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Breakaway was BBC Radio's second regular consumer travel programme, the first being the short-lived "Away From It All", both run by producer Roger MacDonald. It was launched on 29 September 1979, when it ran from 9.05 to 9.50 on BBC Radio 4, where it continued to be broadcast live every Saturday morning in roughly the same time slot for almost two decades. Its longest-serving presenter was Bernard Falk, who fronted the programme from 1980 to 1990. Breakaway finally came to an end as part of the extensive schedule changes introduced by Radio 4 controller James Boyle in April 1998.
Breakaway took the BBC into a new era, far removed from the idealised travel dreams of the Holiday programme, presenting a relatively impartial and realistic view of travel. MacDonald favoured reporters who were members of the Guild of Travel Writers who were hardened travel professionals, and schooled them in the art of radio journalism. A regular commentator was Nigel Coombs, then editor of Travel Trade Gazette who provided knowledgeable insights into the travel industry. The mix of 'warts and all' location features and comedic interviews with travel executives trying to defend the indefensible, found almost universal favour with the audience.
The programme often discussed unsavoury topics; for example, it ran an interview with Dr. Jane Wilson-Howarth on diarrhoea while travelling. The programme was occasionally broadcast from overseas, including New York, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, and famously on one occasion live from Bruges on the weekend when the Townsend Thoresen ferry "Herald of Free Enterprise" ran aground. [1]
The distinctive theme music was "Breakaway" written by Con Conrad, Archie Gottler and Sidney D. Mitchell for the film Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 and performed by Jack Hylton and his Orchestra. [2]
Today, colloquially known as the Today programme, is a long-running BBC early-morning news and current-affairs radio programme on Radio 4. Broadcast on Monday to Friday from 6:00 am to 9:00 am and on Saturday from 7:00 am to 9:00 am, it is produced by BBC News and is the highest-rated programme on Radio 4 and one of the BBC's most popular programmes across its radio networks. In-depth political interviews and reports are interspersed with regular news bulletins, as well as Thought for the Day. It has been voted the most influential news programme in Britain in setting the political agenda, with an average weekly listening audience around 7 million.
BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station describes itself as 'the world's most significant commissioner of new music', and through its New Generation Artists scheme promotes young musicians of all nationalities. The station broadcasts the BBC Proms concerts, live and in full, each summer in addition to performances by the BBC Orchestras and Singers. There are regular productions of both classic plays and newly commissioned drama.
Absolutely is a British comedy sketch show. The cast and crew are mainly Scottish; the principal writers and performers are Moray Hunter, Jack Docherty, Peter Baikie, Gordon Kennedy, Morwenna Banks (English) and John Sparkes (Welsh). The original television series, produced by Absolutely Productions, aired on Channel 4 for four series between May 1989 and February 1993. Following an award-winning one-off radio reunion special for BBC Radio 4 in 2013, the show returned for a new four-part radio series with most of the original cast in September 2015. A second Radio 4 series of four programmes was broadcast from 25 June 2017, and a third in July 2019.
Woman's Hour is a radio magazine programme broadcast in the United Kingdom on the BBC Light Programme, BBC Radio 2, and later BBC Radio 4. It has been on the air since 1946.
Jack Hylton was an English pianist, composer, band leader and impresario.
Z-Cars or Z Cars is a British television police procedural series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, near Liverpool. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.
Don Durbridge was a UK radio presenter who started his career on the BBC Light Programme, and subsequently worked on the British Forces Broadcasting Service, and on BBC Radio 2,. He also broadcast for many years on BBC Radio Medway, BBC Radio Kent and Invicta Sound in Kent, and latterly on PrimeTime and Saga DAB radio. On PrimeTime he introduced the late night slot, In Mellow Mood, until the station's demise in 2006. He was also the regular matchday announcer for Fulham Football Club in the mid-1970s and for Gillingham Football Club during the 1980s.
Sam Browne was an English dance band singer, who became one of the most popular British dance band vocalists of the 1930s. He is remembered for singing with Jack Hylton and with Ambrose and his Orchestra, at the Mayfair Hotel and Embassy Club, with whom he made many recordings from 1930 to 1942, and for his duets and variety performances with the singer, Elsie Carlisle.
