TV90

 

Today marks the 90th anniversary of BBC Television, with the service having been officially launched from Alexandra Palace in London on the 2nd of November 1936. It is, of course, an anniversary of which I have been well aware for a while - and has given me the opportunity to tell a story I have been looking forward to having the chance to tell for many months.

Early this year I read and very much enjoyed Magic Rays of Light by John Wyver, an excellent new book telling the story of British television from its earliest experimental days, through to the launching of the BBC service, and its shutting down for the duration of the war in September 1939. If you're interested, you can read my review of the book on Goodreads here.

There was obviously a huge amount of information in the book which was completely new to me - including the story with which John chose to open it. This was the story of George Boar, a pre-war television viewer who was both ordinary and extraordinary. Ordinary because he was a working class farmhand living in the Suffolk countryside. And extraordinary because for such a person to own a television set in the 1930s was very rare indeed. Perhaps even unique.

George had only managed to afford a set because of an inheritance, and such was its rarity in that place at that time that he became something of a minor celebrity, with assorted press reports about the 'Television Man' of Long Melford. I thought it was a fascinating story, and with Suffolk being the next-door county to the one in which I work, and within the same BBC East region, I was reasonably confident I would be able to do something on it come the anniversary. George wasn't a viewer from day one, but it seemed an appropriate story of 1930s television to cover for the anniversary date.

Well, here we are, and I am pleased to say I have been able to put together an episode all about George for Secret Suffolk on BBC Sounds. John was kind enough to talk to me to share his research into George's story, and I have also been able to speak to a few people who either live or formerly lived in Long Melford - including one lady, Dorothy Theobald, who will be 100 years old in December and still remembers going to George's house to watch his TV set when she was a child.

The more I looked into this story and spoke to people about it over the past week, the more fascinating I found it. There are the headline aspects of it, of course - George's unusual nature as a TV viewer, the attention it brought him, and the incredible story of how when he told one journalist he wanted a wife to watch his TV set with he picked one out of 800 letters he received from women across the country. 

But there's also a very melancholy aspect to the tale, one you can't really get under the skin of from this distance. In 1939, George was the 'Television Man'. It had brought him a wife, and local fame. Everybody in Long Melford knew who he was, and indeed his story would remain a well-known one in the village for decades, even taught to the children of Long Melford Primary School for their history projects. Hundreds of villagers had at one time or another arranged to come and watch George's set, and put a few coins in the bowl in his front room for the privilege as a 'thank you'. He'd spent the equivalent of thousands of pounds on this huge great piece of kit and a sixty-foot mast to ensure good reception from Alexandra Palace. According to the Radio Times piece about him from early 1939, he'd even bought a second set - so presumably had still had some of that inheritance left over.

Then, suddenly, in September 1939... Nothing. Did he and his wife Betty go to turn on the set that night and were they puzzled to find nothing there? Did they scan the newspapers over the following weeks and months, hoping for some sign of television's return? Did they manage to maintain the set in good order, or did it gather dust as a useless encumbrance in the front room? Did that tall mast in the garden start to rust? Would the farmer whose cottage it was for whom George worked as a stockman demand it be taken down? 

We don't know whether George had enjoyed his status as the 'Television Man', although given he always seemed happy to speak to the press it's a fair bet that he didn't mind it too much. Had it made him feel a little special? Was it a comedown to suddenly no longer feel that way? Did he miss the certain status he had held within the village, as the perhaps slightly odd-seeming TV enthusiast?

We cannot know. I do know that George and Betty stayed together, and had two sons, and later moved to Harlow where he continued to work as a farm labourer. You'd think that his TV set and sixty-foot mast might have been mentioned in the press had he still been in Long Melford and the TV set still been working on the resumption of the service in 1946, and especially for the coronation in 1953. His mast would still have been very useful then, in the days just before East Anglia's Tacolneston transmitter.

Perhaps he had already gone to Harlow by then. Or perhaps, the saddest thought of all, he and Betty excitedly tried to bring their set or sets back to life in 1946, and found the years of inactivity had taken their toll. The inheritance spent, no money to repair or replace. The 'Television Man' no more.

It's a mystery. And perhaps a play for someone to write someday. But what we do know and can say about George is fascinating - and I hope you will enjoy listening to the story on BBC Sounds.