2018 will be the first time since 2012 that 27 July has fallen on a Friday.  That was of course the date of the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics, part of an unforgettable summer.

It was also the date where 3 years later, The Sound of Sunday's Neil Ogden conducted the last ever media interview at an official event on the original running track. 

Nowadays, the London Stadium is part of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and two years ago The Sound of Sunday broadcast live from the park for its 1000th show.  On Sunday 29 July, there'll be another chance to hear the highlights of that show.

The message is still the same – the park is still very much open for business and open for millions of people who go and see it every year.  You can swim or cycle at the Olympic venues and see a fantastic view of London at the top of the Orbit (before sliding down the slide).

Hear the show once again on 29 July at 3pm.

This Sunday you can hear our Summer Special recorded in JUne at Alton Lions Party in the Park.

The annual event  in aid of the disabled students or Treloars College in Alton was held in the Public Gardens in the centre of Alton and included all sorts of entertainment and activities.

HRB teamed up with Wey Valley Radio to invite visitors to come and chat and find out more about both stations. 

We went around the event talking to thos who were there including Hampshire Fire Service, Alton Community Hospital and ServWessex.  The town's Mayor was also therer and we recorded live music courtesy of the band Tripowire who are regulars every year.

Hear the show on Sunday 1 July at 2pm.

Blue Peter presenter of the 1960s and 1970s Peter Purves will be a guest on the show in September.  

Peter presented the world's longest running children's TV show alongside Valerie Singleton and John Noakes, a combination widely seen as the ultimate Blue Peter lineup.

Blue Peter celebrates its 60th birthday later this year and The Sound of Sunday will be marking the occasion with several Blue Peter names from the past.  Already featured have been presenter Mark Curry and the director and producer who worked on the show for nearly 40 years Alex Leger.  Chris Booith, the VT editor who recorded Lulu the elephant has also featured.

All the Blue Peter guests can be heard in September.

All of us at HRB were sad to learn in the last few days that honorary member of the station Paul Le Feuvre sadly passed away at the weekend.

Paul's first show on HRB was on 28 March 2007, but he has been on the radio much much longer than that.  He started on Radio Treloar, which was the hospital radio station for Alton.  In the late 80s, he was a big part of the campaign to get local commercial radio for Alton and was then part of the team that was on air on the original Wey Valley Radio, which became Delta FM.

When Radio Treloar closed, he continued to present his Sunday night request show on Delta FM, regularly attracting one of the largest audiences of any radio station on a Sunday evening in Hampshire.  When Delta FM was taken over, and his show finished, he joined Hospital Radio Basingstoke, inventing a new show called Pick a Word, editions of which were broadcast on the station right up until last Christmas.  

In 2008, he helped the station with its new studio and joined the committee as its first Training Officer.

In 2013, Paul received his honorary membership of Hospital Radio Basingstoke from Liz Padmore, Chairman of the hospital's trust.  Two days later he was in London to receive his second surprise of the same weekend on the ITV show Surprise Surprise from presenter Holly Willoughby after being nominated for 40+ years of service to community and hospital radio.

Paul loved taking the stations he worked for and his shows out to his audience.  He encouraged all of us at HRB to go out to local events and cover them for our listeners.  He was a regular part of many events in Alton including the Last Night of the Proms, the Alton Lions Party in the Park and the annual Classic Car Show.  He was the PA at the Froyle Fete for nearly 30 years. 

In 2015, HRB covered the Magna Carta Festival in Odiham and it was Paul who was a big part of that coverage which was then nominated for an award at the National Hospital Radio Awards.  

In 2015, Paul started presenting a new show called Sounds of the Fifties, which at the National Hospital Radio Awards in 2016 was nominated in the Best Specialist Music Programme Category.  Paul recorded the programme in his own studio at his home, from where he also read the local news each week.  

Paul's final role with HRB, and his involvement with The Sound of Sunday was as drawmaster for the weekly prize draw.  He became the voice of the "big blue bag of balls" each week, choosing the winning number by picking it from the bag.  He would do the draw live from his home studio, or sometimes he would take the draw out and about including live from a moving steam train on the Watercress Line, the Victorian Cricket in Alton, and, perhaps most notably, the sin bin at an ice hockey match in Switzerland. 

