LIVE 24-SEVEN
DIGBY LORD JONES THOUGHTS FOR JUNE
I felt very honoured to be asked to write and deliver the Address for Ed Doolan's Memorial Service in May.
This BBC stalwart was a wonderful character and one of West Midlands’ greatest champions; I was blessed to count him as a friend and to have so many wonderful stories to be able to share about our friendship. As you'll read, he touched the lives of many; a selfless man who never lost the humour in life's situations...
…Imagine the scene: it’s Chicago some 25 years ago. An Aussie radio personality in his mid-fifties out of Coogee, Sydney has come from his adopted Brum with a delegation of politicians and businesses from the region (including this Senior Partner from Edge & Ellison in Edmund Street) to promote “Invest in Birmingham” to the Land of Uncle Sam – a linguistic nightmare in the making for sure!
Indeed, one gun-toting policeman thought Ed’s was a Brummie accent and mine was Australian! The mind (and ears) boggled at a ‘strine’-infected, ‘allo our kid” as we clambered into a cab en route to a local radio station.
For sure this was Ed Doolan doing what Ed Doolan did best; using every opportunity to help the West Midlands and its people however and wherever he could. We broadcast his show live back to the homes and workplaces and cars of our region at 0300 local time. And Ed hit upon an idea...over the years to come there followed interviews back to him live in Pebble Mill from Delhi and Bangalore, from Auckland and São Paulo...wherever British business was being promoted by a Brummie lad or a Black Country girl for the good of the region’s people.
Ed Doolan arrived in radio from ten years as a schoolteacher in Sydney, then Edinburgh, then London. It was in 1970 that he made the move, getting a broadcasting position with German World Service in Cologne. He arrived in this fair city in 1974 to help launch BRMB before, on 20th September 1982, Ed Doolan joined BBC Radio WM ...and the die was cast.
Ed was a force for good in a troubled world. He campaigned, indeed railed, against injustice. He picked up the cause of the individual and changed lives. We have buses running on Boxing Day because of Ed; I don’t have time to list the battles he fought and won against Birmingham City Council. The Establishment backing down, resulting in “one up for the little guy” in true Aussie fashion... and not a piece of sandpaper in sight!
Ed achieved the unusual honour of receiving Honorary Doctorates from all three of this city’s universities; he was on the Board of the city’s Children’s Hospital; and in 1998 he received well-deserved recognition from Her Majesty when he was installed as a Member of the British Empire for Services to Radio. Not bad for a suburban schoolteacher from a former British Colony on the other side of the world.
Ed would ask me on his show with great and much-appreciated (by me, if not the listener!) regularity. We’d discuss the issues of the moment, local, national or international and we carried this on even when I left Brum to take up the post of Director-General of the CBI. My Communications Director observed that Radio WM was the only local radio station that received preferential listings in the order of priority on occasions such as Budget Day (often to the detriment of Humphreys, Paxman & Co). I told her that Ed Doolan had given me time and opportunity when I wasn’t holding down a National position, so it was a delight to be able to say thank you in a practical way – oh, and Ed had told me he still had the negatives from that trip to Chicago!
But probably the most fun we had together on air was on Ed’s Christmas Day Show when I played Father Christmas to his young telephone guests who were prompted and guided by Mr Doolan. We were both brilliantly conned one year by one young, inconsolable and increasingly-frustrating young girl...who turned out to be that year’s Lord Mayor of Birmingham!
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