OTD in early British television: 30 August 1938
John Wyver writes: We are back at Radiolympia today, for the sixth day of the 1938 edition, on Tuesday 30 August. Come and Be Televised played in the morning, just after a broadcast from the fair by Mr Middleton about pruning roses. In the afternoon and also that evening there were transmissions of Cabaret Cruise, a variety show played across a spectacular set of an ocean liner built inside the television studio at Radiolympia.
Both afternoon and evening bills, hosted by ‘Commander’ Campbell, included impressions from Ernest Shannon, songs from Trudi Binar, a sketch with singing by Steve Geray and Magda Kun, and Chinese jugglers and acrobats The Five Lai Founs. All of whom featured around a fancy dress dance to music from Dennis van Thal and his orchestra.
Cabaret Cruise was shown several times from Radiolympia, but the Tuesday afternoon edition was special since it was also carried simultaneously on the Regional Programme as a ‘Sound and Vision’ radio broadcast. Quite how The Five Lai Founs came across on the wireless is unrecorded, not to mention the fancy dress frocks.
This bi-media broadcast was one of a series that were tried in the second half of 1938, driven by the belief held by some in the radio-dominated BBC hierarchy that since, as they saw things, television was ‘simply’ wireless with pictures, then there must be cost savings to be achieved by making programmes for both.
Gerald Cock and colleagues argued forcefully that radio and television were two quite distinct media, and that there were a host of practical challenges in trying to create both from the same source. As The Five Lai Founs and the fancy dress party-goers might have told them. Eventually, after a clutch of largely unsuccessful exercises, the idea gradually lost favour.
[OTD post no. 256; part of a long-running series leading up to the publication on 8 January 2026 of my book Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain, which can now be pre-ordered from Bloomsbury here.]
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