Simon Bates: Our Tune

From the Radio 1 On Show magazine, summer 1980.

Simon Bates, 1980 - in his own words:

"A farmers boy was I, raised in Shropshire but when it came to secondary education at University the wanderlust took over and I took off, to the States - I think I had just discovered Bob Dylan at the time! In America I became fascinated by radio - there was so much of it and my British accent made it easy for me to get work. Wanderlust soon struck again though and I returned to farming - this time in New Zealand but I soon found that one of my other loves was still broadcasting. The other one? She was a lady journalist who worked in TV. Eventually she gave me £50 for my fare to Australia - a somewhat unsubtle hint. So I joined a TV station in Sydney where I spent two years making films that no one ever watched.

"By 1971 the old wanderlust overcame me again and I sneaked back to Britain, where I got a job in London's throbbing West End. Couldn't stand the throbbing though, met a friend who knew someone at the BBC and it wasn't long before they let me make the occasional formal announcement. Still doing it too - just a minute, 'Ladies and Gentlemen The Golden Hour'."

In 1990, the 10th anniversary of the popular BBC Radio 1 feature Our Tune was celebrated with the publication of an Arrow paperback by Simon Bates. Our Tune began in the summer of 1980, and I'll let Simon himself tell the story with some extracts from the Foreword to his book:

In the summer of 1980, I was looking through the postbag I received each day for my Radio One show. I sifted through the usual requests for records for mothers and fathers, nieces and nephews, dedications for workmates and colleagues, jokes, and snippets from local newspapers, and as I read through the pile of letters, I came across a simple request from a girl called Susan.

It was not a long or elaborate letter, but something about it caught my attention. Susan, who had recently left school to become a secretary near her home in Manchester, had just returned from a two-week holiday in Bournemouth, on the south coast of England. She had been lucky. It had been one of those occasions where the weather had been beautiful for a fortnight - long hot days, warm nights.

During her holiday, she had met a man in a wine bar - Stephen, who came from just outside Twickenham, and was charming, polite, considerate, and just on the right side of good looking.

In her letter, Susan explained that she had fallen for Stephen, virtually from the moment he had introduced himself. From then on, her holiday had been filled with the sort of things she had always dreamed of… walks on the beach, sunbathing and trips to the New Forest in Stephen’s car.

For two weeks life had been absolute bliss for Susan, until that inevitable moment when she had to return home. It had broken her heart when he drove her to the railway station for the long journey home. While Susan’s friend carried on her luggage, they hugged on the platform, holding each other for so long she almost missed the train.

For weeks, they had telephoned and written to one another, promising that soon they would get together. But, sadly, it was never to be. Afraid of hurting her, Stephen hadn’t told Susan that he had been accepted as a non-commissioned officer in the Army, and was being posted to Germany. And in his final letter, he said that it would be the last time he would write.
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Susan was absolutely distraught; but instead of just moping round her parents’ house, she decided to tell me her story. She asked me to play the song to which she and Stephen had listened during that holiday: “Summer The First Time”, by Bobby Goldsboro.
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And to me it was more than just another request.

I was touched by the simplicity of the request. The story was honest, straightforward, and full of emotion. And once I began reading, I found I just couldn’t stop. It was unlike most letters I had been receiving. I enjoy playing requests for people, but Susan asked me to read out exactly what she had felt. I read it out, just before eleven o’clock, and suggested afterwards that if anyone else had any summer-romance stories, they should send them in.

It was the start of a phenomenon.

Within days, I received more than 2000 letters from listeners with stories to tell. They came from all over Britain. They were happy, sad and, in some cases, completely off the wall.

Some of them were almost unbelievable. One woman had gone on holiday with a friend, fallen for a man she met in her hotel in Tenerife, only to walk into a restaurant and find her boyfriend from home sitting at a table with another girl. They had a furious row, a tearful reunion, and ended up getting married…

Whilst the stories themselves were remarkable, it was the response that was so overwhelming. And it was the listeners who decided on the name “Our Tune” - simply because that’s how so many of them described their records. I had more than enough material to run the slot for six weeks; but pretty soon, it became apparent that people really enjoyed it.

