Saturday Club

There was very little pop music on BBC Radio in the 1950s – after all, it was parents not teenagers who paid the licence fee.

That all changed on Saturday 4 October 1958 when Saturday Club arrived on the Light Programme.

The groundbreaking new show – replacing the previous Saturday Skiffle Club – presented two hours of popular music, featuring leading artists performing live (mostly recorded during the week at the Playhouse Theatre on the Embankment), as well as interviews, requests, and dedications.

The show was introduced by “your old mate”  Brian Mathew, a BBC staff announcer and “resident geezer” (pictured above).

Within a month, listening figures increased from 3.5 million to 5 million, and by the time the show celebrated its fifth anniversary in 1963 – with a show featuring The Beatles, The Everly Brothers, Tommy Roe, Clinton Ford, Frank Ifield and Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen – around 20 million listeners tuned in each week.

Alas, just six months later. Radio Caroline began broadcasting pop records all day every day.

By July 1964, Saturday Club had just 13.9% of listeners in London, while Caroline had 12.5%. Within four months, Saturday Club was eclipsed by some hairy chaps on a rusty boat armed with a box of records . . .

The show fought back, featuring more emerging artists such as Cream and Jimi Hendrix – who famously played so loudly in his session at Broadcasting House that the show received complaints from two floors below where a string quartet was broadcasting live on the Third Programme.

When most pirate radio was eventually shut down, the BBC launched its own pop music station, Radio 1, in September 1967. However, Saturday Club survived (albeit with Brian Mathew replaced by ex-pirate DJ Keith Skues), despite its dated format.

Listeners preferred records and disc jockeys to live performances in the studio, and in January 1969 Saturday Club ended – replaced by Kenny Everett at his “grannyphone” – and the theme tune, Saturday Jump by Humphrey Lyttelton, was heard no more.