Radio 4 - Spiegl 'Skipping Theme'

There's something magical about opening up a radio station in the morning. A fresh start. A new day.

Remember the days of unlocking the doors, un-setting the alarm, and turning on the lights, back in the days when stations went to bed for the night? Then we’d switch off the 1k tone, route the studio to air, and press the first button to kick off the first audio. A drum beat cuts through the dead air and a new day is born. Almost like starting a new life. This is sounding silly now.

Most respectable stations opened up with a long, fluffy station jingle. A temptation even Radio 4 failed to resist for a couple of generations.

In 1973, Fritz Spiegl (pictured), an Austrian composer who’d written a few pieces for the Beeb, was invited to write a theme for Radio 4. This is it, based on a children's skipping rhyme, maybe because Radio 4 was, well, six years old. Some listeners didn’t like it, which is most unlike Radio 4 listeners.

The skipping tune lasted five years and then, as Radio 4 became Radio 4 UK, Fritz was asked for another sheaf of manuscript paper. That’s when the UK Theme was born. And that’s another story altogether.