Hi John - Thanks for the contribution and good to know your dad's still with us. Would you be able to tell us if he has copies of any of his programmes? I know that Stan Ambrose who produces Folkscene on BBC Merseyside along with Geoff Speed has loads of his old programmes on reel to reel including a programme where he talks to Brian Peters about Harry Boardman. He kindly lent this tape to myself and Chris Pollington to make a copy of it for our archive of material featuring Harry. Talking of Chris, I was round at his house last night where he's recovering from a broken back after falling off a ladder and we were listening to some of his old cassette recordings he made of "Fine Folk" from the early days of BBC Radio Blackburn (now Radio Lancashire) where he was featured with his group Knight's Anthem (I think) - pre Strawhead days - about 1972. The programmes was presented by John Mills (not THE John Mills) who sounded awfully posh for a programme broadcast in Lancashire - but then they all did in those days! He also had some other recordings of a programme called Music in Schools which featured his school Jazz band and considering the age of the pupils was about 13, the standard of playing was excellent. The past is out there - it just needs looking for!
Thanks to an appeal I made on another thread regarding the TV programme "Ballad of the Northwest", I now have about ten audio recordings of the programme which is otherwise missing. Whilst they aren't the best quality considering they were done by pointing a microphone at the TV speaker, they are at least listenable to and very interesting they are as well.


Cheers
Mark