“ARE you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…”
Just over 90 years ago the sound of the BBC came to life from an unimposing attic flat in Glasgow.
The station, 5SC, came on air from Rex House, 202 Bath Street, in the heart of what was then Glasgow’s theatre and music hall land.
Today, a small, simple plaque marks the spot where the great adventure of radio began on March 6, 1923.
The first sound on Glasgow’s first radio station was a pipe band playing “Hey, Johnnie Cope”.
That was followed by the voice of John Reith the general manager of the British Broadcasting Company – as it was initially called – who boomed that “5SC was calling”.
The station’s organiser of children’s and women’s programmes, Kathleen Garscadden, who would become known to many as Auntie Kathleen, said the spirit of the day was high.
“It was great fun and of course, very, very amateurish,” she added.
Back in the day “everything was just done on the spur of the moment”.
Kathleen Garscadden, who went on to be a major broadcasting star adored across Scotland, said: “We just went out and bought (sheet) music every day for the programmes, put fairy tale books on the piano, seized a book and just read it.”
Within a matter of weeks, 5SC was experimenting with what we would today call “networking”.
This so-called “simultaneous broadcasting” linked in to radio stations across the country via the Post Office telephone network.
In time, stations were launched in Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh and programming was being relayed from Broadcasting House in London.
From Bath Street, 5SC moved to Blythswood Square, then West George Street before expansion took the BBC to Queen Margaret Drive and now its home by the Clyde at Pacific Quay.
Bath Street seems to have a draw for pioneers.
It was also the home to the revolutionary education service in the 1970s called ETV, which broadcast to primary schools across the city out of purpose-built studios at 129 Bath Street.
We’ll visit there next time we Eye Spy Glasgow.
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