Our speaker was Wally Webb, the well-known former radio presenter with Radio Norfolk.
He described how in his younger days he joined the RAF and during his time there he got involved with club discos and then hospital radio. In 1980 he left the RAF and joined the BBC on a freelance basis. His job was self-operational, i.e. he had to deal with the tapes himself as well as just presenting them and he had to work out the whole procedure for himself.
As well as presenting items from the studio he did reports from a radio car, from many places around Norfolk. He mentioned several amusing “spoof” programmes put out on April 1 in various years, including one in which he pretended to have gone up in a space shuttle and to be broadcasting from there! In another “spoof” programme he pretended to be broadcasting from a (totally fictitious) village called Wanglingham. In response to this he received several calls from listeners complaining that they couldn’t find Wanglingham on the map!
As well as these amusing episodes, during his radio career he interviewed many people, including Simon Weston the Falklands War veteran, Norman Lamb, and Henry Winkler (“The Fonz”). He also covered the funeral in 1997 of Lady Diana Spencer. After a full and varied career, Wally retired in 2021.
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