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00:00It's 7 o'clock on Monday the 28th of March. The news headlines this morning.
00:21Another Monday morning and I've got nothing to look forward to except Mr Humphrey's on the radio.
00:27And another threatening letter from the bank. What I'd give for one little pleasant surprise.
00:38Does no one want to write to me? A love letter from afar perhaps? Something? Anything?
00:49Ah, hello. Ah, what have we here?
00:58The Roland Hill Retired Men's Club. Touting for members, no doubt.
01:03Hang on. They want me to give a talk on the picture postcard. Why me? What do I know about the picture postcard?
01:11Damn. Hold on Nigel. There's dinner and a fee. Ah, so what is there not to learn?
01:20Our Google postcards and this questing vogue will uncover the definitive story of the postcard.
01:27I've got just a week to get this ready, so I need a plan of campaign. I need to find out when the picture postcard started, when it was popular.
01:37I need to find out why people sent postcards and talk about the different types of card.
01:43People, portraits, saucy postcards, places. I'll find out if people collect postcards. And if so, how much a good postcard goes for.
01:55And most of all, I need some good stories on the way.
02:00But basically, it's pictures on the front, writing on the back.
02:04This should be a piece de cake.
02:07So what should we call this masterpiece?
02:11Yep. Kisses on the bottom. Oh no, that's far too fruity.
02:17A bit of poetic alliteration should do it, so...
02:22The picture postcard world of Nigel Wormsley.
02:30As Mary Poppins once famously said, let's begin at the beginning. Or something like that.
02:41Guy Atkins is a collector of early picture postcards.
02:46Nice house.
02:49Guy, tell me, when did the picture postcard really take off?
02:53The golden age of postcards was between 1902 and 1914.
02:571902 is particularly important because that was the first year when divided backs were issued.
03:06Up until that point, you'd either have an official postcard which had the address on the front and then a message on the back.
03:15Or you'd had simply a picture on the front and then an address on the back.
03:211902, the postcard was divided such that you could have a picture on the front, a message on the left-hand side, and then the address on the right.
03:30And that suddenly became a really attractive form of communication for people.
03:36And it took off from, so 1902 there were 350 million cards sent. By 1906 there were double that, so 700 million cards being sent each year.
03:47The postal system was a key factor in why the cards were so useful to communicate through.
03:55So rather than today where you've just got one post arriving each day, they had up to seven posts arriving.
04:03And that meant that you could send a postcard in the morning and it would arrive in the evening.
04:08So you could actually arrange to meet up with someone that evening via postcard, much as you do with a text message or an email today.
04:16The Golden Age is so interesting because people were using them for everyday life.
04:23There's such fantastic insights into how life was in that period.
04:31Some of your cards are pretty incomprehensible.
04:35Yeah, this one is mostly written in code in some kind of Masonic cipher.
04:40And that's quite common because, after all, this is a form of communication that is public.
04:48People are sending quite intimate messages sometimes, and they know that the card might be seen by the postman, by their relatives before they arrive,
04:58the people in the sorting office.
05:00And so the Edwardians did adapt to this and used all sorts of codes.
05:04Kai, did the Edwardians get up to any other tricks?
05:14Well, this next card is one that really plays with the form of postcards.
05:21This is a card from Dorothy to her grandma.
05:25And the front is a picture of the Albert Memorial in Kensington.
05:31But Dorothy's written it on the tube.
05:34She says, I hope you will excuse this scribble as I'm in the tube.
05:38It's a good example of a tilted stamp.
05:42This is something that the Edwardians did to show affection between the sender and the recipient.
05:48So, whilst we can't be sure that Dorothy wrote the card on the tube, we can be pretty sure that she loved her grandma.
05:58Stone the crows. I think I might start using that code.
06:02But where shall I put my stamps to the bank manager?
06:07Top right. Have you forgotten me?
06:11Yeah, if only.
06:12This next card is possibly my favourite.
06:20It's actually the first card that I bought specifically for the message.
06:26It's sent in 1904, December 21st, so just before Christmas.
06:32And it reads, come home at once.
06:33All is forgiven.
06:35We have not had any news from father.
06:37There is heaps of M dash dash dash Y waiting for you to spend.
06:43Surely after that, you could not stay away.
06:48I don't think I've come across a card with more intrigue than this one.
06:53It's, I mean, it's impossible.
06:56It's impossible to know what was going on.
06:59Was there money?
07:01Is it a joke?
07:02What's the relationship between Miss Emerson and Mr. Bollum, who the card has been sent care of?
07:10And yeah, sent just before Christmas.
07:13Is it a desperate attempt to get the family back for Christmas Day?
07:16And then on the front, I think we get the sense that this is quite a solemn message.
07:26It's an image of the cross on Front Street in Rothbury.
07:30There are bits of information here and there on the census, but it doesn't really give you any kind of idea as to what happened before or after this message.
07:40So did Miss Emerson go home? No idea.
07:47Do the messages affect the value of the cards?
07:50The value of the card, of course, is what's on the front.
07:54If it's an early photograph, if it's a photograph of something rare or a popular subject, then those cards will have more value than others.
08:03But the ordinary messages, which I'm most interested in, yeah, they carry no value apart from for myself.
08:09Dear Ruby, will you please meet me on the corner of Hall Beck Row on Sunday morning and I'll give you a suck of my toffee apple.
08:20Dear Nell, what the deuce does Mrs. K know about my doings, whether I have what you say or not?
