Alfred Bradley Radio Plays

The Alfred Bradley Bursary Award was established in 1992, in memory of a kind, energetic, innovative producer who helped many unknown writers early in their careers.

The award is to encourage and develop new radio writing talent in the BBC North region. There can be no better tribute to Alfred Bradley's life and work.

Ken Whitmore: "99% of my plays were produced and directed by Alfred Bradley who scoured the country for writing and acting talent like a soccer coach standing on Sunday League touchlines, shivered in his car all night waiting for a promising lad named David Pownall to come home so he could ask him to write a play, gave me money when I was broke or chivvied the BBC into paying my expenses, offered to baby-sit for my kids when I had a son ill in hospital and did tons of such favours to multitudes of writers and actors. By such means Alfred coaxed and bullied plays out of unknowns, cast them, directed them and kept his writers alive. "

Stan Barstow: "The first money I earned by writing was for readings of my short stories on air from the BBC Studio in Woodhouse Lane, Leeds in the middle 1950s. Some years later I was led into radio drama at that same studio by the legendary Alfred Bradley who directed almost everything I wrote for the medium over nearly thirty years".

Frances McNeil: "Alfred Bradley produced a series called The Northern Drift to which I contributed sketches. That experience gave me the confidence to send my first full-length script to him.

I wrote THE SUN AND THE DEVIL after looking up an account of the Pendle Witch Trials in the British Museum reading room during a summer vacation from college. Across the years, I caught the voices. Two rival matriarchal families boasted of their abilities in the dark arts. My title came from Old Demdike. As she was losing her sight, she looked at the setting sun, and saw the devil.

The script had a huge cast. I assembled not only all those accused of witchcraft but half the population of Lancashire. Alfred asked me to cut down the number of characters and shorten the piece. My first response was to assume he was too mean to pay for so many actors – and that I couldn’t possibly cut my precious work. He was right, of course. Alfred had a clever way of coaxing a writer into improving a script. He would give hints about what you might usefully lose. He said not to take out little lines here and there, which would be removing nuts and bolts, but to look for a strand that could be cut and not missed – except by the writer! Where something was not very clear, he asked for a prose account, helping to focus the crux of the conflict.

The play was broadcast in the Monday Night Play ninety minute slot. It was produced in the old Leeds Studio 1, on Woodhouse Lane. Alfred delighted in having lots of parts for actresses. Attitudes towards women’s voices on radio had not always been so enlightened. I didn’t realize until much later how rare Alfred was in the breadth of his sympathies and encouragement.

Watching him coax good performances from actors was an education. He might say something like, ‘A lorry just went by, so if you could give us that line again. And this time …’

My only gripe about working with Alfred is that it gave me a false sense of what the world would be like. I have collaborated with other good producers, but he was special. He would travel miles to see a small scale production or rehearsed reading because some writer or actor invited him".

Note from Jim:

After Alfred Bradley's death in 1991 at the age of 65, the BBC re-broadcast a couple of his finest productions, one of which was his 1978 production of John Arden's "Pearl". The re-broadcast was introduced by John Arden who recalled recording the play:


"Alfred Bradley's production of 'Pearl' was the first time I had ever been in a radio studio for the entire process of work and I remember it as a deeply happy experience. For Alfred was what playwrights like to call an old-fashion director, which is to say he was concerned to broadcast the story as I had written it. I'll go further than that: he wanted to broadcast the story as I had imagined it; much more difficult, much more rewarding.


What this in fact meant, during rehearsals, is that he never just turned to me, as I sat beside him behind the glass panel in the Manchester studio, and say, as I'm afraid some directors do say, "I'd better go and talk to the actors" and then leave me sitting there while he and they have their secrets like those gangs in the school playground which you were never allowed to join. No. Alfred said always: "Shall we go and talk to the actors?" and he brought me out with him whether or not I had anything to say. And when I did have something to say, he always listened as though it was really important, although often I'm quite sure it must have been niggling and pedantic. He trusted me as much as I was expected to trust him, so I did trust him. I knew exactly what he was doing with the play and why, and also how. I learnt a very great deal about radio production which I never really thought of before.


For instance, the strain on the actors: like Elizabeth Bell playing Pearl with long passages of internal soliloquy. I discovered, to my alarm, that my story-telling style had caused her to spend hours shut away in a sort-of cupboard with nothing but a script and a microphone, cut off from everything except Alfred's disembodied voice. Some directors would have handled such a technique like high-pressured police interrogation and driven the unfortunate performer up the wall. But Alfred never forgot her; he use to worry about her: "Liz must be going mad in there." he'd say "I'll readjust the work schedule. For heaven sake we must fetch her out if only for a few minutes."


We also had a labour dispute. The South Bank Show was making a film of a radio play in production and they had cameras in the studio. Were the actors to be paid for appearing on ITV as well for their work on the BBC? Someone in the London Office had failed to arrange this and they very nearly went on strike. Alfred sorted it out. I don't exactly know how, he just said: "You're quite right, of course. Leave it to me, I'll get you your money." And in what seemed five minutes, he got it. He knew exactly what was due to everyone he worked with, everyone knew he knew it; we trusted him."