Paul Hayes
To round off July, I thought I'd catch up with a couple of bits of writing I unexpectedly ended up doing for BBC News Online this month.The first actually resulted, indirectly, from the Mr Pastry piece I did for Secret Norfolk and News Online in June. A man called Philip Yull heard the Pastry...
Paul Hayes
This is a slightly curious one. An article which wasn’t my idea and which it would almost certainly never have occurred to me to write, but which has ended up becoming one of the most-read pieces of work I have ever done. A few weeks ago my colleague Emma, who among many other things produces the...
Paul Hayes
At my secondary school, which I attended all the way through from year seven to sixth form, at the beginning of every school year you’d be issued with a school diary. I expect many if not most other schools of the time had something similar – an A5-sized, spiral-bound thing probably about half an...
Paul Hayes
A promotional poster for my Flight into Danger documentary, created for me by Andrew-Mark ThompsonI can’t say for certain when I first heard of Flight into Danger. I am reasonably sure, though, that it must have been in the book The Doctors: 30 Years of Time Travel by Adrian Rigelsford, which I...
Paul Hayes
After I had done my piece on Our Friends in the North for the History of the BBC website last month, John who runs that section of the BBC site asked me about any other ideas I might have for further pieces for this year. He sent me the list of BBC anniversaries for various services and programmes...
Paul Hayes
I don’t remember how much of Our Friends in the North I saw first time around. I am sure that it wasn’t all of it – I am pretty certain I didn’t see the whole thing until it was repeated the following year. But I do know that I saw at least some of it on that first run in early 1996; and I know...
Paul Hayes
Two weeks ago, I wrote a piece for the BBC website all about something the Corporation had shown on television on one particular Saturday afternoon in November 1950. This was on the 75th anniversary of that broadcast. Today, I have written a piece for the BBC website all about something the...
Paul Hayes
If you’re anything like me and hang about in the same corners of social media and follow the same sorts of people there – basically, I suppose, if you’re interested in the history of British broadcasting in some way – then there is a certain topic which has been coming up a great deal lately, and...
Paul Hayes
One of the nice things about working for the BBC is that quite often, if you come across something and think “oh, that’s interesting,” you don’t have to just leave it there and get on with your day. You can actually help bring it to a wider audience who might also perhaps find it interesting,...
Paul Hayes
As I usually mention on this blog whenever it happens, every so often I get the chance to write a feature for the website at work, usually from a radio piece which I have put together. More often than not this will be to do with a story I have had my eye on for some time and have known about for a...
Paul Hayes
This has been a week for getting the chance to do things I thought I might never again be given the opportunity to do. One of them was rather sudden – in the week I was asked if I would cover as a presenter, for yesterday afternoon’s Saturday sport show, due to an injury to the scheduled presenter...
Paul Hayes
For reasons which aren’t worth going into, ever since the great change around in BBC Local Radio in the autumn of 2023, when I had to move into a different role, I am now officially employed by the BBC as a ‘Journalist’. This is not a title with which I feel particularly comfortable – I am not...