The letters became more wide ranging, dealing not only with romances, but also with problems that had cropped up on holiday. I started reading these out as well, and I received more and more letters.

At the end of our six week run, I told the listeners that “Our Tune” would be ending - or so I thought!

The switchboard immediately jammed, and within a week the postbag almost doubled. People told me how they stopped work in office and factories, just to listen to “Our Tune”. I had to keep it going…

Our Tune is now firmly associated with a certain piece of music, but it wasn’t so in the early days. Back to Simon Bates:

At first I read out the recording with any sentimental music I could find. Then, one day, I picked the love theme from the soundtrack of Franco Zefferelli’s “Romeo and Juliet”. It seemed to fit the mood of “Our Tune” so brilliantly that I have kept it going ever since…

Radio listings as they were on 17 July 1980 - around the time that "Our Tune" was coming into being

Looking back on ten years of Our Tune in the 1990 10th anniversary book, Simon Bates makes a few fascinating observations on some of the changing trends, attitudes, issues and fortunes of the 1980s:

During the past decade, the emphasis of “Our Tune” has changed dramatically. During the early part of the decade, I was reading out a lot of letters to do with marriage break-ups. With the economy struggling to turn around, many of them centred on financial problems, and quite a few people who just simply couldn’t cope with life. They told me how they had, perhaps, contemplated suicide - but at the last minute had decided to battle on.

Then, with a widening of people’s attitudes on all sorts of issues, the range of “Our Tune” letters has grown. For example, I started getting letters from the homosexual community - from people who couldn’t cope with their gay feelings; and, over the last few years, the AIDS issue has become more and more prevalent.

People blubbed over tragic tales on Our Tune many times, but there were also lots of stories with happy endings.

Here is a favourite of mine from the book (which is out of print, but still crops up on eBay at times). Cue music:

Patsy and Graham

Simon Bates: “Patsy and Graham’s story, from Solihull in the West Midlands, was one of the most stirring love stories I have ever read out. It also brought dozens of letters of support from other listeners.”

(Broadcast: May 1987)

I can see a new horizon

Underneath a blazing sky

I’ll be where the eagles are flying

Higher and higher

"St Elmo’s Fire" - John Parr

This is honestly a love story which I should never really be writing. When I first set eyes on Graham, there seemed no chance at all that we would ever be together.

But, after three years, we are not only the happiest couple alive, but we are planning to marry in the next six months. Hopefully, we will be starting a family to complete everything I ever dreamed of.

It all started so differently though, Simon. When I first saw Graham, it was an instant attraction - me to him. He was tall, very handsome, quite dark skinned, and one of the most well-dressed men I had ever seen. His suits were always well cut, his shirt neatly ironed and his shoes were always well shined.

In short, he was the sort of man most girls would give a fortune to be seen with. And I was one of them. The trouble is, when he came to work as the boss of the used-car department of the garage where I worked, there was no way I was of any interest to him whatsoever.

To put it mildly, I was a bit of a mess at that time. I had broken up with my only boyfriend two years before, and I hadn’t gone out with anyone else. I had let myself go to pot a little. When I had broken up with Jeff, I had taken refuge in eating. I would eat anything and everything I could get my hands on to cheer myself up.

They weren’t big meals, just snacks. But I would have lots and lots of them. Bars of chocolate, bags of crisps, sandwiches - you name it, I would eat it.

I paid absolutely no interest to my clothes, and I never went anywhere, apart from the local wine bar. It was a fairly ordinary existence, but I honestly had no encouragement to break out of it.

I had always been reasonably intelligent, doing well at school, but even though people said how pretty I had been, it is very hard to feel pretty when you have ballooned up to thirteen and a half stones, and have trouble squeezing into a size sixteen.

