Fragment 31: The Life & Times of a Social Experiment
Pirate radio. Commercial radio. The craft of the great voiceovers. I make a firm friend. And a trip to Paris!
Image: Shutterstock
In my late teens I had a radio by my bedside. It was as far from the modern version of a radio (whatever that looks like now that programs are accessible via all manner of devices) as you could imagine.
This radio was a monster that I rescued when a friend of a friend’s Dad was consigning it to the tip. It was a valve/vacuum tube driven beast around a metre tall and at least forty centimetres wide, the cabinet solidly constructed from a dark, laminated wood. A real piece of furniture. And one that, because Alexa and Siri were not even dreamt of at that time, didn’t talk back.
In the front, near the top, was a panel with a dial that showed the selected frequency, and chunky knobs provided control for on-off and volume, treble and bass. The bass, by the way, was truly impressive because the cabinet housed a good quality twelve inch (approx. 30 cm) speaker. That said, I subsequently modified it so that I could switch from the inbuilt speaker to headphones for bedtime listening.
And what did I listen to? Well, for one thing, I tried to tune in to pirate radio, although the signal was invariably poor.
A Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1949 had banned radio stations that were not sanctioned by the British government or the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). To get around this restriction, on 28 March 1964, a radio station started broadcasting from a ship in the North Sea just outside British territorial waters. This was Radio Caroline. Pirate radio had arrived.
The timing of this youthful shriek against bland old Britain was perfect because, the very next week saw the release of Can’t Buy Me Love by The Beatles and, over the next four months came House of the Rising Sun by The Animals, It’s All Over Now by The Rolling Stones, You Really Got Me by The Kinks and on and on and on.
There was a great deal of tut-tutting by the powers-that-be but they didn’t know how to respond at the time. Consequently, nine months later, another pirate, Radio London, came on air.
These stations introduced characters who were to figure large in British youth culture in the decades that followed: on Radio Caroline - Tony Blackburn, Simon Dee, Tommy Vance, Dave Lee Travis, Emperor Rosko and more; and Radio London’s DJs included Kenny Everett and John Peel.
All was well for them until 1967 when Harold Wilson’s Labour government did work out how to overcome these upstarts and introduced a Marine Broadcasting Offences Act that marked the end of the pirate radio era.
Shortly afterwards, on 30 September 1967, Tony Blackburn announced the first record on BBC Radio 1. The establishment had moved in to try to wrest back control of the situation, but they couldn’t hold the tide back indefinitely.
The pirate activity, although ultimately squished by government, had served to introduce Britain to the idea of commercial radio. From 1955, Britain had had a commercial television channel, ITV, but product advertising on the radio was a new thing.
Not long afterwards, inevitably, commercial radio did come to the UK. London’s first commercial radio station, Capital Radio, went on air in October 1973.
As it happens a chap from half a world away in Australia saw what was going on in UK commercial radio developments. Stefan Sargent (1936-2018) was already familiar with London, having spent 1964 and 1965 working as a cameraman with ITN and the BBC. But he had originally started out in Australia, in pre-television days, in radio.
In 1973 he came back to the UK and opened a company called Molinare, with recording studios specializing in radio production work. The Brits may have been new to this activity but Stefan, his partner Tricia Rose, and old school friend Robert Parker were already experienced in this work.
By 1976, Molinare was well-established in its Broadwick Street, Soho, premises and, in the autumn of that year, welcomed a new audio engineer staff member - David Hodge. Before that, David had worked at Trident Studios (also in Soho) famed for their music recording.
In late 1976 I visited Molinare for the very first time to oversee the recording of an AV presentation for Trusthouse Forte Hotels, the company that I worked for. There I met David. It was the start of a friendship that has now lasted nearly fifty years.
I shall write more about David in future fragments but, for now, thinking back to this time has brought back to me what an extraordinary moment it was for commercial audio recording.
For example, at that time a relatively small group of extraordinarily talented people dominated the voiceover scene. A leader of the pack was the actor David Tate (1937-1996), perhaps now best remembered for his work in the original radio series of Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1978).
I recall one occasion when I sat with David Tate and he described the subtly changing accents that occurred along the Oregon Trail when, in the early nineteenth century, a 2,000 mile east-west trail was created across part of the western United States. I only have David Tate’s word for the fact that his interpretations of the dialects were correct but it was a mesmerising performance.
Other voiceovers I particularly remember for their astonishing versatility included Eddie Judd (1932-2009) and one who, thankfully, remains very much alive and kicking - the indefatigable and ebullient Miriam Margolyes (1941- ).
Later, David Hodge teamed up with Stephen Kemble - a voice coach for the Royal Shakespeare Company, no less! - and the two of them wrote The Voiceover Book: Don’t Eat Toast (2014), an excellent primer on the art of the voiceover.
At the book launch, June 2014. David Hodge, Miriam Margolyes, me.
Miriam wrote the foreword, including the following hugely valuable snippet:
Most commercials last for thirty seconds so you have to get the message across in that time. You learn how to be fast without gabbling; you learn that emotion (which is essential for selling!) takes time and that it is the consonants that carry the sense and vowels the emotion. A common fault is losing energy at the end of the sentence, so that final words peter out indistinctly and lose their bite. The voice may be powerful and sensuous, but if it dwindles, it’s useless.
The fashion in voiceovers seems to have changed. Many of today’s voiceovers are far less clear and impactful than their predecessors. Or is it just that I’m getting older and more deaf?
Stefan Sargent’s great love was film. Checking online, I think I’m right in saying that from 1983 he went back full-time to film work and spent his final years in northern California doing, by all accounts, great work.
I had a little experience of working with Stefan on film work. It must have been 1980. By that time I had left Trusthouse Forte Hotels but retained them as a client.
One commission was the production of a film to promote the Hotel George V (now the Four Seasons George V).
Everything was arranged: bed and board for Stefan and me for, if I remember right, three nights, while we filmed various aspects of the hotel and its environs
Hotel George V is one of the world’s great luxury hotels and I was looking forward to a sliver of the high life. To my surprise, however, after the first night, Stefan asked if I minded if he didn’t continue at the hotel.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘It’s not my thing.’
‘Oh. Well, what do you want to do?’
‘Don’t worry about me, I know a little place on the Left Bank.’
And that was it.
Everything remained the same except that, at the end of each day’s work, Stefan scuttled off. I really admired him for that.
At one point we were filming some location shots, including the short journey from the hotel along the Avenue George V, on to Avenue des Champs Elysées and up to the Arc de Triomphe.
We were in a car with a sun roof. Stefan arranged himself so that he had one foot on each of the front seats and his upper body out through the roof. I was the driver and I found myself pressed into the offside door.
As I recall, all was well until we turned on to the Champs Elysées. Stefan wanted a straight shot up to the Arc de Triomphe, with us travelling up the centre of the road.
My sense of preservation kept making me nudge off centre to avoid any collision with oncoming traffic but, when I did so, Stefan yelled at me, ‘Middle line! Middle line!’
Miraculously we survived unscathed and without being set upon by the gendarmerie.
‘Good shot,’ declared Stefan, with a broad smile.
Thanks for reading Aargh! (it’s an acronym for Age-activated reportage, grumpiness and humour).