We were entertained at our May meeting, by not only our May Speaker, Mervyn Saunders, but also our own chair Christine, who brought joy and laughter to the auditorium with her late night purchases, two robots! Only in Southport U3A!
Back to Mervyn!
Mervyn is a founder member and past chair of Parbold and district U3A. The theme of his talk was the life and times of the BBC. He gave an often humorous talk about the now one hundred and three year old great British institution. Starting from the first concept on 18th October 1922, by a consortium of radio set manufacturers including Marconi, he brought us right up to the present day, telling us the origins of the nickname ‘Aunty’, attributed to the late Gilbert Harding and also questionably to Kenny Everett.
Mervyn talked about radio and TV, evoking lovely memories for most of us (despite the first fifty years when even we weren’t old enough to remember!). He then moved on to Radio Luxembourg and our own Pirate Radio station ‘Caroline’ in July ‘64. Their first song was’Can’t buy me love’, from our home grown Beatles. Radio Caroline was made doubly illegal in 1965 but didn’t close down until 1990!
So many events, facts, programmes and characters,
- – The Light programme being introduced in 1945, making music available to every household.
- – Entertainment of all genres from 1950.
- – Favourites like the Archers, the longest running radio ‘soap’ in the world now exceeding 20,000 episodes and still loved by so many today.
- – The beginning of TV, produced from Alexander Palace’s two studios, interrupted by WW2 and resuming in 1946.
- – The introduction of commercial TV, showing the first ever advert for Gibbs SR Toothpaste in 1955.
- – Colour introduced on July 1st 1967 from Wimbledon.
- – Right through to Satellite TV at the end of the ‘80’s
Well received I think! However as charming as lovely Mervyn was, personally I think Christine stole the show!
