These won’t always be daily, but I figured I should put in an effort, early doors. So, Friday 24 June 1955…
The Times reports that in Parliament, James Callaghan (Lab, Cardiff South East) said that workers “were more ready to down tools because of the long hours being worked through overtime.” He added, “Men were working overtime to pay instalments on television sets which they had no time to look at.”
Various newspapers carry the information that the first section of a permanent vision link between London and the continent would be completed by September. However, this exciting news is tempered somewhat by the information that this first section will ‘only’ covers the distance between London and St. Margaret’s Bay in Kent. The next stage – a two-way radio link across the English Channel – isn’t due for a further three years.
The Church Times in reviewing Laurence Brander’s biography of George Orwell notes that, “the one thing which did more than anything else to make him as famous as he is was the televising of his novel 1984. Orwell had no desire for popularity. He would have thought it ironical, in view of his hatred of mass media and uniformity, that television, the most potent instrument for imposing uniformity, should have been the medium of conveying his message to the British people.”
Meanwhile, on-screen, there’s plenty more cricket and tennis as well as Water Skiing in which London (in the form of the Ruislip Water Ski Club) faces the challenge of Copenhagen’s Dansk Vandski Forbund. Radio Times doesn’t mention it, but one of the Ruislip club’s founder members was none other than Jon Pertwee. Did he take part? I suspect not.
The day’s television also includes The Grove Family, Harding Finds Out – in which Gilbert Harding answers questions put by viewers – and Bath-Night with Braden a television outing for Bernard Braden, produced by Brian Tesler.