Glossary of Names∗ Jenny Abramsky Jenny Abramsky was a key figure in the development of radio news and current affairs and was one of the most vocal and effective advocates of a radio network dedicated to news. She was at various times Editor of PM (the first woman to be an Editor of one of the radio sequences), then The World at One and Today (April 1986–October 1987). In her brief time at Today she made John Humphrys a presenter and promoted Sue MacGregor. Abramsky was determined to launch a rolling news service and is generally credited with the creation of Radio Five Live in 1994. In 1999 she was appointed Director, Radio and Music, and so became the most senior woman in the BBC.1 Isa Benzie Isa Benzie joined the BBC in the early 1930s but had to leave in 1937 on mar- rying a television producer because of the rule that husband and wife could not both work in the corporation. During the war she worked at the Ministry of Information2 but returned as a talks producer after the war and worked together with Janet Quigley on Woman’s Hour, taking a special interest in its current affairs content. Isa Benzie is ‘an unjustly neglected name in postwar radio history’3 but Donovan makes it clear in his history of Today that she played a crucial role in the development of the programme. She took control of plans for the ‘Morning Miscellany’ and was the programme’s first producer (working with her boss, Janet Quigley). Helen Boaden A central figure in the history of news and current affairs radio, Helen Boaden per- sonifies the Reithian tradition of serious public service broadcasting. Her career began at Radio Tees in the early 1980s, and in 1983, she moved to Radio Leeds. Staying in the north she moved to File on Four in Manchester, and one of her first programmes as reporter was broadcast in March 1986; it began with the words, ‘State education is in crisis’, and the assertive and slightly uncompromising qual- ity of that statement was not untypical. She was a highly successful reporter, and one of her particular triumphs was a very early report on AIDS in Africa, also broadcast in 1986. In May 1991, Helen Boaden took over the role of Editor of File on Four from Gerry Northam, a position she held for the next four years. Her own reflections on that time, supported by the comments of some colleagues, support the idea that she was a very demanding Editor with some of the certainty and very high journalistic standards of an older BBC. Her career since that time 199 200 Glossary of Names has been impressive, including being the first woman Head of Current Affairs, Controller of Radio Four and then, in 2004, Director of BBC News. Stephen Bonarjee Stephen Bonarjee played a vital role in the transition from talks to the news and current affairs magazine epitomised by Today. Bonarjee was the first and only Editor of the innovative and at times controversial talks magazine, At Home and Abroad (1954–60), where he worked with Ian McIntyre and Tony Whitby. He was committed to topicality and immediacy in the programme and also to the importance of attracting the most prominent people as contributors. He was a radical and innovative producer but at the same time shared John Green’s caution about the use of recordings. In 1963 Today moved from Talks to News and Current Affairs and Bonarjee became one of the programme Editors. He wanted a less ‘jolly’ and a ‘sharper’ and ‘harder’ style, although the presence of Jack de Manio as presenter made that a difficult task. John Coatman When Reith split News from Talks in 1934, the new post of Senior News Edi- tor went to the former Professor of Imperial Economic Relations at the London School of Economics, John Coatman. He was seen by some as a ‘right wing offset’4 to the more radical domain of Talks under the control of Charles Siepmann. This separation of news and comment was to have a great influence on the future shape of news and current affairs in the BBC. Coatman appears to have been an effective head of what was then a very small part of the BBC; soon after his arrival he appointed the corporation’s first two professional journalists; nevertheless, in his six years as Head of News the BBC was heavily reliant on news agencies for its bulletins.5 Jenny Cuffe Jenny Cuffe joined the BBC’s trainee scheme in 1974 and, after a short spell in BBC local radio, became a producer for Woman’s Hour where she stayed till the end of the 1980s. In that time she became particularly interested in child abuse stories, including the Cleveland child abuse affair. She joined the reporting staff