BBC Children's Hour Home Service mid-late Fifties

[DracoM]

Regional Round
Nature Parliament
'Counterspy' - the absolute series of gripper epis that made me love radio

Anyone remember more from the period.

[Serial_Apologist]

Not me! I think I must have "graduated" straight from Listen with Mother to Bill & Ben and Muffin the Mule on TV, which one understands to be a euphemism nowadays!

[vinteuil]

Norman Shelley and Carleton Hobbes as Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes

Norman and Henry Bones

.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Hour

.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It was Children's Hour that fired my enthusiasm for classic music. Sometime during 1960 they ran a series between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. on Sundays, introducing classical music to children. Up to this point, my experience of music was learning to play the piano. I "hated" Mozart because I couldn't play his Minuet in F K.2. Then my father switched on the radio one Sunday evening and I was captivated by it - Beethoven's Pastoral symphony, I think. Seeing that I was so excited, my father suggested I listen to something form his record collection - Mozart: Symphony no. 40, conducted by Furtwangler. I must have asked him to played nearly every day for the next year, and this is the reason why I'm posting here today, instead of on some less worthy forum.

Many thanks, BBC. Now please will you give other young people the same opportunity?

[oddoneout]

It was Children's Hour that fired my enthusiasm for classic music. Sometime during 1960 they ran a series between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. on Sundays, introducing classical music to children. Up to this point, my experience of music was learning to play the piano. I "hated" Mozart because I couldn't play his Minuet in F K.2. Then my father switched on the radio one Sunday evening and I was captivated by it - Beethoven's Pastoral symphony, I think. Seeing that I was so excited, my father suggested I listen to something form his record collection - Mozart: Symphony no. 40, conducted by Furtwangler. I must have asked him to played nearly every day for the next year, and this is the reason why I'm posting here today, instead of on some less worthy forum.

Many thanks, BBC. Now please will you give other young people the same opportunity?

Wouldn't be surprised if someone thinks that the proposed R3X will achieve that...

[french frank]

Norman and Henry Bones

With Patricia Hayes as Henry Bones. I believe they engaged in some subterfuge to conceal the fact that Henry was played by an actress.

Also there was Jennings (and Derbyshire). And Just William.

[DracoM]

Are any of the CH shows indicated above still available on archive and maybe accessible online?

[kernelbogey]

An adventure series - I don't remember its name but the introductory music was from Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements.

[DracoM]

Yes, yes!

[smittims]

Some of the most memorable music on radio and TV was unavailable to the public as it was 'library music' , recordings owned by publishers and hired out to programme makers. I was captivated by the theme music to Sketch Club, a BBC TV children's programme hosted by a kindly old gent called Adrian Hill. It was a gently tripping spiccato piece for string orchestra called 'the Sleeping Beauty', though it certainly wasn't from Tchaikovsky's ballet of that name. A few years later Adrian Hill turned up on Down Your Way and requested the piece , which was named in the post-programme credits. Sometimes these lost pieces of music turn up on discs of 'British Light Music' or such-like titles; otherwise they can be lost, it seems, forever.

Bits of 'serious music' were also used for time to time. I well remember the third movement of Bruckner 7, the finale of Borodin's first, and the finale of Howard Hanson's second, used as theme tunes for BBC TV's Sunday tea-time serials St, Ives, Rupert of Hentzau and Swallows and Amazons, though I didn't identify them until years later.

.

[kernelbogey]

Yes, yes!

Also - though I'm by no means sure about this one - a series, perhaps early '50s, about a tiny family called the Plantagenets, who lived beneath the floorboards.

[gradus]

Here's a reminder with David Davis (Uncle David) introducing Children's Hour, a lost world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDcyXYU8AoY

[smittims]

Nice to see Violet Carson remembered, gradus. As 'Nellie Carson' she was a professional singer for quite a few years, recording with The English Singers more than once, e.g. Columbia 33SX 1078 : 'Madrigals, ballets and folk songs from four centuries.' And in the 1960s she achieved greater fame as 'Ena Sharples' in the long-running Granada soap 'Coronation Street'.

[Pulcinella]

Nice to see Violet Carson remembered, gradus. As 'Nellie Carson' she was a professional singer for quite a few years, recording with The English Singers more than once, e.g. Columbia 33SX 1078 : 'Madrigals, ballets and folk songs from four centuries.' And in the 1960s she achieved greater fame as 'Ena Sharples' in the long-running Granada soap 'Coronation Street'.

Didn't she play the harmonium in the chapel round the corner?
Mind you, I never thought it feasible that someone from chapel would darken the doors of the pub, still less drink milk stout!

[french frank]

Didn't she play the harmonium in the chapel round the corner?

She played the piano for Wifred Pickles.