Tom Browne (broadcaster)
| Tom Browne | |
|---|---|
| Born |
11 November 1945 Lymington, Hampshire, England |
| Occupation | Actor, DJ |
| Years active | 1965-2003 |
Tom Browne (born 11 November 1945) is a British broadcaster and actor, born in Lymington, Hampshire, and educated at King's College School, Wimbledon.
As an actor, Browne graduated from RADA. He has appeared in many films, including 'Prudence and the Pill', 'Decline and Fall' and the Vampire Lovers. He has also performed throughout the UK in repertory theatres and in plays for both the BBC and ITV. He appeared very briefly in the second series (set in 1945, the first series being set in 1928) of The Flaxton Boys playing the part of Captain Ewing in the episode called, "Is your journey really necessary?" shown on television on 25 March 1973.
He began his radio broadcasting career in Denmark in 1965. He married a Danish girl and moved to Chiswick in west London and in 1972 was unexpectedly chosen by BBC producer Johnny Beerling to succeed Alan Freeman as presenter of the BBC Radio 1 Sunday afternoon chart show. He presented this show from 1 October 1972 to 26 March 1978 - initially it was a three-hour show from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. each Sunday called "Solid Gold Sixty", the first two hours being devoted to new release singles on that week's Radio One playlist. "Solid Gold Sixty" ran from October 1972 to March 1974.
The first record that Browne played on his first show was "Honky Cat" by Elton John. The first two hours were broadcast only on Radio 1's medium wave channel of the time, 247 metres (1215 kHz) although occasionally local radio stations broadcasting on FM in mono such as BBC Radio London (94.9 MHz) would carry the transmission from 4 - 6pm. The previous Sunday chart show, the long running Pick of the Pops with Alan Freeman, aired between 5-7pm and was broadcast not just on 247m but Radio 2's FM and LW frequencies for the entire show, but the axing of Pick of the Pops, brought a change to the allocation of FM and LW airtime, with Radio 1 losing one of the precious hours of valuable FM and LW for its chart show, as they reverted to Radio 2. This was bad news for the numerous parts of the country where reception of Radio 1 on 247m was poor, especially during the winter months. From the outset on 1 October 1972, Solid Gold 60's final hour was broadcast on FM and LW as well as on Radio 1 (247m). Twenty records were crammed into 60 minutes, plus a verbal countdown. Whilst many recordings of the many Top 20's aired between 6-7 survive today, there seem to be few recordings of the first two hours of Solid Gold 60 (4-6pm) which have survived.
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