[BITList] Chief BBC announcer

[John Feltham]

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Hibberd,  (Andrew) Stuart  (1893-1983), radio broadcaster, was born at Village Canford, Dorset, on 5 September 1893, the youngest child of William Henry Hibberd, farmer and corn dealer of Village Canford, and his second wife, Mary Catherine Edney. He had one brother and seven half-brothers. From Weymouth College he won a science exhibition to St John's College, Cambridge. He had a fine tenor voice and became one of four choral scholars. He enlisted in 1914, after only a year and a half at Cambridge, and was awarded a wartime degree. He served in the Dorset regiment at Gallipoli, and later in Mesopotamia, then with the Punjabi regiment of the Indian army until it was disbanded in 1922. He married on 31 July 1923 Alice Mary (1892/3-1977), daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Gerard Chichester, of the North Staffordshire regiment. They had no children.

In November 1924 Hibberd joined the two-year-old British Broadcasting Company Ltd at Savoy Hill as an announcer. His cultivated voice and clear enunciation typified what came to be known between the wars as the BBC accent. The words he spoke were usually written by others, and announcers then were anonymous. Nevertheless he soon acquired a special position in the affection of listeners, and was generally known as the BBC's chief announcer, in recognition of his seniority and the respect he enjoyed, although during his twenty-six years of the same work he was never officially appointed to such a post.

Hibberd's diary recorded the eminent speakers and musicians invited to broadcast in the early days, and the national events in which he was involved. It formed the basis of his book 'This-is London ...' (1950) which gives a vivid picture of the BBC's first quarter-century. He noted that on 4 January 1926 the evening announcer first wore a dinner jacket as a courtesy to the people broadcasting, many of whom were similarly clad. Hibberd himself found evening dress unsatisfactory for reading the news; he wanted nothing tight round his neck, and the microphone sometimes transmitted the creak of his starched shirt-front.

After he had closed down the Savoy Hill studio at 10.30 p.m. Hibberd would walk up to the Savoy Hotel to announce, from back stage, the dance-band tunes played at the end of the broadcasting day. Microphones suspended from the ceiling, well above the band of Debroy Somers or Carroll Gibbons, would pick up the music and the swish of dancing feet, giving listeners at home a vicarious evening out. Deliberately there was no visible stand microphone which might tempt dancing couples to send greetings to friends, or-heaven forfend-to put over an advertisement. Meanwhile at nearby Charing Cross Station friendly railway staff would sometimes delay the departure of a train for Hibberd's Kent home when the much-loved familiar figure was seen racing to the platform, his white scarf trailing.

In May 1926 the general strike began, and with it the first broadcast of news before 6 p.m. Before this time an irksome restriction, imposed by the news agencies in the interest of the newspaper proprietors, had permitted the BBC access to agency news only on condition that it neither gathered news itself nor transmitted it before the evening papers were on sale. During the strike, when no newspapers appeared save the British Worker and the British Gazette, edited by Winston Churchill, this restriction was temporarily lifted; it took the Second World War to remove it altogether. On each day of the strike the BBC broadcast five news bulletins, mostly read by Hibberd. Their calm tone, markedly different from that of the British Gazette, helped to steady a divided nation. Broadcasting became responsibly established, and the way was paved for the private company to be transformed, at the end of that year, into a public corporation operating under royal charter, still with the initials BBC.

Apart from newsreading, Hibberd's main work in the 1920s was to present musical programmes. He was a kindly, courteous man whose best-remembered announcement was his rendering of the bulletin issued by the doctors of George V on the evening of 20 January 1936: 'The King's life is moving peacefully towards its close'. With all other programmes cancelled, Hibberd poignantly repeated the words each quarter-hour, following the chimes of Big Ben, until Sir John Reith announced the death of the monarch at midnight.

During the Second World War it was clear that Hibberd had passed his peak. A critic in The Listener noted in 1943, 'He frequently misses his footing as he delivers a bulletin'. However he continued to retain the affection of many listeners, especially when he began to present, in 1949, a Thursday afternoon programme, The Silver Lining, which brought comfort to people handicapped or housebound, and reflected his own strong Christian faith. Hibberd retired from the BBC to Budleigh Salterton in 1951, suffering from fatigue, but he continued to introduce The Silver Lining each week from a small self-operated studio in Exeter until the programme ended in 1964. He also gave much time to recording talking books for blind people.

Hibberd was appointed MBE in 1935. He died in St Cecilia Nursing Home, Budleigh Salterton, on 1 November 1983.

Leonard Miall 

Robert Brown 

Sources  The Times (2 Nov 1983) + The Times (7 Nov 1983) + Daily Telegraph (2 Nov 1983) + The Listener (29 July 1943) + S. Hibberd, 'This-is London ...' (1950) + private information (1990) + personal knowledge (1990) + CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1984) + DNB + m. cert.
Archives  FILM BFINA, documentary footage + BFINA, performance footage SOUND IWM SA, performance recordings
Likenesses  F. H. Man, photograph, 1943, Hult. Arch. [see illus.]
Wealth at death  £433,027: probate, 4 Jan 1984, CGPLA Eng. & Wales



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