Greetings, pop pickers

"A SELECTION from the top shelf of current popular gramophone records" was how Pick of the Pops was described when it launched 70 years.

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The BBC radio show was first presented by Franklin Engelmann, but just a few weeks after it began broadcasting Bill Haley’s groundbreaking Rock Around the Clock was released and marked the beginning of the Hit Parade in Britain.

The American singer said: “We take a lot of care with lyrics because we don’t want to offend anybody.”

Radio had some of the biggest stars in the 1950s with Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Sir Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine in The Goon Show, Kenneth Horne in Beyond Our Ken and Bebe Daniels in Life With The Lyons. Radio drama The Archers also began in the 1950s, but music culture was still in the shadows until Pick of the Pops first began broadcasting on Tuesday evening on October 4, 1955.