08:26I never said the things accused of, about Hall. It is entirely faked up. And as to the whiskey, in the extreme. I am coming home tomorrow and may call.
08:40Especially if there's any-
08:41I'm surprised at not having a letter from you. Don't you think you ought to write to me? I do.
08:46Will you please keep your feet out of my house in my absence and return the scarf pin which belongs to my husband?
08:56A postman's life must have been far more fun in those days.
09:02I want to know more.
09:05First of all, where did the Edwardians buy their cards?
09:08And they would go to shops. There were special postcard shops in those days.
09:14And they were stocked a massive range of cards, often thousands of cards, and people would go through and pick out what they wanted.
09:24But then they'd also send them to their friends. Their friends would say, oh, I collect this subject or that subject.
09:30And so when they sent them a card, they had to send one on that subject in order to please their friend.
09:35And that's when the craze really took off.
09:44This is a favourite because it shows the old bathing hut that used to be in vogue in the Edwardian days.
09:51So we just take the lever down and we reveal the lady in her Edwardian bathing costume.
09:58You just poke your finger through the hole to give the nose of the lady for a comic effect.
10:06This postcard is what is called a hold to light, which means that the windows and various other features have been picked out so that when it's held up with the light behind it, you can see these windows as if they were all lit up and illuminated at night.
10:25And these cards, remember, were still sold at the time for about a penny each and the postage in Britain was just a halfpenny.
10:34So it encouraged people to be able to collect postcards and it became an absolute craze, especially as the first years of the decade came up 1905, six, seven, eight.
10:49Postcard publishers came up all over the place in Britain.
10:52And as a result, people would send postcards to each other purely here is a postcard for your album and they would be able to collect them and they'd have their albums like this one here.
11:05And they'd be able to put these collections together. So on the next page here, we have what's called a composite set of three postcards, which, as you can see, shows adductioned and person sending the three cards would send each one a separate week.
11:23Maybe they'd send the middle one the first week, the end one the second week, and then they'd send the first one the last week so that the recipient could put all three of them together to make a composite.
11:41Those cards of Tony's were gorgeous. Now I need to enlist the help of a favourite old cove of mine, Ronnie Barker, who I recall used to refer to himself as a deltiologist.
11:53First of all, we are very honoured today by the presence of a distinguished deltiologist, Ronnie Barker.
12:08You nearly got it wrong again, John.
12:10I remembered your name, though. How long have you been collecting postcards now?
12:16I'm afraid I've been collecting about 20 years now. I was just thinking back, it's about 57 I started.
12:22How did you start?
12:24Well, I was with an actor called Peter Bull and he collected cards, he sent cards to other people.
12:29And I went out one day and saw a lot of cards, a penny each in those days.
12:33Yeah. And I bought about a hundred and I looked through them, I thought, I must give these to Peter tomorrow.
12:37And then I looked through them again and I thought, well, perhaps I'll give him half of them tomorrow.
12:40And that's how I started. I picked the best half.
12:43The cards that you've got there in your hand, they're all sort of trains. Now, a lot of people specialise in just one subject, don't they?
12:50Yes. These are very sought after. They're London North Western Railway Company, you see.
12:56Crew Junction looking north.
12:58Probably very similar. Yes, looking south, it probably looks exactly the same.
13:02When did Bull's guards actually start?
13:05Well, they started actually in 1870 in Germany, but people didn't really collect them very much, I think.
13:11I mean, they became very popular, they became a craze in about 1903.
13:15Yeah.
13:16From 1903, about 1908 was the height, was the absolute height, you know, when everyone sent cards to everyone else.
13:21Is he throwing her in or pulling her out?
13:23I don't know.
13:24I don't think he's made up his mind, but look at his face.
13:29What else have we got? Oh, yes, I've got her. Yes.
13:32People were bigger in those days, I think, didn't you? Even the small ones.
13:35And what have we got? Oh, that's, yes. Oh, yes.
13:38That looks German, that looks German.
13:40Oh, look at that. That's wonderful, isn't it?
13:42She gets a smack.
13:43That's wonderful, isn't it? Yes. Look at that.
13:46End of day one, and I'm warming to my theme.
13:49Before I turn in, I think I'll see if the postcard is alive and well.
13:55I'll write to some of my all-time heroes and see if I can get a postcard back.
14:00I can pass them round on the night of the talk.
14:14What next?
14:15Tom Phillips, the artist, seems to have written the definitive book on postcards.
14:21He'd be a good person to ask why people collect cards.
14:27Postcard collecting is democratic.
14:29You can enter at any level you like and stay at that level if you like.
14:33But most people are tempted upwards all the time.
14:36You know, they get every postcard of Piccadilly Circus except one.
14:40And then they're after that.
14:42And all the dealers know they're after that.
14:44So if they get this very special postcard of Piccadilly Circus in the war
14:48with the Eros covered up and no traffic around,
14:52then that's worth a lot of money.
14:54So if you have a postcard that was posted on the Titanic,
14:58or not on the Titanic, but with the Titanic on it,
15:01posted by one person that actually was just on it
15:05and sent postcards right from the beginning of the trip which was possible
15:08on a little boat that went back to the shore.
15:11I mean, there you've got something with the writing on it saying,
15:14I'm just on the Titanic looking forward to a wonderful time.
15:17And there you've got something that's worth a thousand, two thousand, three thousand.
15:21So people, you know, they crave rarity.
15:25I'm almost the opposite.
15:26I crave the commonplace, the thing that's the most ordinary,
15:30because that's what interests me.
