Radio days | 23 June 2007

BBC radio’s Test Match Special will deservedly be celebrating particularly special champagne moments in a couple of weeks when their tardis settles on Edgbaston for the one-day international; for  it was at Birmingham’s pleasant ground they began their ball-by-ball odyssey of jabber and jape 50 summers ago. In its turn, tennis next week nods to a cluster of even more  venerable broadcasting jubilees. This year’s Wimbledon championships, which begin on Monday, mark the four-score anniversary of radio’s first running commentary of a match on SW19’s strawberry fields; ten years later, in 1937, the BBC’s fledgling television service relayed some fuzzily flickering outside-broadcast pictures for the first time; and 40 years ago next week BBC2 chose Wimbledon for its inaugural transmissions in colour.

When the Corporation’s first head of programmes, the inspired Gerald Cock, first broached the possibility of radio coverage early in 1927, he received a frosty reply from the All England Club’s new-ish secretary, Maj. D.T.R. Larcombe: ‘Sir, I note your enquiry and my committee will advise you of their decision on the matter in due course.’ Live ‘trials’ were agreed upon, Wimbledon insisting the BBC’s commentator (Capt. Teddy Wakelam) be accompanied at the microphone by an All England member, Col. R.H. Brand, to ensure the new-fangled gimmick would not lower the tone. By all accounts Brand’s commentary style seldom strayed from the drearily monotonous (forehand…recovery…backhand…recovery…smash!…point scored’), but the broadcast was deemed a triumph, and next summer the BBC budgeted £100 for the fortnight with two-hour transmissions each day.

By 1937, Cock was the first director of television and, now on cordial terms with Maj. Larcombe, was asking, ‘Could we carry out experimental relays? Our apparatus has not yet been used over such a distance as that between Wimbledon and Alexandra Palace.’