Derek McCulloch
Derek Ivor Breashur McCulloch OBE (18 November 1897 – 1 June 1967) was a BBC Radio presenter and producer, who is best remembered as "Uncle Mac" in Children's Favourites and Children's Hour and for playing 'Larry the Lamb' in Toytown.
Early life
He was born in Plymouth in 1897 of Scottish parents. The First World War interrupted his education and he enlisted in 1915 in the Public Schools Battalion of the 16th Middlesex Regiment at the age of 17. He served until 1921, with the infantry, where he was commissioned into the Green Howards, and in the Royal Flying Corps as an Equipment Officer, including a spell on HMS Valiant. He was seriously wounded at the Battle of the Somme (1916) and lay in 'no-man's land' for three days and nights in a shell-hole 20 yards from the German lines. While lying badly injured but still twitching, he was found by the German Red Cross and was deliberately shot through the head to end his suffering. (This is the account told by the man himself to Trevor Hill, a colleague on BBC Children's Hour.) However, he survived.
After the army he worked for Central Argentine Railways but his health deteriorated and he returned home to have a bullet removed from a lung; the lung was later removed. He also lost his left leg in a road traffic accident in 1938 when, travelling on a London Greenline bus he stood up ready to alight when a pedestrian crossed in front, causing the driver to brake sharply, catapulting McCulloch the length of the vehicle. As a result of his multiple injuries, he was in constant pain and had fifty operations.
BBC
He joined the BBC in 1926 as an announcer. His health problems and his microphone style meant that he was sidelined to miscellaneous activities such as commenting on sports events, compering variety shows and Children's Hour. He was the commentator on the first radio broadcast of the FA Cup Final in 1927. After a further breakdown in health he was made second in command on Children's Hour in 1931 and was given full charge of Children's Hour in 1933. This programme included many talks, plays, music and drama serials. He regarded his department as a microcosm of all broadcasting.
In the tradition of Lord Reith, McCulloch stated his policy as: "Nothing but the best is good enough for children...our wish is to stimulate their imaginations, direct their reading, encourage their various interests, widen their outlook and inculcate the Christian virtues of love of God and their neighbours".[1]
Noted for his sometimes sharp tongue with colleagues he was no subservient vassal to authority. When a meeting of BBC staff in the last days of Savoy Hill was being briefed on the forthcoming move to the new Broadcasting House they were told that in the new building staff earning more than a thousand pounds a year would have a separate lavatory. 'But’, intervened Mac, ‘you have forgotten something’. ‘What’s that?’ ‘We will still all have to use the same sewers’.
In 1939 the audience for Children's Hour reached 4 million. His sign-off line "Goodnight children, everywhere", became more poignant after the evacuation of many children from their homes at the start of the Second World War.
Children's Favourites
He resigned from the BBC in 1950 because of his health problems. However he became the Children's Editor for the News Chronicle and he continued broadcasting, but now did not have to run a department. He presented a much-loved music request programme for children, Children's Favourites on Saturday mornings, from 1954. As television replaced radio as children's main evening entertainment, the audience for Children's Hour fell to 24,000 and the programme was dropped in 1964, despite protests and questions in Parliament, but Children's Favourites continued to be highly popular, and McCulloch presented it until 1965. He had a strong aversion to pop music, though he had to play some, but his taste introduced children to the light classics. Children's Favourites continued after McCulloch's retirement and the programme metamorphosed into the equally successful Junior Choice, hosted mainly by Ed Stewart, when the BBC Light Programme was replaced by Radios 1 and 2 in 1967.
Writing
A children's song, Marketing Day, was set to music by Martin Shaw in 1933.[2]
Personal life
He married Eileen Hilda Barry in 1931. He was awarded an OBE in 1964. He died at Haywards Heath on 1 June 1967. Derek McCulloch's life is commemorated with a cairn and plaque at the Kent seaside resort of Broadstairs where he often worked.
In October 2012, McCulloch's family described as "complete rubbish" claims that he was the person referred to as "Uncle Dick" in John Simpson's 1999 book Strange Places, Questionable People, who had allegedly sexually assaulted children.[3] Simpson, who was in Afghanistan at the time, declined to comment.[4]
Books
- Goodnight Children Everywhere: History of Children's Broadcasting by Ian Hartley 1983 Midas Books (ISBN 0-85936-201-9)
- Travellers Three Published by Pitman, London, 1936
References
- Jeff Walden, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Sept 2004, Online version
External links
Notes
- ^ BBC Quarterly 1948.
- ^ Marketing Day - sheet music
- ^ "New 'Victim' Claims Savile Abused Her At 15". Sky News. 18 October 2012.
- ^ "Jimmy Savile Sex Scandal: Was BBC's Larry the Lamb Derek McCulloch a Paedophile?". IB Times. 17 October 2012.