He was drawmaster for the final draw in February 2018, assisted live from Guernsey by Fred Setters, Station Manager at Jubilee Radio, the hospital radio station on the island. 

He always encouraged the use of new technology to push the boundaries of what was possible to do on the radio.  He came up with a way of enabling someone to be on the radio live while they were abseiling down the side of the hospital!

Paul enjoyed going to the events organised by the Hospital Broadcasting Association.  He described the HBA's weekend in Guernsey in 2016 as "the best HBA event ever"

Despite his illness he was able to be at the HBA's 2018 conference in Windsor, and although he was ill, he still remained cheerful and as interested in everyone as ever.

In 2017, Paul revived his Sunday evening request show on Wey Valley Radio, now back on air as a community radio station 25 years after the original station went on the air.  The show seemed as popular as ever, full of requests from his listeners which he continued to enthusiastically collect each week. 

Paul's final show on Wey Valley Radio was on Sunday 15 April 2018.  

The domestic football season is coming to an end and HRB will as usual aim to tell the story of the final day of the Premier League season.  All 10 final games kick off at 3pm on May 13th and although the champions may have been known for several weeks, all the indications are that it could be a nail biting afternoon for those at the bottom of the table trying to avoid relegation.  

We'll have reporters at all 10 final day matches which all kick off at 3pm, and they'll be sending previews, updates and goal flashes as The Sound of Sunday tries to tell the story of the afternoon.

The Sound of Sunday Last Day of the Premier League, Sunday 13th May from 1.30pm.

The special guest on this week's show is Basingstoke singer Jodie Steele.

Jodie will be talking about her experience performing in the BBC's brand new Saturday night singing competition All Together Now where she has made it throough to the finl after impressing 97 of the 100.

Jodie is an accomplished singer, actor and dancer and has appeared in many big musical oproductions.  She has in the past featured at Basingstoke Live and was a student at Queen Mary's College.

She will also be the guest drawmaster for this weekend's Sainsbury's prize draw.

Jodie Steele on The Sound of Sunday on 18 February 2018.

The article about Blue Peter and its "zero viewers" on the Daily Mail website still incorrectly states that the Thursday evening edition of the show was shown with sign language and subtitles.  We have on 8 occasions sent an email via the Daily Mail form set up for reporting inaccuracies to tell them that the article is wrong but nothing has been changed.  So we contacted ther IPSO.  They have a code of Accuracy so surely something that is inaccurate must fall foul of that code right?

Sadly no!

Apparently the presence of this particiular incorrect fact does not affect the article and therefore is not deemed inaccurate enough to be er well wrong!  The fact that the whole article is based around the fact that the broadcast of the show that DID have sign language and subtitles on the Tuesday afternoon does not make any difference.

The reply we received was:

"The Committee recognised the importance that information about what television programmes are signed is important, to ensure that people with hearing difficulties can appropriately plan their watching. However, this case was about television broadcasts which had already taken place, and did not suggest that the use of sign language on the original broadcast had affected viewership of the programme.

For this reason, in addition to the reasons already provided by IPSO’s Executive, the Committee considered that your complaint did not raise a possible breach of the Code."

So it doesn't seem to matter that something in an article is wrong.  If it's not wrong enough it's deemed to still be accurate under the code of practice?  This seems to be what the IPSO is saying.

Two more attempts to get the article on the Daily Mail wevbsite changed have gone unanswered.  

Did someone once say don't believe what you read in the papers?  On this occasion they were right although it doesn't seem to matter to the organisation that supposed to be making sure everything is correct.

He was the first celebrity guest we ever had on the show.  He was the first celebrity I had ever interviewed on the radio. 

20 December 1998. 

I can remember being so excited that I was going to talk to someone who I had grown up with on TV.  He was on the phone from The Anvil as he was in panto that year.  

I remember him being so easy to talk to and we could have gone on talking all afternoon.  

Keith was a regular in panto in either Basingstoke or Reading so when he was back in 2001, he made another appearance on our Christmas show – and then again in 2002.

By now our Christmas show had developed into a show that also included a competition prize for a member of staff to take their family to see the panto at both Basingstoke and Reading.  Once again I can remember him being very easy to talk to and he remembered me from 3 years before.  He spoke fondly about his experience of the maternity department in Basingstoke when his son Ted was born there.

