MARGARET HUBBLE was a stalwart of the airwaves for some 30 years, first as chief announcer for the BBC African Service and later on such programmes as Forces Favourites, the wartime record-request show, and Family Favourites, its immensely popular peacetime successor. She was also a friendly velvet-voiced presence on Woman’s Hour, Children’s Hour and children’s television.
She trained the presenter Jean Metcalfe before her debut. “Maggie showed me what to do,” Metcalfe recalled later. “ Turn the big black knob to open the microphone; talk sense with one half of your brain, while the other is reading the clock; never pause more than 15 seconds or the enemy will jam your wavelength; play Lillibullero before every news, and remember in an emergency ‘a good announcer has at hand a stirring military band’ .”
She was completely unflappable, as broadcasters need to be. “She is not in the least dismayed when two telephones ring simultaneously and a visitor calls to see her at the same time,” The Radio Times observed in 1945. Faced with an unplanned silence just before Big Ben one day, she said: “Now come on Benjamin, don’t be late!”
Margaret Elinor Hubble was born in Kent in 1914, the youngest of five children, and went to boarding school in Sussex. She thought about becoming a dancer, but in 1938 accepted a position with the advertising agency Erwin Wasey in the commercial radio department.
When war broke out she joined the Women’s Land Army, but she returned and became overseas presentation assistant at the BBC in 1941, and chief announcer for the African Service the following year. Her duties included writing and timing scripts and introducing the programmes. She fitted well the warm-but-formal “RP” standard of the day.
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During the war Hubble was the first female announcer of the Allied Expeditionary Forces Programme, which replaced the General Forces Programme and which, with its expanded remit, eliminated the need for separate services from the American and Canadian networks. After its dissolution in 1945 she became the first announcer on the Light Programme. Not long afterwards she resigned her staff position to marry Albert Cuthbert, but she returned three years later, after his early death.
At intervals from 1945 to 1952 she presented Family Favourites (also known as Two-Way Family Favourites), which was aired at 1pm on Sundays. “The time in Britain is 12 noon; in Germany it’s one o’clock,” it began, “but home and away it’s time for Two-Way Family Favourites!”. Record requests from members of the Armed Forces to their families, and vice versa, followed, among them the Bumper Bundle — the most popular of the week. It maintained its popularity despite the fact that, in its desire to raise the tone of the programme, the BBC discouraged ad libbing, the livelier jazz numbers and references to girlfriends and fiancées.
Now a big name in her field, Hubble was invited to be Roy Plomley’s guest on Desert Island Discs in 1945. Among her selection of music were Fingal’s Cave and a song by Bing Crosby, whom she had met and found to be as courteous and charming as he looked. She also chose La Boutique fantasque, saying that she could do without broadcasting, or the cinema, but not ballet.
From 1951 she joined Metcalfe and Marjorie Anderson to present Woman’s Hour, but having married Philip Horne the previous year she resigned from the BBC in 1952. She contined to work freelance, however, returning to Woman’s Hour in 1957, mainly in the Reading Your Letters spot. She also presented Milady’s Music Box, You and the Night and the Music, Rise and Shine and Homespun. She was often to be seen at the breakfast table surrounded by records.
She was a contributor to Children’s Hour on the Home Service and introduced a series called Saturday Excursion, a TV programme about travel to interesting places, which ran from 1953 to 1957. She never forgot the time, announcing live to the camera, a large python slithered towards her. It had escaped from its basket in the studio and made its way to the cameraman, who, mistaking it for a cable, kicked it out of the way.
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Thereafter her family became her focus, but in 1959 she was a regular narrator with Douglas Henderson on Children’s Newsreel, and presented Call from Home for the British Forces Broadcasting Service for several years from 1969. She also did shifts in the duty room well into her seventies, answering questions from the public and entertaining programme guests.
Hubble had a kindly, positive disposition, a great sense of humour and abundant energy. After retirement she and her husband ran a pub in Hertfordshire. She enjoyed drawing, painting, and tending her large allotment, and went to as many Kent cricket matches as she could. Her second husband predeceased her. She is survived by three sons and a daughter.
Margaret Hubble, radio broadcaster, was born on December 29, 1914. She died on August 30, 2006, aged 91.