Legend of BBC broadcasting in the Westcountry is remembered
A much-loved broadcaster from the South West has died at the age of 96. Katie Timms looks at the life of Joe Pengelly
TRIBUTES have been paid to a legend of Westcountry broadcasting who left his mark on the region and led a remarkable life.
Joe Pengelly, who graced TV screens as a newsreader in the 1960s and ’70s for BBC Spotlight, passed away peacefully at the age of 96 on September 16.
Mr Pengelly was born on August 28, 1924, and raised at 64 Union Street, Plymouth, above Pengelly’s the tobacconist shop, the family business.
Whilst working for the BBC, he helped set up one of the first weekly radio shows on Hospital Radio Plymouth. It proved so successful a bigger premises was secured.
Among his claims to fame were crossing the Tamar Bridge on foot shortly after it was opened in 1961. Mr Pengelly wrote to the Plymouth Herald to say he was only the second person to do so.
Mr Pengelly’s son Joe recalls that his father sang on stage at Milan’s La Scala opera house, but not in front of an audience, and “was undoubtedly an expert in his field”.
He even lectured at the Library of Congress in the USA. “His interests have led to some scrapes, however – questions were raised in the House of Commons about a visit to interview a naval mutineer who fled to Moscow,” his son said.
Mr Pengelly was married to Barbara for 55 years before her death ten years ago and he leaves behind his son, Joe, daughter-in-law Janet and four grandchildren, Sam, Joe, Phoebe and Verity.
He lived in Plymouth his whole life, apart from when serving at the end of the Second World War in Italy and Austria and during his time as a student at Jesus College Oxford, studying history in the late 1940s.
“After his degree at Oxford, Joe joined the family business and was a director, until the family business which had shops in Plymouth and all over Cornwall was sold in the late 1960s,” his son said.
“The lure of television broadcasting took hold and until retirement in 1979 Joe worked at BBC Plymouth as a continuity announcer and newsreader, both on television and radio.
“As a young child, I remember my father taking part in an air-sea rescue for the cameras – how he managed it, I have no idea, since he was not the best of swimmers.
“He loved the atmosphere at the BBC and connecting with local people.”
Mr Pengelly won the local television personality of the year award in 1969. “People will remember him as someone who always had an interest in them and what they did,” his son added.
In a letter to the Plymouth Herald in 2010, Mr Pengelly responded to an old photograph showing the Tamar Bridge road crossing, on the first day it opened to traffic.
It prompted the question: ‘Were you among the first over the bridge?’.
Mr Pengelly wrote in: “I wasn’t the first, but I know a man who was.”
“He was Thomas Ockleshaw, a fellow-tobacconist who had a shop in St Budeaux.
“He had stayed up all night to be the first to cross the new road bridge on foot. I was the second, arriving before 6am.”
He added: “I was motivated to do so because my grandfather, Dan Brown, had been present at the opening of Brunel’s railway bridge in 1859 and as a very old man he gave me a first-hand account of the event, which had been attended by the largest crowds ever seen in Plymouth.
“My crossing on foot of the new bridge has remained in my memory because, as the barriers were raised, the heavens emptied and I was soaked to the skin.
“My shoes were so full of water by the driving rain that they were never again wearable.
“I was not mollified by George Creber, representing the City of Plymouth at the later and more grandiose official opening, telling me that at that time champagne was quaffed under ideal weather conditions.”
Mr Pengelly also recalled his time broadcasting for Hospital Radio, revealing how he, and his two friends who accompanied him, had to remain silent throughout the hourlong programme.
He wrote: “Using the Chapel at Mount Gould Hospital as our ‘studio’, we established some sort of service... a very different one from the professional set-up they have at Derriford today.
“The snag with the set-up at Mount Gould – even Heath Robinson would have been ashamed of it – was that the public-address microphone in the chapel served as a transmission centre for the whole hospital audio network and was the only means by which the presenter – me – could be heard, and was the only way the requested records could be heard, with the mike picking up the music from the speakers!
“Terry Wogan, eat your heart out!
“This permanently ‘ open’ mic situation meant that all three of us had to keep silent for the whole hour-long duration of the programme, passing notes to and fro with instructions on how to get our way through the programme.
“This meant that we were all denied the luxury of other disc jockeys with their ability to mute their mikes, say what they like, use intemperate language, go to the loo, or whatever!”
Mr Pengelly’s funeral will take place at Efford Crematorium on September 30, by invitation only.