How it all started, how it went and my take as the audio drama’s director
I’ve lived in Chelmsford for nearly twenty years and so of course I’m aware of its radio heritage – not least because as a radio producer myself, its international firsts in wireless broadcasting have always fascinated me.
“Here we go, blame the patriarchy again…”
When broadcaster, writer and comedian Paul Kerensa brought his one man show The First Broadcast: The Battle for the Beeb in 1922 to Chelmsford’s Christ Church on New London Road in November 2022, I figured this would be a good opportunity to be further informed, educated and entertained.
Fresh from its origins in Marconi’s Writtle Hut alongside a much more light-hearted and commercial style of radio, the serious British Broadcasting Company (it didn’t become a corporation until 1927) established itself in London in late 1922. Naturally, this meant several broadcasting firsts. Many of them by women, including one whose credit as radio’s first dramatist hadn’t just been forgotten over time, but attributed to someone else. She was credited in the BBC’s Director of Programmes, Arthur Burrows’ own book about the birth of the BBC and in the occasional academic text. But time and sexism – among other things – gradually eroded her contribution.
And so it was broadly believed that the first radio drama was A Comedy of Danger, written by Richard Hughes and broadcast live in January 1924. It was conveniently set in a coal mine, so no need to describe any scenery with dialogue and only minimal sound effects were required.
“Every word of this story is true…”
Phyllis Twigg, on the other hand, wrote a play called The Truth About Father Christmas thirteen months earlier, broadcast on Christmas Eve 1922. It featured music, songs, ground-breaking sound effects and a cast of characters including children, and Arthur Burrows – yes, the Director of Programmes himself – as Father Christmas. Surely this met the criteria for a radio play? Apparently not, because it was later rather sniffily derided as “only a children’s play”.
Despite there being no dictionary anywhere defining a radio drama as being solely for adults, Hughes’ credit became the one that endured. One advantage being his script survived – Phyllis’s did not – and so live performances could be repeated and later, when it became technically possible, recorded.
I managed to have a quick chat with Paul after his talk, did the usual following on the socials and things went quiet for a while… Until the BBC’s Audio Drama Awards in March 2023, when actor Tamsin Greig, and one of the evening’s presenters, declared a “shoutout to Phyllis Twigg.” A subsequent email, from one of my B7 Media colleagues forwarded a BBC news story which included Phyllis’s “rediscovery”, arrived in my inbox, annoted with the words “This would make a great audio drama”! Paul Kerensa was attached to the story as one of the several people credited with bringing her back into the spotlight.
Six months later in August 2023, Paul released the first British Broadcasting Century podcast episode about Phyllis. I’d been keeping up with her story, but it was Paul’s verbal request in the episode that “if you’re a radio producer interested in turining Phyllis Twigg’s story into a radio drama get in touch” reminded me that with a commissioning round coming up, it was the kick up the backside I needed to try and make it happen. Fortunately my B7 Media partner in crime Andrew Mark Sewell agreed.
Why me?
Paul was back in Chelmsford with his Evening of Very Old Radio in October 2023 and from there, a plan was formed. As a producer with an independent production company regularly pitching radio drama stories, how could I go about pitching this one? The BBC, while not immune to self-reflection, might balk at such an insular story. But it was a BBC story, and there was still some responsibility to help correct the error. This also wasn’t the first time I’d picked up the flame with a view to highlighting women’s forgotten firsts.
In January 2023, I’d taken Richard Kurti’s adaption of a memoir written by Mary Oliver, founder of Britain’s first dating agency, and staged it at Chelmsford Theatre Workshop’s Old Court Theatre with a brilliant team of local actors and crew. While the TV and film adaptations languished in development, I was proud to have got Marriage Bureau off the ground, albeit on a smaller scale. But still, a statement had been made, a flag planted and Mary Oliver and her business partner’s names were back in the historical record and public consciousness, to a degree at least. But at least there was never a miscrediting of that first.
