Children’s Hour

I grew up at a time when very few people had TVs, and we didn’t get one until a long time after they became more common. The lady who lived in the flat upstairs, who we called Aunty Gladys and who owned our flat, had an affluent son who bought one for her. When there was something particularly memorable or important, we would go upstairs and watch it on her television. I remember seeing Winston Churchill’s funeral, sitting on her settee with mum, dad, my sister and dear Aunty Gladys. Ditto the first ever episodes of Dr Who.

From my earliest memories, the most influential media was the radio, particularly Children’s Hour. I guess it might be called a magazine programme, it had stories, serials, a nature and wildlife programme, dramas, history features, classic myths, tales and legends, novels such as Lorna Doone, comic stories such as the Jennings and Derbyshire stories, and of course, Norman and Henry Bones the boy detectives! The presenters were nearly all respected national figures in broadcasting. They became so real, I could imagine them and they were very dear to me, especially ‘Uncle’ David (Davis) and ‘Uncle Mac’, Derek McCulloch.

For some reason I was thinking about Uncle Derek, and realised I knew very little about him even though he was so important to me as a child and young person. As ever, I consulted Wikipedia and discovered that Derek Ivor Breashur McCulloch was born on November 18th in 1897. As well as being ‘Uncle Mac’, he was a BBC Radio producer, presenter  and  head of the BBC children’s broadcasting from 1933 until 1951. I never realised what a brave and courageous man he was – he was only seventeen when he enlisted for the First World War in 1915 when he was still at school, Croydon High School. He joined the Public Schools Battalion of the 16th Middlesex Regiment.

Derek was wounded at the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, and then shot by – would you believe it, a German stretcher party! He lost his right eye, and lay in a shell crater as he was further wounded over  three days and nights. Eventually, somehow, this seventeen year-old, managed to crawl back across no-man’s land to the British lines. He continued to serve until 1921, but at some time later while he was working in Argentina, he became ill and on his return to England, a bullet was removed from his lung!

He first joined the BBC as an announcer, even though his health was still declining, and in 1929 he became involved in Children’s Hour which he took charge of in 1933. Five years later, more catastrophic luck descended on him and he lost a leg in a road accident, which led to continual pain and discomfort. He continued working for the BBC until it seems his tenure came to an end when Children’s Hour finished in 1964 and the following year gave up Children’s Favourites, a music request programme he had hosted. He died in 1967, leaving his wife Eileen and two daughters.

I was always so fond of Uncle Derek and the other presenters on Children’s Hour, and in retrospect admired their skills and talents. Now I am even more in admiration of him, dear, brave, Derek McCulloch, Uncle Mac.