15:32What was really interesting, and sometimes not properly discussed,
15:51is that postcards, when you could get them made of yourself,
15:56go into a studio and you pay a shilling and you get twelve postcards of yourself,
16:00right in the very early, very early years of the century,
16:03was often the first representation of yourself that you had had.
16:08And in fact it was a democratisation of portraiture,
16:11because the portrait before then was only allowed to the gentry,
16:16or the upper gentry, and they had pictures of themselves,
16:20and you had no pictures of your family in the past if you were an ordinary bloke.
16:25But now, of course, you existed on a postcard,
16:28and you had a portrait of yourself.
16:31So this was an amazing thing.
16:40I bought this one for about 20p.
16:44It's not in very good condition.
16:46What interests me here is it's got everything that I require from a postcard.
16:51It's got a narrative.
16:54Why are these people there?
16:56It's two people in Aberdeen in 1911,
17:00obviously off the fishing fleet in some way,
17:02and they've gone into a postcard studio.
17:04They're friends.
17:05What do they say?
17:06What happened before this?
17:07What made them go in?
17:09What was their relationship?
17:10What happened to them afterwards?
17:12Everything is contained in the moment,
17:14and I just think that's incredibly intriguing.
17:16And what happened to the guy afterwards?
17:18The black guy?
17:19He's obviously a West African.
17:21Well, there was a record of somebody taking up farming
17:24not far from Aberdeen in 1915,
17:27who might have retired from the sea.
17:29So the surroundings of that,
17:31the emotional surroundings,
17:32the social surroundings,
17:34the historic surroundings,
17:35the racial surroundings,
17:37they're all,
17:38it vibrates with all that for me.
17:40So that's why I find certain postcards incredibly rich.
17:45I never thought of that.
17:47The picture postcard is the first democratization of portraiture.
17:51Great card and a great quote.
17:54I'll soon sound like an expert.
17:59Now, I must look up a picture postcard magazine.
18:14Ah, here's the one.
18:23Good afternoon, Reflections, Brian speaking.
18:25Is that Reflections?
18:26It is indeed.
18:27Do you publish the postcard magazine?
18:29We do, yes.
18:35Many of the postcards that were published in the 1900 to 18 period,
18:40the Golden Age,
18:41showed photographs,
18:43showed scenes of towns or scenes of events
18:47that just weren't replicated anywhere else in photos.
18:50And often they're the only source of a particular event
18:54or a particular day in time.
18:56They are massively important.
18:58And I think they're often underrated.
19:05Lots of Edwardian politicians were real personalities.
19:09Joseph Chamberlain particularly.
19:11And one of the elections of the Edwardian period in 1906
19:15was covered massively on postcards.
19:19Many candidates had election cards.
19:21There were cards detailing the results.
19:23There were photographic cards showing the result in a particular town being announced.
19:29Postcards did reflect politics just as they reflected all other areas of social and cultural life.
19:36If there was, for example, a train crash in a particular location,
19:46then a local photographer would be on hand to publish a postcard of the event.
19:52And people would send these to their friends and relatives to show them what was actually happening in their particular area.
19:59And this happened very fast as well.
20:02I have a postcard of a train crash at Croydon on the 10th of July, 1909.
20:08This event was on a postcard postmarked the same day as the accident, which is amazingly fast.
20:13So this means the crash happened in the morning.
20:15A photographer took a picture.
20:17It was printed as a postcard in the afternoon.
20:19And somebody mailed it in the evening.
20:23It's got a Croydon postmark on the same day.
20:26And so all this was happening amazingly quickly.
20:29So postcard photographers were almost a 24-hour news provider.
20:34So what killed off the golden age of postcards?
20:59It was a variety of reasons.
21:02At the end of the First World War, the Royal Mail doubled the price of postage.
21:08So postcards that previously cost a halfpenny to send suddenly cost a penny.
21:12And then very quickly afterwards, in 1921, they went up to three halfpens.
21:17So the cost had virtually trebled in three years.
21:20Also, at the end of the First World War, there wasn't as much money around.
21:26There wasn't also the appetite that people had to go on holidays.
21:29All sorts of things had happened.
21:31Families had broken up.
21:33Husbands had been killed.
21:34Fathers had been killed.
21:36There just wasn't the same sort of cultural phenomenon around as there had been,
21:41pre-1914, the same atmosphere.
21:43And also, more people were having telephones installed in the 1920s.
21:47And therefore, the whole function of postcards declined.
21:53And postcards survived as either view cards of touristy places or as comic cards.
22:04End of a beautiful day.
22:07I think the Roland Hill mob are in for a treat.
22:10Up to seven deliveries a day.
22:12They'd never have guessed that instant messaging started a century ago.
22:19And that Croydon train crash story, you'd be amazed if that happened today.
22:23Ah, nice drop of vino plonko.
22:28Tomorrow, I'll look for a couple of big names to add weight to my thesis.
22:33BIRDS
22:36BIRDS
22:38Now, I love the way a postcard photograph fixes a place, a locality in print.
22:57It's a chronicle of costumes, events, adverts, people, through times of peace and times of war.
23:04I can time travel to any location and see it develop through the decades.
23:09This is becoming quite addictive.
23:13And then we come to Wolferton Station.
23:18That old buffer John Betjeman knew a thing or two about visiting tourist destinations.
23:23There are no posters on Wolferton Station.
23:27And you'll notice how the signal box is made to fit in with the style of the cottage to which it's attached.
