BY NICHOLAS ENGERT
When I was growing up in the 1960’s there stood in the corner of our sitting room a magnificent Grundig wireless set. This was radio as furniture – a statement. A polished mahogany cabinet with a facia comprising a loudspeaker grille, below which was the backlit glass “dial” which listed the radio stations from around the world. To either side of the dial were two large knobs – the one for tuning to a station, the other to control the volume. The Grundig set was more sophisticated than others by having an outer ring on the tuning knob which enabled very fine tuning. It also had a “magic eye” featuring a light that indicated the accuracy of the tuning.
Below the dial were a set of ivory coloured keys to select the wavelength.
Across the illuminated dial were displayed the names of stations both domestic and foreign. The British stations of the time were limited to three, namely the Home Service, the Third Programme and the Light Programme, corresponding to today’s prosaically sounding names of Radio 4, Radio 3 and Radio 2. (Reducing the names to a number robbed the stations of their roots and their deeper, implied meaning and was, to my mind, an act of cultural vandalism.) Imprinted on the dial these were simply referenced as Home, Third and Light. Alongside the BBC stations I recall the stations of the great cities of Europe – Rome, Luxembourg, Oslo, Paris as well as the lesser known cities – at least to me at the time – of Hilversum and Graz.
To move from one station to another meant enduring the no man’s land of static and white noise, the hisses and squelches of incomprehensible nothingness, before arriving safely at your chosen destination where the noise gave way to jazz, a symphony or concerto rendering the search completely worthwhile.
And if music was not what you wanted there was of course radio comedy.
Let me introduce you to a cast of magnificent characters tailor made for radio.
In 1951 a collection of anarchic characters – Neddie Seagoon, Denis Bloodnok, Hercules Grytpype-Thynne, Henry Crun, Minnie Bannister, Count Jim Moriarty, Eccles and Bluebottle, along with a litany of minor characters – burst on to the BBC Home Service in what was to become one of the iconic radio shows of the fifties.
Collectively known as The Goons, the characters were played by Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and, for the first two series, Michael Bentine. Created and written (mainly) by Spike Milligan, The Goons developed a unique style of comedy with ludicrous plots overlayed with sound effects from the newly formed BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
The Goon Show painted pictures with words and sounds and for a glorious 30 minutes each week you lost yourself in the ridiculous capers of these cartoon characters whilst waiting for your favourite character to appear. The plots were surreal, almost four dimensional in their utter impossibility and yet they gently poked fun at an incompetent and stuffy establishment. (Secombe and Milligan had met whilst in the Royal Artillery in the Second World War and much of their humour was derived from the petty stupidities of army life.)
The Goons, through the medium of radio, created an immersive world into which the listener was drawn and enraptured and from which, all these years later, one still cannot entirely escape.
The act of gathering around a radio set, waiting for it to warm up and then tuning in to the Home Service to collectively enjoy this and other programmes of the time reinforced a sense of belonging and community centred on a culture that was uniquely British.
The introduction of television, for all its wonders, broke the bonds between the spoken word and the listener’s imagination. And whilst television has brought some truly marvellous dramas and documentaries into our homes, in the end it is radio that is master of the airwaves.
Today the broadcasting landscape has been Balkanised into a myriad of competing businesses and the result has been too much choice, tiny (by comparison with the past) audiences and advertisers chasing harder and harder for attention in the cluttered media world. As a result, as the quantity of programmes has increased while the quality has inevitably suffered.
And this fragmentation of that which drew us together as a community or a family is so utterly fractured that we each inhabit our own world which we customise to suit our own unique desires and interests. The shared experience of a radio show, or at its height in the 1970s and 80s, television shows such as Morecambe & Wise, which at Christmas in 1977 garnered an audience of 28 million viewers – roughly half the population – are now sadly a distant memory.
So perhaps the time has come to rediscover the delights of radio and to travel through all those no man’s lands until you arrive at a station along the journey at which you can linger and enjoy what it has to offer.
Nicholas Engert is the founder and creative director of Nicholas Engert Interiors, a studio known for its timeless, elegant and understated design philosophy. With decades of experience in interior architecture and design, Nicholas brings a refined eye and a wealth of knowledge to every project, blending form, function and character with a deep understanding of client needs. Every product featured in the studio’s collection is personally selected to meet exacting standards of quality, design, and aesthetic integrity.