Ronald Knox’s Radio Revolution
On 16 January 1926, the BBC broke the news that a murderous mob was storming the capital. Broadcasting the Barricades wasn’t supposed to be a hoax, but it was an effective one.
It was a bitter winter: rivers were frozen, trains derailed, newspapers undelivered. But listeners to the BBC on the evening of Saturday 16 January 1926 were in for a bigger shock.
A talk on 18th-century literature was followed by a news bulletin. London, listeners heard, was under siege from a mob of the unemployed. The National Gallery was being sacked, the announcer said – before switching to the weather. Moments later, an update. A philanthropist, due to give a BBC talk, was being roasted alive in Trafalgar Square.
Events snowballed. Dance music from the Savoy was interrupted by a trench-mortar attack on Big Ben. The minister for traffic was hanged from a tramway post. More music from the Savoy was cut short by an explosion. The mob was advancing on Broadcasting House. Then the report
broke off.
The nation was stunned. At least the part of it that hadn’t heard the preliminary announcement of a skit by Ronald Knox, Catholic priest and sometime humorist. Had they not noticed that the mob’s fury was driven by Mr Popplebury, secretary of the National Movement for Abolishing Theatre Queues? Apparently not.
Newsrooms nationwide were flooded with calls. One London hotel alone received 200 telegrams asking if it was safe to visit. In the absence of newspapers, people pestered the police; in Dublin the following day milkmen shared the news on the doorstep.
The press had a field day. ‘Terror Caused in Village and Towns’, a Daily Express headline roared. ‘A Blunder by the BBC.’ The BBC released a transcript as clarification, complete with audio descriptions: ‘Wireless noises bizz, bang, bizz’, and so on.
As for Knox himself, he enjoyed the reaction at first, declaring himself ‘almost electrified to learn that Dundee had rung up to know how much of London was left’. But by the end of the week he pronounced himself tired of it. Humour, he said in a talk that Friday, was our ‘inestimable playmate … in the long watches of a hopeless night’, while satire was a beneficent poison. Whether he intended his hoax as play or poison he didn’t say.