23:34On arrival at a new place, Betjeman wrote,
23:36I take a walk to the biggest stationers and consult one of the revolving stands of views.
23:42There, I generally find postcards taken by a local photographer.
23:46Brilliant!
23:47If you need an instant shortcut to the best views of any town, just go and buy all the local postcards.
23:54Of course, this station is much more spick and span than any other.
23:58It's won 30 prizes in the eastern region for doing so.
24:02I'm not surprised.
24:03And it's not just the outside.
24:04I mean, look here at the public waiting room and booking office.
24:10It looks to me, from the carving and the style of it generally, as though it was done in the time of King Edward VII.
24:19Thank you, John.
24:24By the time the Second World War had ended, and with the telephone becoming more common,
24:28I suppose the picture postcard just morphed into the modern holiday postcard.
24:33With a new generation starting to travel, the cliches of,
24:38this is where we're staying and wish you were here, became common currency.
24:46So, I really need to speak to a tame teledon in order to examine the nature of this discourse,
24:52to inject a more intellectual tone to my upcoming after dinner lecture.
25:03PHONE RINGS
25:06Hello?
25:07Is that Professor John Sutherland?
25:09None of them.
25:10I understand you're always up for doing something on television or radio.
25:14Yes, and if you've got any donkeys, I'll talk the hind legs off them.
25:17OK, I'll be straight round.
25:22John, I'm doing a talk on postcards.
25:25Tell me, do they have their own special language?
25:28You'd write things which were, you know, didn't contain any kind of information content at all.
25:35They were just what linguists call fatic communion.
25:38That's to say, they just established a relationship of community with the person you were,
25:44just as in a railway carriage you might say, nice weather.
25:47That is not information for the person sitting opposite to you.
25:50It's a way of just, as it were, sort of creating a kind of short-term relationship.
25:53You know, wish you were here, having a lovely time, weather, good, bad, indifferent, so on.
25:59The kinds of things where you'd really be saying, I'm not lost.
26:03I may be off your immediate radar, but I shall be back.
26:06I don't think that happens anymore.
26:08I mean, I think the world has shrunk.
26:10So, in fact, you just, you might make a phone call or you might actually send an email.
26:14But in those days, it was a big deal to travel.
26:17And part of that big deal package was, you know, sending back your picture postcards.
26:22Dear Win and Louis, thanks for your lovely card.
26:25As you will see, we are on holiday and enjoying every minute of it
26:28after an enjoyable ride in the coach.
26:31Love, Ivy and Bill.
26:33Dear Mother, we're having a lovely haul.
26:35The weather is really nice for a change.
26:37Hope you're feeling better and that you have got the pot off.
26:40All our love, Mary and Frank.
26:42Dear Roy and Dorothy, having a good time.
26:45Supped some stuff last night.
26:47Dancing tonight.
26:49Twin beds here.
26:50Nice to relax away from it all.
26:52Love, Frank and Mary.
26:54One of the interesting aspects of postcards was they were, in a very small but interesting
27:01way, taboo breaking.
27:02That's to say, the early 20th century, there was repression on things which were considered
27:10saucy and naughty or, to go one step further, obscene.
27:15Postcards largely escaped that because, you know, they were rather fugitive things.
27:19They would just be on a stand if you went to a news agent.
27:22It was very hard to actually oppress them in the same way that cinema was oppressed or radio.
27:29And so there was a certain kind of area of freedom.
27:32Now, that went together with certain other things because, when you sent postcards, it
27:35was generally because you were away from home when morals were relaxed, of course.
27:39So, to some extent, you know, there was this feeling of kind of a moral sort of breakout
27:46associated with some kinds of postcards, of course, famously with the one that Orwell
27:51wrote about it at great length, the Donald McGill postcard.
27:54Donald McGill is the king of the Dublon Tondra.
27:59He knew how to pull it off.
28:02So, I must pack my suitcase and travel back to the land that time forgot.
28:07This is the bit I'm looking forward to.
28:10The saucy postcard.
28:12Some McGill cards are guaranteed to perk up my talk.
28:17Mr. McGill sees every angle.
28:32He's seeing the female angle.
28:34He's seeing the child's angle.
28:36And he's just literally doing a raspberry to everybody.
28:40Donald McGill was perhaps the most renowned comic seaside postcard artist of all time.
28:53McGill really invented the whole genre.
28:56I don't think it's too strong an exaggeration to say.
28:59He was in right at the beginning of the postcard boom.
29:04And he, in fact, was the first full-time postcard artist.
29:09He invented that job.
29:11He had a huge advert.
29:13He worked for almost 60 years.
29:16And produced over 12,000 postcards.
29:23Most postcards ran into trouble as a result of local busybodies or Puritans getting awfully worked up and complaining.
29:45And when they complained, the police had to take action.
29:48And then cards were confiscated from retailers.
29:54And the retailers found themselves in the magistrates' courts.
29:57And sometimes even in the crime courts.
30:10The Isle of Man and Blackpool, they set up very studious censoring committees
30:16where they would have all postcard artists sending their designs before the season started.
30:23And those cards would be stamped approved or disapproved.
30:27So they would know that those cards were acceptable or not acceptable in their town.
30:32The Isle of Man and Blackpool
30:42McGill was prosecuted and appeared in court at Lincoln Quarter Sessions in 1954.
30:4721 of his cards were prosecuted.
30:51And he was advised by his defense counsel to plead guilty on four counts, probably, to achieve a more favorable outcome.
31:02Bernard, what effect did the prosecutions have on the postcard trade?
