Jad Abumrad

But he says it was really when he sat down and listened to the original broadcasts, what's left of them.

Two hours of old BBC recordings that survive today because my grandparents pirated them from the BBC back in 1950.

He says it wasn't until he heard those tapes that I went, wow.

You should now tell us this story.

Tell us what you heard that made you go, wow.

Well... You hear this very dramatic theme song.

And this old BBC voice comes onto the tape and says... Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

And the music goes up.

All very, very dramatic.

And then the narrator sets the scene for you.

And then you hear my grandfather's voice.

Well, as Stephen Grenfell has just told you, life's been quite exciting for us.

He was a stutterer.

We've had a lot more letters.

There were all these things that meant it should never have worked on radio.

Anyhow...

my grandfather is in the studio on the stage and my grandma i'm sorry to say leslie isn't here she was often somewhere dramatic as a nut in the studio somewhere exotic one time she was in a diving diving bell she was underwater at the bottom of a test tank one time she was in the tower of london are you there leslie in the tower yes i'm here

So your grandpa is on stage and your grandma, you're saying, is in a tower by phone?

No, she's in front of a microphone.

Now, this is back in the time when microphones were the size of small melons.