LULU DAWN

Chris Maume recalls events from this week in history

24 JULY 1864

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Frank Wedekind (pictured), the playwright best known for the Lulu plays. Raised in a Swiss castle, he worked in business and the circus, then as an actor and singer, before taking up writing. His Lulu plays, Earth Spirit (1895) and Pandora’s Box (1904), tell the story of a dancer who rises in society thanks to a series of sugar daddies but who falls into poverty and prostitution. They inspired GW Pabst’s silent film classic Pandora’s Box, Alban Berg’s opera Lulu and an album of the same name by Lou Reed and Metallica.

27 JULY 1981

On Coronation Street Ken Barlow, played by Bill Roache, married Deirdre Langton (Anne Kirkbride), drawing a domestic audience of around 24 million – more than the number who watched the televised wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana two days later. After almost a quarter of a century of affairs, separations and a divorce, they married again in 2005, the day before Charles wed Camilla Parker Bowles. Again, the Street won the ratings battle, by 13 million to nine.

29 JULY 1945

As the world changed during the Second World War the BBC plotted its own future, deciding that postwar there would be three networks. Thus on 29 July 1945 the General Forces Programme, which had been offering something different from the Home Service, became the Light Programme, taking over the frequency that had been used by the BBC National Programme. The new station, said the BBC’s Senior Controller, Basil Nicolls, would be “popular, but not rubbishy”, and it featured future staples of the Home Service, or Radio 4 as it would become, such as Woman’s Hour, Any Questions, Book at Bedtime and even the Shipping Forecast. In 1967 it was rebranded as Radio 2.