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Available for 7 days

The 4th of October 2025 marks seventy years since the iconic radio show Pick Of The Pops began on the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½. It was a very stiff and staid programme when it began in 1955, with host Franklin Engelmann, starting life as just something of a weekly concession by Auntie that the Corporation really needed to create an outlet for ‘popular’ music on the Light Programme, long before the days of the off-shore pirates or the birth of both Radio 1 and Radio 2. There was no chart element to it at first, but that quickly evolved when presenters Alan Dell, David Jacobs and Don Moss had to gingerly navigate the show, kicking and screaming, into the rock n’ roll era and through the 1960s Beat Boom explosion. Part one of this three-part series, presented by Mark Goodier, is packed with incredible rare archive footage and contributions from young listeners at that time, including Tony Blackburn, Bob Harris, Paul Gambaccini and Pete Waterman, telling the story of its journey from the backwaters of the schedule to its ascendency as a genuine appointment-to-listen for chart fans every week. There’s a special spotlight on the one and only Alan Freeman, the unique Australian broadcaster who made Pick Of The Pops his own, with a presenting style and rapid-fire delivery that turned it into the most exciting show on the planet, and we find out how and why his legendary theme tune ‘At The Sign Of The Swinging Cymbal’ is still used to countdown the retro charts each week after all these years.