Graham was completely out of range, as far as any sort of relationship was concerned. I told my only true friend, Karen - the only person I could really confide in - what a fantastic guy had started to work at the garage.

She told me that if I thought he was that fantastic, why didn’t I try to make some sort of contact with him? I told her not to be stupid - why would he be interested in someone like me? Karen asked me if he had a regular girlfriend. As far as I knew he hadn’t, but I couldn’t see why he would be on the shelf.

But, she did plant the seed of an idea in my mind. Over the course of the next few weeks, work brought Graham and I into a reasonable amount of contact. We got on well. He had a sense of humour that I enjoyed, and I think he knew I wasn’t an idiot.

On several occasions, we had to organise promotions - like cheese and wine parties - for the garage, and had to stay behind when it was all over. I found out that he was single, and, although he dated a few girls, there was no one serious in his life.

The night I found all this out, I made a decision that was going to change my life. I never really believed that people’s appearances were more important than their characters, but if ever I was going to appeal to a man like Graham, then I would have to put some pride back into my life.

From that point on, I became a different person. I can honestly say that from that moment on, I never touched another bar of chocolate, or a sandwich outside meal times.

I began swimming virtually every day. The first few weeks were really painful. I felt like a whale squeezing into a swimsuit at the local baths. But I did it. When I came out of the changing rooms I sometimes felt the whole place was staring at me, especially the little children.

I managed to get through a few lengths for the first visits, but slowly and surely, my fitness and my strength built up and I was doing more and more distance. It exhausted me to start with but, gradually, I could cope more and more comfortably.

At the time, I put myself on a diet. I cut out all the junk food I had been eating and I stuck to salads and vegetables.

You know, the hardest part about trying to change yourself is finding a motive, and, to be honest, Graham was my motive. At first I lived in fear that I would turn up at work and find out he had got married, or engaged. But, after a while, that didn’t become the thing that was driving me. I got on the scales at home, and would see the needle moving slowly down. All of a sudden, that became my aim.

I couldn’t believe the change coming over me. I started to take an interest in my clothes again. I didn’t earn a lot of money, so I picked things that were really smart. And, as my sizes went down - a twelve at first - I felt better and better about myself.

I can’t begin to tell you how happy I was the night I went to the baths and plucked up the courage to wear a bikini for the first time. I thought everyone would still laugh and point, but nobody did.

At work, I had energy. I felt confident and happy, and a whole change was coming over me. I went away for two weeks to Tenerife. When I got back, everyone said how well I looked. Perhaps it was the fact that I had been away - and people saw me in a new light - but everyone seemed to be paying me compliments.

But, of course, there was one I really wanted. And that wasn’t long coming. Graham came over to me as soon as I walked through the door of the showroom, and paid me the greatest compliment!

Well, Simon, it didn’t take long for that compliment to be an invitation to dinner. And then it didn’t take long until we were going out together virtually every night of the week.

As I said, I know physical attraction isn’t everything, but if you don’t have pride and confidence in yourself, how can you expect other people to have any either?

I put all that back in myself, hoping to win over one man. It worked for me, and I can’t begin to tell you how much inspiration it has given me. Please play “St Elmo’s Fire” for me. It is a song I used to listen to all the way to the swimming baths and back. It really used to drive me on, and it still means an awful lot to me today.

1986 - a rare "Our Tune" compact disc (most surviving copies of this compilation are on vinyl - compact discs were still an expensive novelty in 1986, having only arrived in 1983). Featured tracks included ABC - "The Look of Love" and the Moody Blues - "Nights In White Satin". And the most requested "our tune" up to that point? The dreamy "I'm Not In Love" by 10CC.
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From its humble beginnings in 1980, Our Tune grew to become a daily "must listen" for millions. Including me. When I was on morning duty at the home for the elderly where I worked in the mid-to-late '80s, I always contrived to arrange my tasks so that my tea break could coincide with Our Tune. Soppy devil? What a dated concept. I was, quite simply, every inch an 80s man!

