Author of Doctor Who: Star Flight, OUT NOW from BBC Audiobooks: https://xitter.cf/t.co/YlmdDxhJ45

Joined September 2010
My look at what was the world's longest running clandestine station, Radio España Independiente. It was active without a break for 36 years (1941 to 1977) first from the USSR, then, from 1955, in Romania. Many listeners thought it was based in the Pyrenees radioatlanticodelsur.blogspo…
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So do they record the score Shirley said live, or the one she keyed-in on her pad for the graphic...? #strictly
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On a personal note, I am very grateful to Susie for always having been willing to be interviewed for, or to lend her voice to, various bits of BBC East history stuff I've done down the years. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvrl…
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Much more about this in my book When Saturday Came, coming early next year from Telos Publishing. Why are the other books wrong about how many episodes there were? Why did they suddenly have to write out one of the lead characters? Learn the answers to all this and more!
Stranger from Space Sci-Fi BBC tv 20 October 1951 - 20 December 1952 Each episode introduced by Humphrey Lestocq The BBC's first television science-fiction series. Adventures of a human boy befriended by a Martian boy who crashlands on Earth. Tap ALT to see a partial cast list
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Our client, comedic legend and film producer @thedavidzucker, is featured in this anniversary documentary from @the_questmaster celebrating Flight Into Danger, the film that inspired the comedy classic Airplane!✈️🤩 open.spotify.com/episode/1PV…
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This time, my blood has been issued at... the N&N. Just down the road from where it was given. Which makes it feel a bit odd that it had to go all the way to North-West London and back first, but I guess that's just the way these things work.
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The University of East Anglia and the British Film Institute think you might want to pay actual cash money to come and see me (and Steve Cole, which is likelier!) talk about #DoctorWho... whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/de…
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You can read about some of Peter Ling's pre-Doctor Who Saturday teatime work in my book When Saturday Came, out from Telos early next year.
We remember... Peter Ling - scriptwriter 27 May 1926 - 14 Sept 2006 Age 80 Peter created Crossroads with Hazel Adair. Ling's other TV credits include: Doctor Who Pop the Question Sexton Blake Dixon of Dock Green Compact The Avengers Dead Trouble Whirligig Saturday Special
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My colleague Alice has made a nice little episode for the Secret Cambridgeshire series, all about what happened with Shada. It's always fascinating having #DoctorWho stuff made by non-fans, and I think she's done a very nice job - do have a listen! bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0p8x2…
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70 years ago today a staff of 14 opened up the BBC's first ever East Anglian broadcasting HQ at St Catherine's Close on All Saints Green in Norwich, and what would later become known as BBC East was born. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyz…
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Here's the piece I made for the BBC Local Radio network on the 40th anniversary of #Casualty, which many stations have run over the past couple of days, looking at some of the controversies around the first series in 1986. soundcloud.com/paul-hayes-88…
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Here’s a restoration, expansion and (in one case) colourisation of two #DoctorWho images from the 1964 Radio Times Christmas colour supplement ‘Barbara in Wonderland’ - the first is the main colour image as it appeared in the magazine and the second is an alternative shot used (in b&w) as a preview the week before. The full feature had a girl taking an Alice-style trip around BBC TV Centre and meeting all the stars of the day. Both photos show William Hartnell serving ‘tea’ (because of course tea always comes in a sinister glass bottle and is served from a ladle) to Babs Lord (later of Pan’s People fame) in what I assume is the TVC canteen, monitored by two Daleks in their DIOE splendour. And just look at the slapdash paint job on the Dalek Supreme! Luckily the preview pic had tons more vertical image to work with, and the four missing corners weren’t anything too complicated to recreate. At first glance you’d assume the shots were taken seconds apart as so much is identical between them, but there’s been some shifting of the background chairs, the teapot on the table has moved, and Babs’ bib is absent in the preview. Maybe they were stuck there for hours doing it… Oh and that thing hanging on the silver Dalek’s gun is Dr Who’s walking stick in case you were wondering.
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New blog entry: why I spent a large chunk of August putting together a coffee table book with a print run of precisely one copy, which hardly anybody will ever read. notanovelistyet.blogspot.com…
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They were two years out, in the end.
An oddly-specific prediction for Dolly Parton's year of death on the wall of the Western Front pub in Brighton...
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87 years ago today a group of people was summoned by telegram & told to board a coach in London for "somewhere in the country". The Soviet-Nazi Pact had been signed 2 days before. War was certain. The group's mission: set up the BBC's "Monitoring Service" radioatlanticodelsur.blogspo…
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In July 1962, the Peterborough Evening Telegraph's television column previewed an ITV documentary which was finally tackling the most serious threat then facing the country.
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I'm often fascinated by inscriptions in old books I've bought. I wonder if Sue made it into television production...?
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