Press Releases Great 40th birthday present for Radio Leicester at the Frank Gillard Awards 2007

Category: Radio; Radio Leicester
Date: 24.11.2007
Printable version

BBC Director-General Mark Thompson honoured the winners of the Frank Gillard Awards 2007 at an awards ceremony in the impressive surroundings of Birmingham Town Hall.

The Gillard Awards were the centrepiece of a celebration of 40 years of BBC Local Radio attended, on Saturday 24 November, by listeners, staff and freelances, past and present, from all the BBC's 40 stations.

The awards were presented by well-known alumni of BBC Local Radio, including Jane Garvey, Simon Mayo, Jon Sopel, Kate Adie, Sophie Raworth, Michael Buerk, Mary Rhodes, Sonia Deol, Garry Richardson and by the Chairman of the BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons.

BBC Radio Leicester celebrated its 40 years on air (the anniversary was 8 November) by winning two Gillards. Ben Jackson took Gold for the Breakfast Programme category and Herdle White, whose black music programmes and reporting have been a constant on the station for 39 years, won one of the six Outstanding Contribution to BBC Local Radio awards.

The coveted Station of the Year award for 2007 went to BBC Radio Leeds while Ronnie Barbour of BBC Three Counties Radio won Gold in the most strongly contested category – Programme Presenter – coming first out of 28 entries.

It was a good year for the bigger metropolitan stations as BBC London 94.9's coverage of the London marathon gained the Outside Broadcast Gillard, BBC Radio Manchester came tops in the Station Sound category, and BBC Radio Merseyside's prison phone-in took the Interactivity Award for Roger Phillips.

Amongst the smaller stations, BBC Hereford and Worcester has been making a habit of winning Gillards and this year was no exception with the station winning the Original Journalism category for its coverage of the plight of migrant workers.

The 40 years of BBC Local Radio were marked by six Outstanding Contribution Awards presented by Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC, to:

• Radio Leicester's Herdle White.
  
  
• Alison Hartley, a founder member of the BBC Essex team whose battle with a brain tumour has not stopped her contributing to the station.
  
  
• John Walch, a much appreciated BBC Radio Sheffield engineer who has been with the station since 1973 and is now the second longest-serving member of BBC staff.
  
  
• Ray French, the doyen of Rugby League commentators for Radio Merseyside and BBC Sport.
  
  
• John Jefferson, the former manager of BBC Radio York and Leeds whose career began on BBC Radio Durham as a reporter and continues to this day with BBC Local Radio as a consultant and trainer.
  
  
• Owen Bentley, organiser of the Gillard Awards, who started his career as a producer at BBC Radio Stoke-on-Trent in 1967 – after a few weeks at Radio Sheffield while Stoke's opening was delayed by foot-and-mouth – and who has since been manager at Radio Leicester, and Head of Local and Network Radio in the Midlands.

JW