of File on Four under the editorship of Helen Boaden and stayed to become one of the most recognisable women reporters on Radio Four. She played an important part in the feminisation of factual radio output and contributed to a feminist influence on both Woman’s Hour and File on Four. Jack de Manio Jack de Manio was the presenter of Today from 1958 to 1971, during which time it was generally regarded as the ‘Jack de Manio programme’. De Manio was very much a part of the old BBC, having worked on the Forces Programme in Glossary of Names 201 the war and then became an announcer on the BBC General Overseas Service and the Home Service in the 1950s. Paul Donovan devotes a chapter of his his- tory of Today to ‘Jolly Jack’, and the references to his ‘rich gin-and-tonic voice’ and ‘golf-club, bar stool manner’ go some way to describing de Manio’s style of presentation.6 De Manio was famously prone to making mistakes in his eccen- tric presentation of Today, which was at that time a far less serious or political programme. He was well-known for not being able to tell the time correctly and his occasionally embarrassing gaffes were legendary. As the Editor, Stephen Bonarjee, made Today a more serious and political programme in the late 1960s, so de Manio’s style was increasingly problematic and in 1971 he was removed to make way for more serious journalists, notably John Timpson. In her autobi- ography, Sue MacGregor is withering about de Manio: the ‘golf club bore’ who was ‘fond of his whiskies and increasingly unpredictable’.7 Her dismissive com- ments are justified but de Manio was also an extremely popular and successful broadcaster who was more innovative at Today than is generally acknowledged. In particular, his willingness to work outside the studio, gathering vox pops and actuality or going on tour, suggest he was a more creative broadcaster than is often realised. Richard Dimbleby One of the most, if not the most, important figures in the development of radio news in Britain, Dimbleby joined the BBC in 1936 as one of the first radio reporters and quickly established himself as an ambitious and brave radio news pioneer. He reported live on the destruction of Crystal Palace in 1936 but it was his wartime broadcasts that were to make his name. He managed to get into France just before the German invasion across the Maginot line in June 1940 and then joined the British Army in North Africa. Dimbleby was a vital part of BBC news after D-Day, reporting from a Lancaster bomber and, famously, on the liber- ation of the Belsen concentration camp. Like, J. B. Priestley, that other great war commentator, Dimbleby expressed his personality on air and so exploited radio’s capacity for intimate communication.8 George Fischer One of a group of central European émigrés recruited to the BBC in the 1950s and 1960s,9 Fischer had fled from Hungary in 1956 as Soviet tanks moved in. After settling in Britain he joined the Hungarian section of the World Service in 1963. He became a producer of talks in the late 1960s and began to work with Ian McIntyre with whom he was to forge a close and influential alliance. Fischer became the first producer of Analysis and worked extensively with McIntyre as presenter. In 1972 he was promoted to Head of Radio Talks and Documentaries. One of his most important decisions was to recruit Mary Goldring as the main presenter of Analysis to follow McIntyre in 1975. Fischer, together with McIntyre, Whitby and Hearst, was one of the main enforcers of the Reithian turn in 1970s radio, partly documented in the minutes of the Radio Weekly Programme Review Board. He was deeply committed to rigour and standards in radio and a ferocious 202 Glossary of Names opponent of what he saw as second rate and derivative in populist radio. When McIntyre became Controller in 1976, Fischer was his most important lieutenant. Frank Gillard One of BBC radio’s most important and influential figures, Frank Gillard joined the BBC in 1941 and became a war correspondent. His reports included the Normandy landings and the link-up between American and Soviet forces at the River Elbe in 1945.10 After the war, Gillard became Controller, West Region (based in Bristol), where he created Any Questions. At that time, Gillard developed his deep commitment to local radio, inspired by a visit to the USA. From 1963 to 1970 he was Director, Sound Broadcasting/Managing Director of Radio. This was a crucial period for BBC Radio and Gillard, along with his close colleague, Gerard Mansell, was a powerful voice for change in radio output.