, finally ending in 1958, by which time it had been translated into 17 languages and broadcast globally. Other characters were “Doc” Matthews (Guy Kingsley-Poynter), “Mitch” Mitchell (Don Sharpe, later David Williams), and Lemmy Barnett (David Kossoff, later Alfie Bass). Other parts were played by David Jacobs. It is notable in the history of radio in that it was the last program of its era to attract an audience to the medium larger than that watching television at the same time.
JOYCE, WILLIAM “LORD HAW-HAW” (1906–1946). It is a strange fact of British broadcasting that one of the most remembered and listened-to personalities of the mid-20th century was also one of the most hated and feared of all enemy propagandists of World War II. Born in New York, of Irish descent, but with a forged British passport (his undoing, since because of this he was convicted and executed after the war as a traitor), he joined Oswald Moseley’s Blackshirts in the 1930s and formed his own National Socialist League before moving to Germany in 1938. His thin, nasal tones, the sneering quality of his voice, and his trademark call of “Germany Calling, Germany Calling” transfixed British audiences, who tuned in to the broadcasts in vast numbers (at one point 27% of the whole population), as if hypnotized, to hear his uncanny predictions and inside knowledge of what was happening in the country—and where the next strike would fall. It was said that six million listeners tuned in nightly to hear him.
His nickname, “Lord Haw-Haw,” was coined by a journalist working on the Daily Express, Jonah Barrington, although Barrington’s original target for the name was not actually Joyce but another broadcaster altogether. By mid-1940, even German radio was introducing him, using the name. Broadcasting from Hamburg, his transmissions were relayed via Radio Luxembourg while the station was held in German hands. Joyce’s last broadcast, on 30 April 1945, was slurred by drink. He was hanged for high treason at Wandsworth Prison, London.
JUNIOR CHOICE. When Radio 1 went on the air on Saturday, 30 September 1967, one of the first programs was Junior Choice, the successor to the Light Programme’s Children’s Favourites. Broadcasting on Saturday and Sunday mornings, the first presenter was Leslie Crowther, who was succeeded by Ed Stewart in 1968. The program, a record request show, took into account the changing youth music trends that had created Radio 1, and differed from its predecessor in that music was chosen by the program producer for its overall mix, rather than program policy being governed—as previously—by demand and volume of request for specific items. By the time Stewart was succeeded by Tony Blackburn in 1979, the show had attained a remarkable audience of—at its height—16 million listeners. In the early 1980s, with audience trends changing and the growth of Independent Local Radio (ILR) the program was taken off air.
JUST A MINUTE. Devised by Ian Messiter as a successor to One Minute, Please, the program revolves around the idea of being able to talk without hesitation or deviation for one minute on a set subject. The four panelists are permitted to challenge one another and, if successful, take up the remaining time on the clock. Panelists have included Clement Freud, Derek Nimmo, Peter Jones, Paul Merton, Wendy Richard, and Kenneth Williams. When the program began in 1967, producer David Hatch originally invited Jimmy Edwards to take the role of chair. Edwards was unavailable, and the chairmanship was offered to Nicholas Parsons, who has fulfilled the task ever since.
JUST FANCY. This gentle comedy series was written by Eric Barker and performed by him, with Deryck Guyler, Kenneth Connor, and Pearl Hackney. A sketch show that was largely based on Barker’s gift for human observation, it ran from 1951–1962; thus it was almost exactly contemporaneous with the more famous The Goon Show. In its own way, it was equally popular in its time, with similar listening figures, and was quietly revolutionary in its development of radio comedy, notably by the absence of a studio audience.
JUST WILLIAM. A phenomenon of British children’s radio postwar, Richmal Crompton’s own adaptations from her original stories were first heard in October 1945 and captured the hearts of a generation. “William Brown” was the central character, a naughty but loveable small boy, whose antics and misdemeanors attracted large audiences of children and their parents. The stories had come from a magazine called Happy Mag, the earliest dating from 1919. The radio dramatizations continued until 1952, and included actors such as Charles Hawtrey, Anthea Askey (daughter of Arthur Askey), Andrew Ray (son of Ted Ray), and Patricia Hayes.
From 1986, a new generation was to discover “William” through a series of highly popular readings on Radio 4 by the actor, Martin Jarvis, which continued until 1990, when the last series was simultaneously released as an audio book by the BBC, with unprecedented success in terms of commercial sales of the spoken word.
The author, Richmal Crompton (1890–1969) was a classics mistress at a girls’ school in Kent, but when she was struck by polio, she devoted herself to writing full time, producing more than 400 Just William stories.
J. WALTER THOMPSON ORGANIZATION. This major United States advertising agency was a crucial part of the development of prewar commercial radio in Great Britain. Having learned from its American experience, it set up the first purpose-built radio studio for commercial radio in Britain. The Ariel Studio, in Bush House, was highly sophisticated, and used the Philips-Miller system of recording on film. At its peak, in 1938, the unit was run by a staff of 40, producing 44 programs a week to be shipped to continental stations, including Radio Luxembourg and Radio Normandy, for transmission back to the United Kingdom.