大象传媒

Brian Matthew was the host of Saturday Club from its first episode in 1958 right up until the end of the Light Programme and the birth of 大象传媒 Radio 1 in 1967 - the theme tune each week was Ted Heath's Saturday Jump, released on Decca but never a hit. The guests on that very first episode were Terry Dene & The Dene Aces, Humphrey Lyttleton and his band, Johnny Duncan and his Blue Grass Boys, Gary Miller, Russell Quaye's City Ramblers with Hylda Sims, Shirley Bland and Jimmy Macgregor. "I did Saturday Club for eight or nine years" Brian remembers, "until somebody in management - now dead, I'm happy to say in this instance - decided they were going to unite people with Radio 1, and that I wasn't really suited for that. So they cast me out. I went to see this chap and I said 'Are you really telling me I have no future in radio?' and he said 'Well yes, I think I am'."

Keith Skues in 1967

Keith Skues took over Saturday Club on Radio 1 in 1967, followed a year later by Tom Edwards; the show ended in 1969. Brian wasn't out of work for long. "Fortunately an engineer I'd worked with on Saturday Club named Brian Willey had started to introduce a daily afternoon programme called Roundabout, with a different compere every day of the week. Brian gradually increased it until I was working five days a week, the only one there. It was what they now call drive time, 4.30 til 7. And I've not really been out of work since.

Brian wasn't a great fan of Radio 1 and was surprised to get a call in 1973 from the head of the station, Derek Chinnery. "Out of the blue he came up with the idea for My Top Twelve - it was a good idea." It was meant to be a hipper version of Desert Island Discs, which at that time was far more likely to have a retired general choosing his favourite records than anyone with a quiff. "It was a weird eye-opener. Once in a while, someone would surprise me and choose all their own records!

"I remember a My Top Twelve that I did do with Bill Haley. We were chatting about his whole life story. He admitted he'd had a serious drink problem, and that it had interfered with his work. Then suddenly he broke into tears in the interview, sobbing, because he'd made a mess of his life. We got it sorted out, that didn't go on air, but it was quite moving. He wasn't being sour grapes or anything, no reason why he should, but clearly thought he'd fouled it up. Which he had, to a large extent."