31:06Well, it's often felt that the prosecutions did damage the postcard industry.
31:12Opinion differs.
31:14And there is an argument which says that the prosecutions actually gave the industry a boost.
31:27Now for my celebrity surprise.
31:30The irrepressible Michael Wedder.
31:33Michael, do you think the McGill humor is quintessentially British?
31:37Well, Donald McGill was archetypally British.
31:39He shows the British bravado during the war.
31:44He shows wonderful pictures of children.
31:47His children pictures were very beautiful.
31:50And he shows the British as what they still are and people pretend they are not.
31:56Which is a cheerfully vulgar race.
31:59They are quite earthy.
32:00And McGill summed up that British spirit of fun and laughter.
32:06He was a great social commentator of the times.
32:09But, Mr Winner, Michael.
32:11George Orwell said that the McGill cards had ever-present obscenity and a lowness of mental atmosphere.
32:18George Orwell was an idiot.
32:19Quite simply.
32:20He was an idiot.
32:21I mean, these were very fine drawings.
32:23But people decried the Impressionists.
32:26There was a riot when the Impressionists first had an exhibition.
32:29George Orwell was an art critic.
32:32He had his qualities somewhere else.
32:34I'm not sure where in the toilet, maybe.
32:36But, you know, what does he know about us?
32:39Impersonate of him.
32:41He can have a view, of course.
32:42He's a human being.
32:43But it's a rubbish view.
32:45Lot 159.
32:47First of the McGill postcards.
32:5050 pounds for them.
32:51But in those days, I did go to the auction.
32:54I think quite a few came up in Sotheby's Belgravia, which no longer exists.
32:58And I stood there among the Motley.
33:00280.
33:01300.
33:02And I bought two or three.
33:04And then I just kept buying them endlessly.
33:06And I ended up with about 180 of them.
33:10Sold at 450, then.
33:12Yours.
33:14But if the McGill cards were so lovely, why did you sell them?
33:19Well, I sold mine because I have about 700 pictures up in my house
33:25that I had no wall space for them.
33:27There's a limit of space.
33:28In my toilets, I've got seven, eight, nine important pictures.
33:31I couldn't build another house to put them up.
33:34So I flogged them.
33:37Well, this is coming along very nicely for my talk.
33:40I've got history, messages, a prof with fatic communion,
33:45and saucy postcards with Michael Winner.
33:47Must work in a calm-down, dear joke.
33:50Now, I need the post-war stuff and some people who do curious things with postcards.
33:56Time for a quick trip to Phil, the demon barber.
34:08He has his own collection of cards.
34:10Every one of them, a barber's shop.
34:14Hi, Phil.
34:15Hello, how are you?
34:16Yeah, yes, yes, good.
34:18Now, you collect cards of barber shops, don't you?
34:20Yes, I do.
34:21People send them from all over the world.
34:23And that one's from India.
34:26There's a few here, actually, from India.
34:32Over here, I think that's in Puerto Rico.
34:36That's France.
34:38And this one is suggesting I should get a bit more modern.
34:43It says, isn't it about time you bought your shop into the 20th century?
34:48Well, you know, I suppose he's right, really.
34:51What do you think?
34:52Well, it's hardly the cutting edge.
34:55Goodbye.
34:56Actually, I think this trade bit can be quite colourful and charming.
35:02Whether it's beer, holidays, or a bank that not only could you withdraw from, you can tow it away.
35:09Caravans.
35:10Caravans.
35:11Holidays.
35:12Didn't Brian have something to say on that?
35:18Postcards really came into their own again in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
35:21I think it was fuelled by enthusiasm of people in Britain for package holidays abroad
35:26and also for holidaying at the Butlins, various Butlins holiday camps and other camps around this country.
35:34Butlins themselves published thousands and thousands of different designs.
35:39And so you get an absolute mountain of postcards available now that people sent during that period,
35:46detailing their experiences at Butlins holiday camps.
35:49These have become incredibly collectible again now.
35:52I need to find out more on the post-war holiday era.
35:58I need an expert.
35:59Ah, there he is.
36:01The Butlins bloke.
36:03Martin Parr, why are you fascinated by Butlins postcards?
36:16When I was at college, I used to go and work at Butlins holiday camp Filey, in fact.
36:21And it was there that I discovered the postcards of John Hynde.
36:24And I was really taken with these brightly coloured, brash postcards
36:28and started to collect them and got really fascinated by the whole history of Hynde.
36:32And they discovered that these were done a few years earlier,
36:34when Butlins had commissioned John Hynde to completely update their postcard stock.
36:39And I started to collect these.
36:42They were a fantastic social document of this time in Butlins.
36:46So, for me, they hit all the nails on the head.
36:49Their social history, they're great to look at.
36:52And they tell us about the clothes and the interiors that people were exploring and using
36:57in the late 60s, early 70s.
37:01Well, John Hynde decided to employ German photographers,
37:03because technically they were a lot better.
37:05They were all shot on 5x4, so big cameras.
37:08They would then collaborate with the Redcoats and arrange people,
37:11literally, within the photograph.
37:12So they're all entirely staged.
37:14And they're sort of super-staged, if you like.
37:16And that's how these postcards would come together.
37:18So they spend a lot of time maybe shooting one or two per day,
37:22fixing them up, getting everything right, wham-bam, shooting them.
37:26And then the saturations and the separations for these postcards
37:30were made in Italy to give this very bright, intense colour,
37:33which is all part of the secret as to why John Hynde was such a successful postcard manufacturer.