Thora Hird - The 1980s: Never Too Late, Praise Be! A Cream Cracker Under The Settee, Hallelujah!

It wasn't alternative, but it was realistic and optimistic - it was Never Too Late, a 1980-1981 BBC Radio 4 comedy by Terry Gregson, starring the brilliant English character actors Thora Hird, Megs Jenkins, Avis Bunnage and Joe Gladwin.

Thora, who was a member of my own wonderful grandmother's generation and shared many of her qualities, played the highly capable Hilda Springett - a pensioner organising a holiday for her friends and neighbours, including man-mad Mildred Emmett, played by Avis Bunnage. Of Mildred, Hilda said: "Anybody who thinks promiscuity started in the 'sixties should have known Mildred in her twenties!"

Megs Jenkins was feather-headed Emily Holroyd (Mildred: "Remember when they dropped that bomb on the gasworks?" Emily: "That'd be during the war.")

Joe Gladwin was the oft morose Tommy Preston, who discovered that even the marmalade wasn't as good as it was when he was a lad.

Oddly enough, the show had the same theme tune as Terry & June!

A second series followed late in 1981, running into 1982, with Hilda and her pals raising funds to keep the local day centre for the elderly open.

Never Too Late = fondly remembered.

Thora Hird kept a very special appointment in 1983 - to collect her OBE. In the early 1990s, she became a Dame of the British Empire. We were pleased for her, my family, friends and I, but she was always just "Thora" to us. Not that we'd ever met her, but we felt as if we had. Thora had such a natural way about her on-screen, she seemed like one of us.

My gran never referred to Thora's Sunday evening hymn request show by its titles; when it began in 1977 it was a studio-based show called Your Songs of Praise Choice. In 1984 it became Praise Be! But Gran simply called the show "Thora":

"Thora's on tonight, so we'll make a cuppa beforehand, and then we can settle down."

I often used to visit Gran on Sundays (I was usually nursing a hangover!), so often saw Thora then. In the '80s there was some wonderful location filming with ducks, dogs and glorious countryside.

In 1983, Thora starred in the Dick Sharples telly comedy Hallelujah!

She was, of course, already appearing in Mr Sharples' other telly comedy, In Loving Memory, which had premiered (with a different cast) in 1969 and became a series from 1979 to 1986.

In Hallelujah! Thora played disaster-prone Captain Emily Ridley of the Salvation Army, trying to make a success of running a citadel in a small northern town, and avoid being put out to grass. She was assisted by her widowed niece Alice Meredith (Patsy Rowlands), who would much rather have found a nice man and settled down again.

A serial bigamist, who had only done it because he couldn't face "living in sin", formed one of the storylines in the first series. A young Richard Whiteley turned up, playing himself, in another episode in which Captain Emily nearly fell off the roof at Yorkshire Television, trying to prevent a stoat keeper from committing suicide!

A second series followed in 1984.

The 1980s were truly a wondrous time for Thora fans. Remember her in Last Of The Summer Wine, and Alan Bennett's absolutely brilliant Talking Heads instalment A Cream Cracker Under The Settee?

No offence meant, but I was never a great fan of Last Of The Summer Wine. However, when Thora Hird arrived as Edie Pegden (she joined the cast in 1985, and made her screen debut on New Year's Day, 1986, in an episode entitled Uncle Of The Bride), I had a lot more time for the show - even began to enjoy it. The character, complete with Thora's tried and trusted "phone voice" routine ("Hoh how har you?"), was a delight, bolstering the monstrous regiment of women with her coffee mornings - and balancing out the men (with their long-running juvenile antics) a little more.

1980s newcomer Edie Pegden (Thora Hird) with Last Of The Summer Wine stalwarts Nora Batty (Kathy Staff) and Ivy (Jane Freeman).

Thora wasn't only like a favourite relative or good friend visiting us via the telly screen - she was an absolutely top-notch actress.

And that didn't just mean comedy, either.

