Major power failures

This week: the abortive start of BBC2; the English mayoral elections; and which Europeans harbour lingering expansionist ambitions?

Below there are rather a lot of words about the round of English mayoral elections due in just over a week’s time, on Thursday 2 May. That feels like a fairly heavy way of beginning a newsletter, though, so this week I’m switching it up and starting with something completely different.

Saturday saw the 60th birthday of the BBC’s second and Britain’s third television channel, creatively called BBC2. Launch night, on Monday 20 April 1964¹, did not go well. At 6.55pm, 25 minutes before the start of scheduled programming, a massive electrical failure hit large chunks of London, knocking out Television Centre in White City and forcing the BBC to broadcast from back up facilities at Alexandra Palace. So instead of the slick first night the corporation might have been hoping for, the result was 15 minutes of utter chaos, before someone pulled the plug.

You can watch all this on YouTube, in a video with the delightful title of “Attempted start of BBC2”. 

It is, quite genuinely, fascinating. With intended programming unavailable, someone had decided the best plan would be to simply read the news over and over again, but even that doesn’t go to plan. A horrible noise is followed by three minutes of Gerald Priestland, the former foreign correspondent press-ganged into anchoring for the night, reading mutely into the camera. The sound eventually cuts back just in time for a story about a racist bus conductor being given her job back after union intervention: it’s not quite true to say that the first word ever heard on BBC2 was a racial slur, but it’s certainly within the first 20. 

Later highlights include:

• Priestland’s extremely 1960s pronunciations of “Laos” and “Mandela”;

• The awkward moment when a phone rings and the anchor answers, only to find that no one is on the other end. He later, more successfully, takes further calls, live on air (“Excuse me…”);

• The even more awkward moment when he learns, after a full seven minutes, that he was initially inaudible;

• The news that the Church of Scotland has clarified that it is not in fact sinful to exercise on a Sunday (though they think some reading, or some serious thought, are more “proper activities”);

• The entertaining story that the Queens’ newborn fourth child’s initials (Edward Anthony Richard² Louis) spell “Earl”;

• And finally – this said with a smile – “the Beatles have been burgled”. 

After a couple of goes at this, the broadcast cuts to some light music (ironically, it’s “I feel pretty”) over the caption “BBC 2 will start shortly”. Then that’s replaced by a screeching noise and the words “major power failure”. Honestly, it’s weirdly compelling viewing, as well as a clear influence on early Monty Python. (Hattip: Jim Cooray-Smith.)

The book bit

After several weeks of “It’s not officially out but...” the big week is finally here. The launch party is tonight; official publication tomorrow, which means if you’ve ordered it from Amazon, or the ebook or audiobook versions, it should be with you shortly. 

The window at Foyles, whose manager was kind enough to tweet me that it was “selling well”.

Here’s my first review, which weirdly has a massive picture of my face at the top, courtesy of Bernard Hughes at the Arts Desk:

“The moments of seriousness are diluted by the jovial tone of most of the book and Elledge’s almost puppyish enthusiasm for his subject matter. His delight in sharing the things he has discovered shines through; it is like spending an evening in the pub with an entertaining pal.” 

I’ll take that, even if he thinks my footnote habit³ is “a bit self-indulgent”. You can order the book from Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles, among others.

So what’s going on with this year’s English mayoral elections?

In 2017, I spotted a gap in the market. Outside the capital, the whole notion of England’s conurbations or counties having elected mayors was new. I thought they’d be a good innovation for both consolidating local identities and devolving power from our insanely over-centralised state; I also thought that nobody else in the London media was likely to cover them. 

So, I dedicated much of that spring to reporting and writing and podcasting about the upcoming mayoral elections. I spent a strange Sunday afternoon in a Greek Orthodox church with the Tory candidate for the West Midlands. I turned Labour’s unsuccessful candidate for the Tees Valley, Sue Jeffrey, into a sort of meme on politics nerd twitter. I was told, by a gleeful campaign press officer, that Andy Burnham had complained privately that I never said anything nice about him. I even, when election day arrived, liveblogged it. I learned a lot – but also, in my own strange, nerdy way, I enjoyed myself.

By the time the next elections rolled round in 2021, I did some bits and pieces but it wasn’t quite the same. And with one thing and another, this year’s mayoral elections have snuck up on me entirely. They’re happening next week, and I’ve barely glanced at them.

If I have a defence for this, other than the obvious ones that it’s no longer my job and I’ve had other things on my mind, it’s this: they seem to have snuck up on everyone else, too. There’s been relatively little coverage, compared to the bigger and more high-profile race for the London mayoralty. That means relatively few polls, too, since there are fewer people who want to commission, fund or write up them. As a result, the fact the Tories may be about to lose two of their highest-profile office holders outside national government may come as a bit of a shock.

Here, best I can tell, is what’s going on – and my guide to what I, at least, will be looking out for on 2 May.