Allo Darlin', its The Annual Junior Choice Special!

Hi everyone

New Year's Day will soon be here, which means it's time for our annual Junior Choice show. Since 2012, each year we've remembered the days of this radio show which is still held with the warmest and deepest affection today.

Junior Choice was born out of a BBC programme "Children's Favourites" presented by Derek McCulloch, where song requests for children were played. When BBC Radio 1 and 2 were created in 1967, Leslie Crowther presented the show, followed by Ed Stewart in 1968 and Tony Blackburn at the start of 1980. During Ed and Tony's reign, the show leaned more towards playing pop records of the day rather than children's favourites. When Ed presented the show, it reached a peak of 17 million listeners.

Ed Stewart's tenure on the show is the one we remember fondly. Indeed until 2015, each Christmas day, Ed would present a special edition of the show which was always popular, receiving hundreds of Emails and text messages, asking for the songs we all remembered.

Sadly, we lost Ed Stewart at the start of 2016, days after he presented his last Junior Choice show. So we're very glad to keep bringing you the programme again on Team-FM.

So what will you hear?

Songs which were the most requested. To compile this list, we've relied on our memories of listening to the programme from the early 70's, our personal archive of recorded shows from that period, and Ed's Radio 2 shows from 2007 through to 2015. This year, we’ve managed to obtain the playlist of Junior Choice from Ed’s first show in February 1968, and we have a clip from the first ever Junior Choice show on 30 September 1967.

Songs which may have been forgotten. These were songs played on the programme which we have needed to transfer from LP records as they are not available digitally. We have some lovely gems this time around!

Memories of the show itself. We have lots of them, but you'll also hear tape requests, the full story of the well-known "Allo Darlin'" catch-phrase and "Happy Birthday" song, and of course, Ed reading requests stuck down on the back of a sealed-down envelope! There are also trips to hospitals and a special 70’s guest star who regularly visited the programme. Find out who it is and hear the reaction from the screaming girls outside!

We hope you'll join us for an extra special Junior Choice show this Monday at 7 PM UK time, 2 PM Eastern, right after Brian D presents his review of the hits from 2017!

Hear the choicest entertainment on Team-FM! Radio as it used to be.

Brian and Lulu Hartgen