1987's A Cream Cracker Under The Settee was a tremendous revelation to me - it was the first time a performance by Thora ever made me cry. I was working as a care assistant at a Social Services home for the elderly at the time, so thought that the show would be of interest. But I was completely bowled over. I wept, and wept - and wept some more. And thoughts of the show kept me awake well into the early hours.

I don't ever recall reacting to a dramatic performance like that - before or since.

And at other times during this era, when Thora was making me laugh and making me cry as various fictitious characters, I was glad to see her, via the tube, popping in for a natter as herself.

There was a wonderful simplicity and integrity about "our Thora".

She was utterly convincing when acting a role. And always seemed utterly genuine when appearing as herself.

In fact, she was a bit of a one-off.

And she's sadly missed.

In 1987, Doris took a tumble and discovered that Zulema had left a cream cracker under the settee. Thora Hird's portrayal of Doris earned her a BAFTA award for best actress.

1980: The Axing Of Waggoners' Walk...

Walking the walk... Mike and Claire Nash (Edward Cast and Ellen McIntosh) owned No 1, Waggoners' Walk, centre of a lot of the serial's action, from 1969 to 1980.

BBC Radio 2's sometimes controversial soap opera Waggoners' Walk, which had been on air since April 1969, was last broadcast in 1980 - it ended as part of the BBC's economy cutbacks. Bizarrely, Waggoners' Walk was, at the time of its enforced demise, the highest rated show of BBC Radio's drama output - this was pointed out back then. I couldn't help wondering just what the logic was in cutting this particular show, and wondered if the BBC, piqued at being made to pull in its belt, had decided to take it out on the audience?

And "Auntie" was very snobbish about soap opera at that time anyway. EastEnders was still years away.

The Beeb firmly turned down Capital Radio's request to take over Waggoners' Walk. Boo to the BBC!

Waggoners' Walk had often been fearless and controversial, covering story-lines like cancer, hypothermia and homosexuality.

The first homosexuality story-line had actually been a bit of a cop-out, with the gay man being a peripheral character who later "reformed", married and lived happily ever after. But never mind.

The show had its roots in a one-off radio play broadcast in early 1969, called The Ropewalk. It featured a lonely young woman - newly arrived in the capital from the north of England - prepared to offer her virginity to a stranger in a squalid bedsit, an anti-Vietnam demo, and a bouncer from a Soho clip-joint - where a young prostitute died of a heroin overdose.

And yes, this was in 1969.

Major characters in the Waggoners' saga included Mike and Claire Nash (Edward Cast and Ellen McIntosh) - he the editor of the Hampstead Herald, she a former model. Mike and Claire owned No 1 Waggoners' Walk; Lynn and Matt Prior (Judy Franklin and Michael Spice) - lady-like southerner Lynn and fiery northerner Matt were my two favourite characters. "Bloody wars, Lynn!" Matt would cry as news of the latest sophisticated goings-on in Hampstead reached him. "Matt! Behave yourself!" Lynn would reply. Matt and Lynn owned a restaurant and lived at the Old Bakery in Haverstock Hill. And then there was Liz and Peter Tyson (Ann Morrish and Basil Moss) - Peter was Lynn Prior's first husband. He and Liz lived in Minden Road and Liz worked on the Women's Page at the Hampstead Herald.

To end our round-up of memorable Walk characters, I'm sure fellow fans will remember Peter's father, the horribly grumpy Arthur Tyson (Lockwood West), and his genial friend George Underdown (Alan Dudley), who seemed to have found happiness with a late-in-life marriage, only to have that happiness cruelly snatched from him.

In 1980, Waggoners' Walk got an omnibus edition at last - beginning on Sunday, 20 January. Also in early 1980, the show opted to go down the gay route again, this time properly it seemed, when one of the characters - a restaurant waiter by the name of Rob Pengelly - announced: "Girls don't turn me on at all." This scene was actually rebroadcast as part of one of the first omnibus editions. At SUNDAY teatime, hallowed home of the classic Sunday serial on TV and Stars On Sunday! 