37:38I've chosen here a couple to show you, which are from Filey,
37:42the very places I worked at.
37:44Here's the French bar.
37:45Look at the fantastic interior.
37:47Look at the way all these postcards have been arranged,
37:49the people being set up.
37:51Fantastic colours.
37:52Look at the clothes that people are wearing.
37:54And then finally from Butlins is the Beachcomber bar.
37:57I worked for two summers at Butlins.
37:59First as a black and white walkie, we were called.
38:01And then the second year I was promoted to a colour walkie.
38:04And the place where the colour walkies were allowed to go to was the Beachcomber bar,
38:09which was the height of sophistication at Butlins Filey.
38:13And look at the colours as well. Aren't they absolutely fantastic?
38:16Now, Martin is also into motorway cards and 60s architecture.
38:26But if push came to shove, I wonder which he'd clump for.
38:29Martin, what's your all-time favourite? Is it a Butlins card?
38:33Difficult to actually pin down one card that would be my absolute favourite,
38:38but I guess my collection of motorways is particularly cherished.
38:42And within that, say for example, let me show you this one here
38:46of the Captain's Table in Leicester Forest East.
38:48And this has taken a few years after it opened.
38:51And this is in the time when the actual motorway service station was very glamorous.
38:55So people would literally come in and book themselves in for a meal
38:59on a motorway service station.
39:01It was absolutely the bee's knees for a night out.
39:04And here, look at this other postcard of the M1.
39:07What's fantastic about it is how deserted it was.
39:10Then, the M1 was a really heroic thing.
39:13I remember being taken onto the M1 as a treat when I was a teenager.
39:22So the postcard is a very good indicator of how our social trends and attitudes have changed.
39:28The period in particular that these cards come from
39:31was the time in the 60s and 70s when Britain was building itself up again
39:36after the Second World War.
39:38And many of the things that they show, such as motorways, shopping centres,
39:42all look now rather drab and dreary.
39:44So although technically we think of them now as a bit boring,
39:48of course at the time they're really the height of the new achievement,
39:51of the utopia being built in Britain after the Second World War.
39:54What is the appeal in boring postcards?
40:00I mean, look at this, a power station control panel.
40:03Hmm, is this what they call postmodern?
40:05Hang on though, there may be something in this.
40:08On one of my old parkies, I think there's a bit of Andrew Sachs with the ultimate in boring postcards.
40:14Earlier in this series I was talking to Andrew Sachs about his life and times,
40:18about playing Manuel in faulty towers and all that,
40:21when he mentioned his hobby of collecting boring postcards.
40:24Well, that started it. From all parts of Britain they came to us by the sackful.
40:28Well, Andrew Sachs is regarded as a private habit, proved to be a national pastime.
40:33Anyway, tonight is the big night for all the boring postcard collectors,
40:36because we're going to announce the most boring postcards of all time,
40:39and celebrate with a suitably boring prize.
40:42To do the honours, please welcome the man who started it all,
40:44Mr Andrew Sachs.
40:45There's a card you might have seen before.
40:59It's this one showing a kilted gentleman looking at a large hole.
41:02Now, the person who sent it suspected he was doing something other than looking,
41:07and he christened it Piddler of the Glen.
41:12Well, let's move on now, Andrew, to the three that we've picked out.
41:16In reverse order, as somebody else is always fond of saying.
41:19Yes.
41:20So, the third, then.
41:21All right, well, these three, I must say, lowered...
41:24They lowered...
41:26They lowered our spirits considerably.
41:29Set the blood coagulating in our veins.
41:32This one here is a classic example.
41:34It's caravans, nissen huts, prefabs are always good value.
41:38And it would have actually come possibly second or even first,
41:42except for the inscription on the back, which says,
41:45scenes of interest and beauty from Lynham and Wiltshire.
41:48I like this story.
41:49Yes.
41:50That was number three.
41:51The second one?
41:52Ah.
41:53This, in fact, is an American entry.
41:55Yes, from Judith Oakley.
41:57It's quite nice.
41:58It's again in colour, but it's OK.
42:00It's a brick wall with some holes in it.
42:02It's actually the O'Brien Hall Amherst Campus, it says.
42:06Yes.
42:07Well, that excites me.
42:08Yes.
42:09The thing that stops it again from winning is, I think,
42:12a little too much excitement about the trees at the bottom.
42:14Normally, trees are pruned at the top.
42:17These are pruned at the bottom.
42:19OK.
42:20Well, let's now look then at the winner, the absolute outcry.
42:25There we go.
42:26Yes.
42:27This is totally underwhelming.
42:28It's wonderful.
42:29Underwhelming.
42:30And we all...
42:32Now, for the benefit, I think, of those viewers
42:35who have perhaps summoned up enough energy to switch off
42:37or go into a coma, may I describe it a little bit?
42:41It's almost uniformly grey or off-sepia.
42:45It is totally without interest.
42:48Yes, fine.
42:49So that's the ultimate...
42:50Ah.
42:53Boring postcards.
42:55Hmm.
42:56I'm really well stocked with stories, but I'm sure I'm missing something.
43:12The postcard of art and the postcard as art.
43:16What was it Professor John said?
43:21They're very beautiful, a lot of them, and they were artworks.
43:25This continues to the present day.
43:27I mean, if you look, for instance, at the kind of postcards,
43:31you know, which people like me actually buy...
43:34I've got one in my pocket, actually.
43:36which is a very lovely picture by a very good photographer, George Roger.