It wasn't until 2014 that he was back in Basingstoke, and by now I was getting to meet some of the panto cast in person rather than just on the phone.  I met Keith in an office upstairs in the Anvil and we recorded an interview that ran for about 15 minutes but it felt like we could have chatted all afternoon.  Much of it was about Saturday morning TV and he recorded some liners for both HRB and the BIG Broadcast and signed my autograph book.  Some extracts of that interview were used in our special show It Started with Swap Shop which was nominated for an award in 2017.

My experience of him seems to match those of all his friends who have paid tribute to him.  A genuinely nice person, and I feel privilaged to have met him.  

This Sunday we will repeat that interview from 2014 as our tribute to someone who millions of people grew up watching and was part of our lives for so long.  Sunday 17 December at 4.30 on HRB.

It’s that time again – our Big Christmas Show will officially launch Christmas on HRB on Sunday 10 December at 12 mid-day.

The centre piece as usual will be the Christmas Cracker Dash with instant requests and competitions for staff and patients.

Before that we’ll meet the cast of Peter Pan – this year’s Anvil panto and our live special guest will be former Blue Peter presenter Mark Curry who will join us to remember his time on the show as part of our celebrations to mark the 60th anniversary of the world’s longest running children’s TV show in 2018.

We’ll also hear the Tadley Band playing recently at the Tadley Christmas lights switch on, Trev and Simon will be talking about Strangeness in Space and Richard Smith will talk about the New Year’s Eve BIG Broadcast.

And later on, it will be Resident’s Requests for everyone at Basingfield Court in Old Basing.

For five hours of festive fast moving fun, it is the Sound of Sunday Big Christmas Show live from 12 mid-day.

We’ve been saying for weeks that the article in the Daily Mail saying that Blue Peter had zero viewers for one “episode” in June was unfair, and now the paper seems to have agreed that the headline at least was wrong.

It all started when the Daily Mail published an article, the headline of which said that an edition (or “episode”) of Blue Peter got zero viewers.  The article referred to the third repeat of a particular edition of the show that did register zero viewers but the previous showings of the programme that week got over 300,000 viewers in total.  This particular repeat was on at 2.30 on a Tuesday afternoon during term-time!

We contacted them to challenge them on this, and waited for their response.

And waited…

And waited..,.

And finally we got two of them.

The first reply said “The article made it clear that the broadcast was a repeat and that it did not register any viewers via the BARB system used to measure audience ratings, which does not mean that there were no viewers at all, obviously. “

So “no viewers” “obviously” does not actually mean “no viewers” then.

The reply went on “The reporter also double-checked the figures with ‘Overnights’ – the company which supplies the numbers. They confirmed that having zero viewers on the system meant that literally no one in a BARB household had watched the broadcast.

The article specifically states that there may still have been some youngsters tuning in (i.e, because BARB is an imperfect system).”

We replied to this pointing out that the headline quite clearly says ““Children’s show once watched by millions had NO viewers for an episode”.  That’s “episode” not “broadcast .

A few days later we were called by Katherine Rushton who wrote the original article, who basically said the same thing as the original reply, and that the article only referred to that broadcast of the programme, but when I pointed out that the headline said “episode” not “broadcast” she had no answer and said that she didn’t write the headline.

So that’s OK then!

A few more emails later also pointing out a factual inaccuracy that still exists in the article, we received the following reply:

 “I am sure you will appreciate that newspaper headlines need to be read in conjunction with the article. In this case, the article itself makes clear that the broadcast was a repeat and that it did not register any viewers via the BARB system used to measure audience ratings, which does not mean that there were no viewers at all.

Whilst we cannot agree that the article is inaccurate, if it would resolve your concerns, we would be willing – as a gesture of goodwill – to replace ‘an episode’ with ‘a broadcast’ in the headline.”

So a partial result anyway.  At least now the headline is more correct than it used to be.  No mention of the challenge we made to write a POSITIVE article about all the good things Blue Peter does and they didn’t reply to several invitations to come onto the show and explain themselves, but at least they did eventually listen -shame it took 2 months of Bonehead of the Week awards to get them to take any notice.

There is by the way still a factual inaccuracy in the article which has also been pointed out now on 5 occasions, but I guess you can’t have everything.