A Saturday in November 1950

If you’re anything like me and hang about in the same corners of social media and follow the same sorts of people there – basically, I suppose, if you’re interested in the history of British broadcasting in some way – then there is a certain topic which has been coming up a great deal lately, and creating a lot of discussion. Namely, the current policies and future direction of the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham in Berkshire.

 
Obviously, as a member of BBC staff it would not be appropriate for me to enter into that debate in a public forum. All I can say on the matter is that I have been lucky enough to be able to visit the WAC many times over the past ten years, for various research projects both for and outside of the BBC, and I can vouch for the fact that it really is all of the things its advocates claim it to be. A wonderful resource for all kinds of research into the social and cultural history of the United Kingdom in the 20^th century, staffed by a dedicated, kind, and extremely helpful team. It’s one of my favourite places to go, and whenever I visit I always feel very privileged to be given access to the incredibly valuable material which they hold there.

The BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham, on my May 2019 visit. I normally like to take a picture of the place whenever I go - I think just in case I never have the opportunity to go again!

The reason I mention all of this is because one of the things which has often been discussed in the recent campaign concerning the future of the WAC is how the ability to research there can be a very organic process which can lead to unexpected discoveries. So it was for me when, six-and-a-half years ago, while looking through one of the files which had been provided for me on a research trip, I came across a fact which made me think, “Oh, that’s interesting – I must do something with that one day!”

In the reading room at Caversham, May 2019

The file in question was the BBC Television Outside Broadcasts Department’s football file for the 1950-51 season. It was one of several I was looking through that particular day in May 2019, covering the first seven football seasons from the resumption of BBC Television in 1946. I was there researching the life of Jimmy Jewell, the BBC’s first regular TV football commentator who had also refereed an FA Cup final and briefly been the manager of Norwich City. I was working on a documentary about his life which eventually went out that August Bank Holiday and, if you’re interested, is still available to listen to via BBC Sounds.

 

I noticed among those lists of and documentation about BBC Television’s early football coverage that one of the games on which Jewell commentated was an FA Cup fourth qualifying round match between Tooting & Mitcham United and Great Yarmouth Town, on the 11^th of November 1950. Working for BBC Radio Norfolk, the name Great Yarmouth obviously caught my attention. And I realised that this would have been the very first time a Norfolk football team had ever appeared in a live television game – long before Norwich City, who you would perhaps have expected to have claimed that statistic.
 
So I tweeted out the fact that day to the interest of a small handful of people, and made a mental note to see if I could put a little something together around it for the 70^th anniversary of the broadcast in 2020. 2020 being what it was, I unfortunately ended up completely forgetting all about it by the time November rolled around that year, much to my annoyance once I remembered that I had, er, forgotten.
 
“If I’m still working here in five years,” I decided, “I’ll do something about it for the 75^th…”

 

Well, here we are, and here I am. Six-and-a-half years on from sitting in the reading room at Caversham thinking to myself, “Oh, that’s interesting,” I have at last finally been able to do something about it.
 
And I’m rather pleased with what I have been able to do. It’s the tiniest little fact, relevant only really to people in Norfolk and to those interested in niche titbits from broadcasting and football history, but hey – that’s one of the things that’s great about the BBC. That we can serve such audiences. That we do serve such audiences. Yes, we are all of the big things. But sometimes it’s nice to be the little things, too.
 
So I have made a radio piece combining the information and background from the files at Caversham, some more recent research into local newspaper archives, and some new interviews with a couple of people connected with the club, along with a tiny bit of illustrative archive. Including, just to bring things full circle, a clip of Jimmy Jewell on commentary duty, although sadly not from this particular game which was, like so much at the time, broadcast live and never recorded. There and gone in the instant it happened.

But remembered by me, on the BBC, today.

 

I’ve also been able to write a tie-in feature for BBC News Online which, through the necessity of the differing requirements for the two media of course, is a little drier and more plain, but with which I am also quite pleased. Mainly because this one hardly got edited at all in the subbing process, which perhaps shows that I am starting to get the hang of doing these things!
 
All of this thanks to those wonderful files at Caversham, and the ability to research and to explore there.