It took a further six months before we submitted our first 300 word proposal for The Truth About Phyllis Twigg (stuffing a lot of information and a big story into so few words was helped significantly by Andrew, who – being a slight step back from the story – was able to help condense it into a tight overview.) Two months later we learned we’d learn we’d made it through the first hoop. Next was the detailed proposal, and in the further two months we had to pull that together, both Paul and I had been juggling care for elderly relatives. I’d been spending time with my parents and my father in particular, who ironically, spent most of his evenings watching back-to-back episodes of Not Going Out, on which Paul was a writer. (My Dad has mild Alzheimer’s so would happily watch the same episodes multiple times on iPlayer!) I hadn’t seen it much before, so I could at least tell Paul I’d been enjoying his work! On one rare occasion when Dad watched an episode of Miranda for a change, it was the episode where Paul makes a cameo as a customer in Miranda’s shop – just as I was balancing my laptop on my knees going through his latest draft of the Twigg outline. I tried to explain to my Dad the who, what and why of that moment, but as a former accountant, it was like him trying to explain his football spreadsheets to me.
A green light
Three months after we submitted our detailed proposal, in November 2024, we learned it had resulted in a commission. The Truth About Phyllis Twigg was happening – and scheduled for broadcast on Radio 4 on Christmas Eve 2025 and the 103rd anniversary of the radio play’s original performance. It stars Tamsin Greig as Phyllis, Rory Kinnear as Arthur Burrows, Amit Shah, Aja Dodd, Will Harrison Wallace, Haydn Watts and in an appropriate twist, Phyllis’s real-life great, great granddaughter Flora Saner as her own great grandmother, Anne Twigg.
It wouldn’t have happened without huge support and involvement from Phyllis’s descendants. Her grandson and her great granddaughter, Peter Grimaldi and Carina Saner had been working with Paul for some time on Phyllis’s story – and continue to do so. And with Carina’s daughter Flora playing Phyllis’s 8 year old daughter Anne Twigg, the family had much greater involvement with the drama’s production than most estates and rights holders. It also seems Phyllis may have been exerting some cosmic influence; Carina and I learned only after the broadcast that we were both at the same wedding in July 2022, three months before my first ever conversation with Paul. She was a friend of the bride and I of the groom!
Production
Recording took place over two days at The Soundhouse, in West Acton. The first in July 2025 with Tamsin Greig, Rory Kinnear, Will Harrison Wallace and Flora, the second in September with Amit Shah, Aja Dodd and Haydn Watts. Rory gamely munched his way through several meringues in the name of historical accuracy and Flora emerged as a star in her professional acting debut. Aja too was making her Radio 4 debut – As a native Teessider like me, I’d been keen to hire a northern actress to offset the 1920s BBC RP that was prevalent at the time and with Amit, make a clear distinction between the eras. It was her performance in Mulgrave Audio’s Fellfoul that led me to seek her out and ask if she was interested. It was a bonus that she also works as a freelance BBC Tees journalist, so there was a natural affinity with Jenny the podcast producer.
Usually recording days would be back to back, or at least in the same week, but in this instance a combination of studio and actor availability lead to a six week gap. The break wasn’t an issue however, as the July recording exclusively covered the 1922 scenes and September covered 2025. Neither era overlapped, except in the final edit.
The next stage
Eloise Whitmore‘s thoroughly researched sound design gave the drama its realism and underlying character, with three different techniques used to convey the microphone sounds of the times and styles of broadcasting featured. Neil Brand‘s music reflected his capacious knowledge of the 1920’s performed with a signature twinkle, and singer/songwriter Hannah Brine provided an original song, Dear Santa which charmingly echoed Phyllis’s short story, The Truth About Father Christmas: “if we close our eyes, we might just realise that we can still believe in you.” Dear Santa isn’t available as a single yet, but maybe one day… In the meantime, you can find Hannah’s album Blue Sky Now on Spotify.
So that’s how we helped Phyllis Twigg regain her long overdue credit as radio’s first dramatist – the writer of the UK’s first radio drama, The Truth About Father Christmas. A small victory in the grand scheme of things, and further addition to the work already carried out by the likes of Prof Tim Crook, and Drs Tina Pepler and Kate Murphy and many others. But even the tiniest corrections to a record can mean a lot to a family, history – and equality. That said, a number of websites still erroneously credit Hughes as the first dramatist and I suspect the derision at a specifically written-for-radio children’s play, rather than one for adults, still lingers.
Paul Kerensa is at the Chelmsford Theatre Studio with his Evening of Very Old Radio on 16th April 2026, (and around the country on many other dates) with Phyllis’s story (plus others!) and probably a few tales of his own from the production – thanks in part to a serendipitous connection forged in the city where wireless began.
