As the War ended in Europe, the BBC responded quickly in creating a new entertainment radio station - the BBC Light Programme.

It would bring us many much-loved programmes including Mrs. Dales Diary, Saturday  Club - and Housewives' Choice (Ken Dodd pictured, reading his Family Favourites mail).

Launching on 29th July 1945, when radio listening was at its height and fledgling TV had yet to re- commence, it was the station which would entertain the nation until its closure in 1967 – and the precursor to BBC Radio 2.

As the BBC Yearbook stated, it would “appeal not so much to a certain class of listener-but to all listeners when they are in certain moods', but not everything was “frothy or frivolous”. The station would bring programmes that remain to this day including Woman’s Hour and Pick of the Pops – but the necessary reorganisation of wavelengths on radio dials “bewildered many listeners”.

David Hamilton is the only UK broadcaster who appeared on the BBC Light Programme regularly - and still broadcasting daily now.

On Boom Radio, to mark the anniversary, David will tell his personal account of the BBC Light Programme. Fond memories as a boyhood listener, glued to the football commentaries – and impersonating the characters in the channel’s famous comedy shows.

He tells of the programmes he hosted in his early BBC career – with the stars of the day performing live. And of how he was the person who closed-down the service in 1967, hosting the final edition of Housewives’ Choice - a programme seemingly ill-suited to the BBC’s new hipper Radio 1 and Radio 2 – and hosted Music Through Midnight, the programme which took the channel into its final day of life. “I felt like an undertaker”, says David.

David Hamilton celebrates the 80th anniversary of the BBCLight Programme - Tuesday July 29th at 9pm