Next Monday is the hundredth anniversary of radio broadcasting from Wales. It was launched in Cardiff from a room above a music shop on Castle Street and it was the first broadcasting venture outside London. Astonishingly, people from Pontypridd, Rhymney, Newport and Gwent all managed to tune into radio 5WA's inaugural broadcast. Astonishing, because, unless you could afford the equivalent of two weeks' wages to buy a wireless, you had to rely on some polymath amateur who'd mastered adapting upside down telephone microphones to build a crystal wireless, or perhaps you could have attended a listening party, such as the one that was held in City Hall in Cardiff. 

The wireless orchestra, all seven of them, had a repertoire that included contemporary favourites like Ivor Novello's My Life Belongs to You and Dafydd y Garreg Wen. The latter, sung by Mostyn Thomas from Blaenau Gwent, fresh from his 1922 Eisteddfod win, was historic because it was the first time ever that the Welsh language had ever been broadcast.

Now, these amateurs—they were all amateurs initially—burnt through five station managers in the first six weeks on air. The pioneer uncle Fred lasted all of two days. Uncle Arthur, on the other hand, had staying power. Arthur Corbett-Smith was very keen to ensure that the BBC for Wales and the west country was going to have a much more relaxed tone than what was broadcast from London. Though he fully subscribed to the Reithian principles of 'educate, entertain and inform,' he wanted them to take place in the same programme, not in silos. So, talks were billed as chats; London had Children's Hour, but Wales had The Hour of the 'Kiddiewinks'. If you want to learn more about this, hear the concert that's going to be broadcast on Monday, which I attended last Sunday when it was recorded. Equally, you can listen to the BBC's The Ministry of Happiness, a sitcom that's being broadcast at the moment that was launched in memory of these pioneering broadcasters.