348 Homeground

First  viewed  :   Spring  1978

Some  time  in  the  spring  of  1978  this  replaced  Sit  Thi  Deawnn   as  the  late  Friday  night  regional  programme . It  had  been  running  seasonally  since  at  least  the  mid-sixties and  had   a  broad  brief  to  provide  an  indepth  half  hour  feature  on  something  of  interest  in  the  North  West  and  perhaps  inevitably  had  a  jaunty  brass  band  playing  the  theme  tune. My  interest  in  the  programme  was  two  fold.

Firstly,  it  was  covering  the  sort  of  topics  the  Littleborough  Civic  Trust  ( see  the  post  on  Jumbo  Spencer  for  details  on  my  involvement   with  them )  discussed  such  as  conservation, local  history  and  tourism  and  visiting  some  of  the  places  I  went  with  my  friends   ( about  to  become  a  regular  Saturday  morning  routine  around  this  time ).

The  second  main  reason was  to  put  a  face  to  a  very  familiar  name. My  Mum  had  Radio  Four  on  all  the  time  and  so  a  regular  part  of  our  breakfast  routine  for  as  long  as  I  could  remember  was  listening  to  the  Today  programme . From  1975  onwards  it  was  helmed  by  liberal  journalist  Brian  Redhead  so  I  was  interested  to  see  what  he  looked  like. He  turned  out  to  be  a  short  chubby  man,  with  a  marked  resemblance  to  Abba's  Benny,  who talked  as  much  with  his  hands  as  with  his  mouth  ( and  he  wasn't  exactly  tongue-tied )  when  addressing  the  camera.

Nonetheless  he  communicated  an  enthusiasm  about  even  the  dullest  subject  matter; in  fact  apart  from  a  programme  to  mark  the  final  completion  of  Liverpool  Cathedral  after  nearly  75  years   I  can't  really  recall  any  single  episode  but  being  local  it  was  something  nice  and  cosy  to  watch  before  bed  and  the  promise  of  an  adventure  the  following  morning.

Of  course  Redhead  was  the  stuff  of  nightmares  for  some. He  was  said  to  be  the  inspiration  for  the  Tory  assault  on  the  BBC  in  the  late  eighties  with  his  all too  incisive  questioning  of  Thatcher's  ministers  on  Today. One  Tory  commented  that  if  there  were  no  Redhead  there'd  be  no  problem  or  words  to  that  effect. In  1989  there  was  a  famous  exchange  when  arrogant  Chancellor  Nigel  Lawson  lost  his  cool  and  referred  to  him  as  a  Labour  supporter  when  in  fact  Brian  voted  for  his  friend  , the  Tory  maverick  Nicholas  Winterton  in  Macclesfield. Alas  Brian  didn't  live  to  see  the  back  of  his  foes  and  died  early  in  1994  when  his  ruptured  appendix  was  misdiagnosed.  I  think  the  last  series  of  Homeground  was  in  1982  but  I'll  stand  correction  on  that.