43:43Now, I wouldn't necessarily, even though I admire his work,
43:47I wouldn't necessarily buy a whole book,
43:50a very expensive coffee table book of Roger's work,
43:53but I'm very, very glad.
43:54And also, if I send it, it signals to the person I'm sending it to that we have shared high cultural values.
44:01It's a kind of snobbery, but I think, you know, a very innocent kind of snobbery,
44:05the kind of postcards you choose to fine you.
44:09Go to a museum, for instance, and people are buying postcards.
44:13They're not necessarily sort of, you know, writing wish you were here
44:16and sending them to their nearest and dearest like we used to.
44:19But, no, people still like to have them.
44:21They still like to have them around.
44:22They're nice objects, they're nice things.
44:24And also, they're very cheap, so you leave the museum thinking you've bought something,
44:27you've got a relic, and it only costs you, what, 90 pence or something like that.
44:35Gilbert and George have done some amazing things with postcards,
44:40namely stick them in patterns.
44:44Oh, get on with it.
44:57Why did you choose to live as artists?
45:00It was not our choice. We are driven to be artists.
45:04What's your favourite colour?
45:07We have no taste. We are artists.
45:10These Gilbert and George patterns of postcards from phone boxes and tourist shops
45:15are supposed to represent the male urethra.
45:19Is this meant to be ironic, or are they just taking the piss?
45:23I mean, is that art or artifice?
45:26Come on, that doesn't look a bit like my urethra.
45:29Actually, I don't know what it looks like, because I don't think I've ever looked at it.
45:33OK, if you can't beat them, glue them.
45:35There. I'll call that Donald McGill's Blackpool Tower.
45:45Must be worth a bob or two.
45:46The postcard is a form loved by many artists.
45:54And I hear someone is doing something special with male art.
45:59That's art using the post.
46:01To find out more, I'm going to Chelsea College of Art.
46:09My name is Nigel Bence, and I work at Chelsea College of Art.
46:14And I'm involved with something called male art.
46:17My explorations into male art made me go in all sorts of different directions
46:21until I discovered that, for me, the postcard is an exquisite form.
46:30It wasn't until some years later that I came across somebody called Reginald Bray,
46:36the father of male art.
46:40Bray also produced some remarkable postcards.
46:45In their concepts, they were just tremendous.
46:48And there's a couple that I'm going to show you now.
46:56It does what it says on the card, really.
46:59It's to any resident of London.
47:01And this postcard he sent to any resident in London.
47:06Sadly, it didn't get sent.
47:08It's got a rubber stamp here of insufficiently addressed.
47:11But a tremendous idea.
47:13He was successful in sending postcards that were more specific.
47:20He'd find a picture postcard in the shop, the old man of Hawaii, Orkney Islands,
47:25and would address it to a resident nearest this rock.
47:30He then came across a format for which I guess he was most well-known,
47:33which was his autograph card, postcard, in which he gathered the addresses of whoever was in the news
47:45or whoever needed their autograph taking.
47:47And he would send this card with a bit of blurb at the top there, saying who he is and who he was.
47:53He sent tens of thousands of these off.
47:57And on the back, the recipient would sign their autograph and then post it back to him.
48:03And he amassed a huge collection.
48:05It seems nothing is beyond Nigel Bent's imagination in his testing of the resourcefulness of the postal services.
48:15But deep down, Nigel is also a determined postcard collector.
48:19I'm collecting some large letter postcards at the moment.
48:24I'm trying to amass all 50 of the American states.
48:29The most important postcard for any collector, and every collector, is the one that you haven't got.
48:35It doesn't matter at all about any of the ones you have.
48:39As soon as you have them, that's done. It's on with the next.
48:42I do not have North Carolina yet. I will soon. It's in the post.
48:47I do not have Alaska. It's too expensive at the moment.
48:54It's £14-15 and one person in America issues them every so often.
48:59And Hawaii, which doesn't exist.
49:04So I intend to design it myself and then distribute it to needy collectors who need Hawaii.
49:17And who are my co-respondents?
49:28Ah! Jimmy McGovern. Hero of Hillsborough and the street.
49:32An amusing tale of how his postman reads all his cards and hopes to visit all the places on them.
49:39I sense a play coming on.
49:42Hmm.
49:44Yes.
49:45Parsons! Heaven!
49:47Ha!
49:48I love postcards and keep those sent to me by friends.
49:51Ah! I enjoy sending postcards.
49:53Bzzzzz! Repetition. Sorry, Nicholas.
49:56Oh! My old mate, Bill Oddie.
50:00Ha, ha, ha, ha.
50:02Er, ooh. Gracious. Hmm. Not of the feathered variety.
50:07Hmm.
50:09These cards can be my homage to Reginald Bray, the autographed man.
50:15After all, it is mail art and they are all mail.
50:20That reminds me.
50:26I'm sure there's an old postcard album somewhere up here in the High Andes.
50:32Hello, Little Ted.
50:38Ah.
50:40Beano.
50:42Beano.
50:45Bingo!
50:47Hmm.
50:49Quite an eclectic selection.
50:51Comic stuff.
50:53Rare views.
50:55Ah! Butlins!
50:56Must be worth a few quid.
50:58Next stop, the UK's largest postcard collector's fair.
51:04The organiser of the postcard fair is Barry Rollinson.
51:09If ever a man knows his clientele, it's Barry.
51:12Let's hope we don't...
51:14Come on. Welcome back to...
51:16What a queue!
51:19Mainly men.
