The Postcard
A postally unused postcard that was published by Puffin. On the divided back of the card they inform us:
'There's nuffin like a Puffin!'
They also tell us:
'Cornish Adventure, 1941.
Cover illustration adapted from
photograph by the author.'
Derek McCulloch
Derek Ivor Breashur McCulloch OBE was born in Plymouth, Devon on the 18th. November 1897. He was a BBC Radio producer and presenter.
He became known as "Uncle Mac" on Children's Hour and Children's Favourites. He was the head of children's broadcasting for the BBC from 1933 until 1951.
-- Derek McCulloch - The Early Years
McCulloch was the youngest child of William Lionel Breashur McCulloch and his wife, Bertha Russell. The Great War interrupted his education at Croydon High School, and he enlisted in 1915 in the Public Schools Battalion of the 16th. Middlesex Regiment at the age of 17.
He was wounded at the Battle of the Somme in July 1916 within 20 yards of the German front line. He was then shot by an enemy stretcher party and lost his right eye. During three days and nights in a shell hole, he incurred further injuries from shrapnel.
He crawled back to his own lines, and continued to serve until 1921 with the infantry, where he was commissioned into the Green Howards, and into the Royal Flying Corps as an equipment officer, including a spell on HMS Valiant.
In the early 1920's Derek travelled in Europe and South America. He was working for Central Argentine Railway when his health deteriorated, and he returned to England where a bullet was extracted from his lung.
-- Derek McCulloch's Career
McCulloch joined the BBC in 1926 as an announcer. He was the commentator on the first radio broadcast of the FA Cup Final in 1927.
His health worsened while working for the Belfast station in 1929, but a job was found for him in Children's Hour. By 1931 he had become second-in-command of the programme, and in 1933 he took charge of it.
The programme included talks, plays, music and drama serials. He was appointed head of children's broadcasting in 1933, serving in that position until 1951.
Derek regarded the department as a microcosm of all broadcasting, stating:
"Nothing but the best is good enough
for children ... our wish is to stimulate
their imaginations, direct their reading,
encourage their various interests, widen
their outlook and inculcate the Christian
virtues of love of God and their neighbours."
One of the favourite segments of Children's Hour was Sydney George Hulme Beaman's Toytown playlets, in which McCulloch played the central role of Larry the Lamb.
By 1939, the audience for Children's Hour had reached four million. Derek's signoff line, "Goodnight children, everywhere," became more poignant after the evacuation of many children from their homes at the start of the Second World War.
Derek resigned from the BBC in 1950 due to ill health; he became the children's editor for the News Chronicle. However, he continued to chair Nature Parliament, which ran roughly every month on Children's Hour.
In 1954, McCulloch returned to the BBC to present a music request programme for children, Children's Favourites, on Saturday mornings.
By 1964, the audience for the daily Children's Hour had decreased to 24,000, in favour of television. Despite questions in Parliament, the programme was dropped. The following year, Derek ceased to present the Saturday show.
After his retirement, it was hosted by Leslie Crowther, and it became Junior Choice, hosted by Ed Stewart, when the BBC Light Programme was replaced by Radio 1 and Radio 2 in 1967.
-- Derek McCulloch's Written Work
McCulloch wrote the book Every Child's Pilgrim's Progress in 1956, a simplified version of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, which in McCulloch's words was one of the "greatest stories ever written".
He also wrote two children's stories, Cornish Adventure (1941) and Cornish Mystery (1950), and gave his name to a series of Ladybird children's books in the 1950's.
-- The Personal Life and Death of Derek McCulloch
Derek married Eileen Hilda Barry, a BBC secretary, on the 13th. June 1931. They had two daughters.
In 1938 he lost a leg as the result of a road accident, and thereafter remained in constant pain.
McCulloch was the subject of the BBC television programme This Is Your Life in February 1964.
He was awarded an OBE in 1964, and died at St. Francis Hospital, Haywards Heath on the 1st. June 1967, aged 69. Derek was cremated at Bramley, Surrey.
