The Irish Tales

Second Life (10)
　
Wireless. What does that mean to you ? 3G mobiles, laptops working in the middle of the ocean, Twattering, sorry, Twittering from one end of the earth to another ?
Once upon a time, it meant something completely different to millions of people around the world.
It was the name of a mystical machine which allowed a man in London with a bow-tie and and a cut-glass accent to talk to the rest of the known – and unknown - world.
It started as the steam radio, then became the valve radio, then the transistor radio, then the digital radio.
To many people though, it remained the "wireless".
To me in my First Life, "wireless" presented a golden opportunity. Radio advertising was largely ignored by both agency creative teams and clients.
The teams thought it beneath their dignity and the clients were far more entranced by television and shoots in far-away places.
Besides – it was rather cheap, wasn’t it ?
It was indeed. Cheap to buy and cheap to produce. But oh what listening figures it produced. The pirate stations may have died off, but the local commercial stations were pulling in figures that ITV would die for.
Ditto the social profiles – everything from A1s to D minus. (And don’t forget – D-s bought a whole raft of Ford Escorts. Allegedly.)
Before television became widely available to the masses, radio was king. Every household had one, every family gathered around it.
(Yes, I know that could be said about TV today, but not quite in the same way.)
I am just old enough to remember hearing the Goon Show live
and listening to Fluff Freeman counting down Pick of The Pops on a Sunday night.
I was also forced to listen to the Mike Sammes Singers and "Sing Something Simple" by my father. It scarred me for life.
Hey Jude was Number 1 even before it was officially on sale and I recall vividly Freeman teasing us all by playing the initial cry of "Hey Jude" for 2 seconds, as he counted down every chart entry until Number 1, when he played the entire 7 minutes.
Because it was the first of the electronic media, because it was cheap and easy to use, because despite the absence of any visual appeal, it somehow communicated to people, radio survived the introduction of television.
Indeed, it seemed to flourish, aided by the pirate stations and then by the government of the time allowing all kinds of commercial stations to have a bandwave.
Yet despite its broad appeal to all socio-economic classes, advertising on radio, as I said earlier, was largely spurned by clients with big budgets or creative teams with even bigger egos.
The dross which was churned out daily made soap powders ads on the box seem cool.
Now, it occurred to me that a D&AD pencil for radio was worth just as much as any other pencil.*
And at that time, I listened to it a lot. I was hugely influenced by radio ads from the States, where writers seemed to understand how to use this medium. And terribly flattened by the attitude towards it in the UK.
And then suddenly, in the early eighties I think, a whole host of terrific radio ads appeared.
Mel and Griff with Phirrups, Bergasol, Heineken and so many more I can’t quite recall now, revitalised the medium and made me prick up my ears.
There are very many more I should mention, which gathered national acclaim at the time.
So I set my sights on radio. I must be honest here – half the appeal was that I could write the script myself, I didn’t need an art director and I could, with the help of a producer to book the voices and the studio time, make the whole thing on my own.
I was in heaven. Suddenly, it seemed that all our clients had a budget for radio.
British Caledonian, Sainsbury’s, the Observer – and Volvo. Especially Volvo.
The agency ran loads of spots for them and I bagged as many briefs as I could steal for myself. It helped that our then client, Ian, was a huge fan of good radio and was refreshingly open to silliness and humour.
For one of the first, I remember getting Leonard Rossiter in to play the main voice.
I was nervous, naturally. (He was still alive then.) He bounded into the studio and I was introduced to him.
When he heard my name, his eyes lit up.
"Really ? And where are you from ?" he asked eagerly.
"I looked at him blankly. "Um, the agency, AMV …?"
He sighed and looked away. My producer at the time kicked me hard and I died. I’d forgotten we shared the same surname.
Despite this initial awkwardness, he did the script in three takes and it was brilliant. Thanks entirely to him.
The briefs kept coming. I was ecstatic when Neil Innes agreed to sing and record a pastiche of lovely old fifties songs, with lyrics changed to reflect the greatness of a Volvo.
(My finest ever lyric was : " And now I have just one more thing to solve –oh. Where can I find the words to rhyme with Volvo ?" Sung to "These Foolish Things". I know.)
At the time, I was an obsessive Archer’s fan. My train to Bristol would get in every evening at 6.55pm. By seven pm, I was in my car, with Radio Four on and hungry for my daily diet of country folk. It lasted just long enough for me to drive home.
One day at work, I was told that the Volvo client wanted a long-running radio campaign for their stock, run of the mill model.
Nothing too great about it, except the price and the usual Volvo virtues – safety, reliability, comfort.
To be honest, I was stumped. How did one get across these points about a brand still fairly well smirked at, without like, well…being rather dull.
Then one night, I drove home, listening to the Archers with half an ear and puzzled about the Volvo brief.
The next morning, I drove to the station, got on the train and fell asleep as always.
When I woke up at Paddington station, I realised I was grinning like a yokel.
I didn’t know why until I got to my desk, stuck some paper in the typewriter (no computers then) and wrote the first episode of The Sherwoods,
In the way it does when you strike lucky, it came out more or less fully formed.
A soap opera for radio, five new episodes per week, broad cast daily at exactly the same time, morning and evening drive-time.
Lasting 90 seconds each. And telling the story of country folk and their troublesome lives, who at some point in every episode, expressed their amazement that a Volvo 340(?) was much cheaper than a Ford Escort.
I got a musical friend to do a pastiche of the Archer’s theme music.
We hired top radio actors and actresses to play the many parts.
We recorded it in one of the last studios in London with the facility to handle ensemble players, then took all the takes down to a cracking editing studio in Wiltshire, to cut it all together.
They ran twice a day, for five days a week, one week on, two weeks off.
They were, if you’ll excuse my lack of modesty, very well received and became very popular. Even my current wife, who I had yet to meet, turned out to be a fan.
(She told me this on our second date, after I mentioned it casually in passing. That was a rather good evening.)
Inevitably, as time went by, the story lines got more and more incredible, culminating in one of the younger Sherwoods discovering the fully preserved body of a German fighter pilot in the swamps of the lower fields.
Before the end came, as it had to do, we’d recorded 80 or so episodes and Volvo sold lots of cars, received lots of fan-mail and were extremely happy bunnies.
I can’t remember why they were stopped, in the end. I think some new client arrived at Volvo,UK and simply didn’t get the gentle humour.
Hey ho. I had the time of my life writing and recording them and I still get emails and texts about them.
When I listen occasionally to the commercial stations now, I feel sad. The ads seem so shrill, yet dull, so prosaic, so unaware of just how powerful a medium radio still is – and still can be.
It takes me back to the very bad old days of the late seventies when radio briefs were given to the most junior teams, who didn’t see them as the opportunity they were and did the bare minimum.
Now, I’m sure a lot of you young, trendy, blue-toothing, iTuning, Tablet lovers out there will say Pah! or Pffft! silly old man, mumbling about past glories.
You know what ? You’re quite right. Carry on.
I know I would.

*D&AD pencils are the highest award a writer, art director or anyone else in the business can be given for their work. They are highly prized and I'm proud to have just the one. But not, sadly, for radio. Bastards.