Cynical teen that I was, brought up on a '70s diet of The Sweeney, The Wheeltappers And Shunters Social Club, Bernard Manning and George And Mildred, I muttered, "The BBC won't stand for this. They'll have this programme off in quick sticks."

"Queers", "benders", "poofs" or "woolly-woofters" as gay men were called around my district in the 1970s (not that any actually lived there as far as I knew but everybody had an opinion on them and, it seemed, everybody was a bigot) were definitely not the sort of thing you expected to hear about at tea time on Radio 2 - not even in 1980. Particularly at SUNDAY teatime!

I've no idea if the gay story-line actually did have any bearing on the matter, but, very shortly after it began, the axing was announced.

There was uproar, including a debate in Parliament, but the BBC was having none of it.

A friend of mine suggested that Margaret Thatcher's Government was responsible for the show's demise, as the BBC was being forced to make cutbacks. But this simply made me laugh. What company in its right mind decides to ditch one of its most successful products when looking at areas where savings can be made?

The show's forthcoming demise was actually mentioned in the plot by a character called Jessie Brewer to an aforementioned character called George Underdown some time before the final episode. Jessie was having a moan and ended a list of woes with: "BBC cutbacks - have you heard about them taking off Waggoners' Walk?"

"Um, yes," said George, who actually wasn't paying much attention as his mind was occupied by other problems. But George was a character in Waggoners' Walk, and his problems were simply Waggoners' Walk story-lines!

Highly weird.

The scene fused my brain for weeks afterwards.

TV soap opera moved on in the 1980s, gritty social issues were examined, some soaps developed a hefty left-wing subtext, and, in 1987, BBC Radio Four produced a brand new soap called Citizens, revolving around a group of friends sharing a house in London.

I tuned in eagerly, but quickly tuned out again. The show seemed, to my mind, almost desperately topical, and I felt it was tarnished by the then emerging political correctness.

Citizens soon went down the dumper.

What a shame Auntie hadn't stuck with Waggoners' Walk, I thought at the time.

And it was a shame.

The BBC had two widely differing serials on radio - Waggoners' Walk, set in 'appy 'ampstead, and The Archers, set in sleepy Ambridge. Both worked beautifully. One complemented the other. And I loved the way these serials spurred my imagination to form pictures of characters and settings.

I still listen to and enjoy The Archers.

And I still bemoan the loss of Waggoners' Walk, nearly thirty years on. When nostalgia takes me, I have several episodes I taped from the radio back then that I can listen to.

Oh well. The 1980s took away but they also gave us soaps - Brookside, EastEnders, Take The High Road and, of course, the brilliant spoof Acorn Antiques.

Here's what Victoria Wood had to say about her most celebrated creation:

"It was a homage to Crossroads but also to a terrible radio series called Waggoners' Walk which was on then."

"Terrible"? Flippin' 'eck!

Still, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

And I loved Acorn Antiques, too!

After Waggoners' Walk ended, a novel was published, Waggoners Walk - The Story Continues..., written by Terry James, one of the show's scriptwriters.

The final episode was heard at the end of May 1980, and it went out with a cliffhanger: middle-aged George Underdown, whose wife had died of a heart attack the year before, asked a girl thirty years younger than himself to marry him - Sophie Richmond, victim of a rape in 1979.

In the final scene, a shocked Sophie told George she needed time to think about it.

The novel took the saga on to September 1980, when Sophie married George. Sophie had decided that marriage to middle-aged George was right for her. The rape had left her afraid of sex, and George had told her that a "platonic marriage", based on companionship, would be all right with him. Sex had never played a large part in his life anyway.

On the last page of the book, Sophie discovered George crying over a photograph of his dead wife and telling it that he'd only married Sophie because he missed her so much.

"I think I may have made the biggest mistake of my life," Sophie told herself.

The End.

Another cliffhanger, this time never to be resolved!

Readers of the "Story Continues..." left Waggoners' Walk for the very last time in September 1980.

And this particular reader was tearing his hair out!