51:21With the occasional sighting of the fairer sex, presumably.
51:25Oh, I've got a waistcoat like that.
51:28Ah! There's one.
51:32This is amazing.
51:42Postcards, postcards everywhere.
51:45And not even time to blink.
51:48Everything. There's another one.
51:49Hmm.
51:50On every stand, boxes and boxes of pictures and messages.
51:55Cheap cards, expensive cards.
51:58Barry, everyone here seems a postcard addict.
52:02They have a history and a memory.
52:05That's what we all collect.
52:07Memories that give us pleasure to remember these things.
52:10What's the one postcard you yearn for?
52:13It's so easy for me to answer.
52:15My grandfather was mayor of Rotherham in 1939.
52:19And a picture postcard of my grandfather in his mayoral robes would be an absolute delight for me.
52:26I would cherish it.
52:27Wow!
52:33If you could have a cornucopia of cards, this would be it.
52:44Nearly 150 dealers.
52:46This is the ideal place to cash in on my album.
52:50They'll bite my arm off.
52:51Yep, she'd go for my album.
52:56Hi, would you look at my cards? I think they're rather special.
53:02Oh, right, okay.
53:03Some are a bit loose.
53:09From our point of view, these cards are a bit, are rather on the modern side.
53:13We tend to sell older cards than this.
53:19They change the size of the cards, and the bigger sized cards are the more modern ones,
53:24which we don't have any of at all.
53:27Or if we do, they're in our cheap boxes.
53:29Cheap boxes?
53:31I wouldn't actually be interested in buying that, really.
53:34Oh, dear.
53:35Well, thanks for having a look.
53:36Yes.
53:37Oh!
53:43Oh!
53:44There's Brian.
53:45Hi, Brian.
53:46I must buy something.
53:47I'll follow young Martin's lead and go for the early motorway stuff.
53:50Shouldn't cost too much.
53:52Have you got any motorway cards?
53:53Ah, thank you.
53:55£2 each.
53:56Brilliant.
53:57Great stuff.
54:02I'll give Barry a waft of my album.
54:04He looks a generous type.
54:05These are modern.
54:06I'm sorry, there's no value.
54:09So I'm not going to retire on these, Barry?
54:11No.
54:12No, sir.
54:13But if you could, I'd already be a millionaire.
54:19At least Brian from Reflections is bound to give me a good price.
54:23Sure.
54:24Right.
54:25OK.
54:28Anything there catching your eye?
54:29To be honest, to be worth any real money, postcards have got to be pre-1920.
54:36We class these as modern cards, and so the chances are there won't be anything of terrific value.
54:42I don't think you'd get much more than a tenner for that.
54:45I know it's disappointing.
54:46A tenner?
54:47There's only three pints in old money.
54:50But, on the upside, I now think my quest is all but over.
54:56Time for a quick recap of all my favourite quotes from my journey.
55:02For, as my mate Picasso said, good artists borrow, great artists steal.
55:08I think there is a magic about sending a postcard today.
55:12In fact, I'd go as far to say that it's, in some ways, more of an impact, or that it has, than postcards then,
55:20because it is so unusual to get a handwritten note from a friend or a member of your family.
55:25Oh, that's good. Thanks, Guy.
55:27Next up, Martin Parr.
55:28In this day and age, the postcard's role is almost gone, because everyone now has got a camera phone,
55:35you can send a picture, you can write a message on it, you can do it instantly,
55:39you don't have to rely on someone else to take the picture, you can take it yourself.
55:43So, everything has its time and place, and the postcard had a great century, and long may it live.
55:49But it won't, because it's dying in front of us.
55:52Cluster photographer would have been negative.
55:54Everything in the world is represented somehow in a postcard.
55:57In fact, you could put it the other way around, and say that everything in the world exists in order to end up as a postcard.
56:03And you'll find nothing, you'll find no point of reference which doesn't echo itself in a postcard,
56:09isn't illuminated by it, any aspect of human life, and the things we see and do.
56:14What more can you ask of an object?
56:19Tom, I'm one over. As James Bond once nearly wrote, postcards are forever.
56:24Excelente. So I'll start my talk in 1902, and the first split back card.
56:33Then cover some of Tony's gorgeous ones, then talk about the messages on the back as tantalising glimpses of Edwardian life.
56:40Hit them with the amazing number of deliveries.
56:42So the card was a phone call, email, text or Twitter, all rolled into one.
56:48Rounding up nicely with the holiday postcards of the post-war period.
56:53Butlins and all that.
56:55Finally, the holy grail for the collector.
56:59An authentic card sent off the Titanic at her last port of call in Ireland.
57:03This one went for six and a half thousand. Jack, the writer, didn't survive.
57:09I'll create a hush around the room.
57:12I could even pass around my own album.
57:15Somebody might buy it as a memento.
57:17But how to start?
57:20It just has to be a Donald McGill joke to win them over.
57:24Tonight's the night.
57:31They're gonna love this.
57:44Gentlemen and ladies, my talk is on the picture postcard.
57:49So, I must start with my favourite Donald McGill saucy caption.
57:55Ladies store assistant is saying to a male customer.
57:58Gentlemen's requisites? Yes, sir.
58:00Go straight through ladies underwear.
58:02Yes, the picture postcard, as we know it, started in 1902 when the post office first allowed the split back.
58:12We're off to the last night of the proms here on BBC4 tomorrow night at half past seven.
58:27And coming up next this evening, it's the final part of The Killing.
58:30The Killing.
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