So Beadle's not about. I am genuinely sad - he was a very clever and interesting man. I've got several of his books, and his radio shows years ago were legendary for their ingenuity. He once had 100s of Londoners racing across the capital in search of mysterious treasure that didn't exist, because he kept playing sound effects of bits of London, as if he was out and about, and would give a clue to his next location (of course he was in the studio all the time).
I met him once - I used to do a weekly guest spot on BBC Radio Berkshire, talking about the news and generally trying to be genial to the M4 corridor listenership. Henry Kelly usually hosted, but one week he was ill, so Jeremy Beadle stood in for him. He was a lovely chap, and was particularly interested that I was about to write for The News Quiz. He's a bit of a quiz expert, and in this obits you might have read, where it says he raised £100m for charity, that was through his celebrity quiz nights he'd regularly do for the charity. So he tipped me off that the perfect quiz question to pose should be 7 words long and contain one very and two nouns. Useful to know.
One unusual thing happened when I met Beadle - and I mean this in the greatest of respect... First of all, yes, I shook the hand. What was unusual was that when we went into the studio for the broadcast, the studio engineer had no arms, being an unfortunate victim of the thalidomide drug. So there were 3 of us in the studio, and the average number of full-size working hands was one each. Jeremy admitted he hadn't done radio in a few years, so was a little nervous, and when he was about to go live, pushed back on his chair, unplugging his headphones, and also entangling his good arm in the lead. With about 5 seconds till broadcast, we all looked at each other, and although it's the studio engineer's job, and although Jeremy was the one to unplug himself, I volunteered to plug him in again, given that I felt my two standard hands made me most qualified for the task. Not a word was said, and we continued with the show.
JB was an excellent interviewer too - normally Henry Kelly would let me coast along with pre-prepared material slotted into comments on the day's news. But not Beadle. He'd force me to leave my comfort-zone by not asking for amusing comments about the royals or something that I was bound to have stuff on. Instead he'd suddenly ask, "So Paul, tell me, what scares you about the news today?" or "Tell me something that excites you about events in the last week?" He made me think on my feet, and I think great radio came of it. I rediscovered in my head stories, anecdotes and opinions that I'd forgotten were there. Well done, Beadle, and a lovely fella to boot.
God bless ya, Beadle. I'm sure you're up there right now, with an extra-bushy fake beard, pretending to be 'Beadle the Angel' as you drop St Peter's Ford Escort into a river with a clumsy winch.
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