Friday Night is Music Night is a long-running live BBC radio concert programme featuring the BBC Concert Orchestra, broadcast on the BBC Light Programme and its successor BBC Radio 2 since 1953. The programme is the world's longest-running live orchestral music radio programme.
Anne Erica Isobel Mackenzie is a former BBC political and current affairs presenter. Mackenzie worked as a newscaster between 1981 and 1997. She started her career with Grampian TV, in Aberdeen, before joining BBC Scotland in 1995. She became a political and current affairs presenter in 1998, anchoring several BBC network programmes. Mackenzie was also part of the Newsnight Scotland team, with BBC Scotland, from its launch in October 1999 to July 2007. She could also be heard fronting factual programmes for BBC Radio 4 in London.
Music While You Work was a daytime radio programme of continuous live popular music broadcast in the United Kingdom twice daily on workdays from 23 June 1940 until 29 September 1967 by the BBC. Initially, the morning edition was generally broadcast on the BBC Home Service at 10:30am, with the afternoon edition at 3pm on the Forces/General Forces Programme - and after the war on the BBC Light Programme. Between August 1942 and July 1945, a third edition was broadcast at 10:30pm for night-shift workers.
Patrick Cairns "Spike" Hughes was a British musician, composer and arranger involved in the worlds of classical music and jazz. He has been called Britain's earliest jazz composer. Later in his career, he became better known as a broadcaster and humorous author.
Jack Jackson was an English trumpeter and bandleader popular during the British dance band era, and who later became a highly influential radio disc jockey. The BBC's nickname "Auntie" is often credited to Jackson.
BBC Alba is a Scottish Gaelic-language free-to-air television channel jointly owned by the BBC and MG Alba. The channel was launched on 19 September 2008 and is on-air for up to seven hours a day with BBC Radio nan Gàidheal simulcasts. The name Alba is the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland. The station is unique in that it is the first channel to be delivered under a BBC licence by a partnership and is also the first multi-genre channel to come entirely from Scotland with almost all of its programmes made in Scotland.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom. Headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, it is the world's oldest national broadcaster, and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees, employing over 22,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 19,000 are in public-sector broadcasting.
2ZY was the name of a radio station established by the British Broadcasting Company in Manchester, England, in 1922. Part of the newly nationalized British Broadcasting Corporation from 1 January 1927, the station continued broadcasting under the 2ZY name until its transmissions came to be referred to, from 9 March 1930, as "the Manchester programme". Subsequently, on 17 May 1931, the Manchester station – broadcasting from a new high-powered station at Moorside Edge – became the main production centre of the newly launched BBC North Regional Programme, which was to remain on air until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.
The Chris Evans Breakfast Show is the name given to two versions of a radio programme hosted by broadcaster Chris Evans in the United Kingdom. The first was the incarnation of The Radio 2 Breakfast Show that aired every weekday morning between 11 January 2010 and 24 December 2018. Evans had taken over from Terry Wogan, who ended his stint as the station's morning presenter on 18 December 2009. On 3 September 2018, it was announced by Evans live on air that he would be leaving the network. The show broadcast its final episode on BBC Radio 2 on 24 December 2018. On 3 October 2018, it was announced by Evans live on air that Zoe Ball would take over the slot, with her first broadcast airing on 14 January 2019. Evans meanwhile started the second incarnation of the show on Virgin Radio that began on 21 January 2019.
Band Waggon is a 1940 British comedy film directed by Marcel Varnel and starring Arthur Askey, Richard Murdoch and Moore Marriott. It was based on the BBC radio show Band Waggon.
The Week in Westminster is a weekly political radio programme, which is broadcast on Saturdays on BBC Radio 4.
Helen Clare was a British singer who was well known in the 1930s and 1940s through her work in variety, radio, television and recording. Clare worked extensively in light entertainment, appearing on BBC Radio and recording with British dance bands. Her distinctive soprano voice saw her working with some of the biggest names of the era, including bandleaders Jack Jackson and Henry Hall. She was one of the last surviving British singers who had been active in the 1930s.