10:26am Tuesday 7th April 2009
By Richard Garfield
WORD of mouth is certainly a good ay to spread the news – and that is what the Basingstoke Talking News team have been doing for the past 37 years.
Initially called The Basingstoke Cassette Service for the Blind, every week volunteer readers select stories from The Gazette and record them on to tape. Copies are then sent by post to blind and partially-sighted people.
Barbara Woolford and her late husband, Ray, were instrumental in starting this much-needed and valued service. Ray, who worked in the goods office at Basingstoke railway station and who, for many years, was secretary of Basingstoke Football Club, lost his sight due to diabetes during his 40s.
“Until then, I had no idea what blindness meant,” Barbara said, recalling the profound change this had on their lives.
“In those days, there wasn’t a local radio station and there weren’t local news bulletins on television, so blind people wouldn’t get any news about Basingstoke unless someone read them The Gazette, and so they often felt very cut off.”
Barbara said that, back in June 1972, Ray sat on the first committee of the Basingstoke Cassette Service for the Blind, which was set up after news filtered through that a similar service was proving to be a success in Wales.
It met at Basingstoke Sports Centre, where the centre’s then director Bill Leadbeater was the first chairman. On the committee was a blind lady called Mrs Andrews, a couple of social workers, plus a representative from the Lions Club and then assistant editor of The Gazette, Doug Crossley.
Doug and chief reporter Barrie Congdon made a pilot programme which received positive feedback, and they regularly got involved by putting together a variety of news, views and comment under the title of Radio Gazette.
“Doug was excellent,” recalled Barbara. “He read for us for a long time and even used to read Arthur Attwood’s long history articles, which we used to send out separately to those who wanted them.”
Barbara said the service got off to a shaky start mainly because of lack of funds. But thanks to generous support from organisations such as the local Lions and Rotary clubs, and support from Basingstoke-based businesses such as Eaton’s and Smith Industries, the service survived and thrived.
Members worked hard too, raising funds by holding bazaars and jumble sales.
Back in the early days, the service was on a much smaller scale, using very basic equipment. Barbara said: “Ray used to be responsible for copying tapes, which he would do on a little picnic table in our sitting room. We used to have two tape recorders which we linked up, copying a master tape to another – we’d have to do the tapes one by one.
“They were an hour long and we used to set the timer on our cooker so that every half hour we’d turn the tape over. It took five hours just to do five tapes.”
Barbara’s early involvement was by helping her husband with tasks such as addressing envelopes and ensuring the tapes were sent out to those who wanted them. Always eager to receive feedback from listeners, even in matters which may seem inconsequential, Barbara recalled one lady’s comment which reminds her of the intimacy the service provides.
“On the tape we never say ‘hello everybody.’ We just say ‘hello,’ because one of our listeners said: ‘I sit there and listen to your tape and imagine you are sitting in the room with me’.
“If we were to say hello everybody, it takes that away. None of us had thought about it until that lady told us that.”
A highlight for the service was its 25th anniversary celebration, which was sponsored by The Gazette in 1997, held at the then Ringway Hotel (now the Apollo Hotel).
During the event, Barbara, who was chairman, received a long-service award from then borough mayor, Roger Morris, while Ruth Merry, who was the first person to listen to the service, received a special certificate to mark her 25 years as a listener. By now, the service was known as Basingstoke Talking News, and the guest of honour at the anniversary event was the BBC’s Peter White.
The broadcaster, who is blind, has been the BBC’s disability affairs correspondent since 1995, and currently presents Radio 4’s You and Yours and In Touch.
Gazette Newspapers editor Mark Jones, who was then deputy editor, was also at the 25th anniversary event – and when the Basingstoke Talking News service faced losing its existing base at the start of this year, Barbara got in touch with him and asked if he could help find them somewhere to move to.
Mr Jones had the prefect location as there was space in the Gazette Newspapers’ offices in Pelton Road. So now, the Basingstoke Talking News team are closer than ever to the paper they read all about.
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