Theme Music

Ian Hillson

The Q&A bit in the “Daily Mail” is usually interesting, this is from the edition of 16^th February-2016:

	QUESTION	The theme music for
	QUESTION	TV’s Morse famously
	incorporates Morse code. Does it feature in any other TV programme?

Mark Phillips, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire replied:

AN IN-JOKE among musical composers, inserting a hidden message in a piece of music, is known as an Easter egg.
In the case of Morse, composer Barrington Pheloung has an accompaniment which is not only a rhythmic morse code figure on a single note, but also spells out the letters M.O.R.S.E in morse code.
Some argue that the code is slightly incorrect as the beat has microscopically prolonged spacing between the first two dashes of the rhythm, so instead of MORSE the sequence actually spells out ‘T T O R S E’.

The cleverest example is Ronnie Hazlehurst’s score for “Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em”. Hazlehurst (1928-2007) was perhaps the greatest theme tune composer of all time; his work with tape loops and cash·register percussion on “Are You Being Served?” was verging on genius…

“Some Mothers..”’ opening melody played by two piccolos, spells out the show’s full title in Morse code. It’s a measure of Hazlehurst’s talent that he could compose a piece of music under this constraint…

When BBC2 launched as a black-and- white channel in 1964, its first logo was an animation in which white and grey stripes flew in from the left and right before a ‘2’ and the BBC corporate logo flew in from the top and bottom. The jingle that accompanied the ident was a fanfare based on the morse code translation of ‘BBC TWO’, composed by Freddie Phillips, famous for his collaborations with animator Gordon Murray on “Trumpton” and “Camberwick Green”.

BBC’s electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, famous for her “Doctor Who” theme, also devised a theme tune for is Radio Leicester based on the morse code signal for Leicester.

Fair use as this is discussed below:

Dave Plowman

Didn’t Ronnie Hazlehurst say something like “… the music should say the title…” ?

Nick Ware

I’m 90% sure that the "verging on genius" cash register rhythm loop for “Are You Being Served” was actually made up by Larry Goodson a day or two before the recording of the pilot show in 1972. I know this because I was there when he was sticking the bits together. I say 90% sure because I spent a lot of time in the TMS with Bish too, but IMDb credits Larry for the pilot. We all worked very regularly with Ronnie Hazlehurst, and I daresay the idea for the loop and its unrelenting 4/4 rhythm was Larry’s, hatched over a cup of tea in the Lime Grove canteen, or more likely, the bar! The people who actually deserve credit are not always the ones who get it.

I can only say what I saw, and sadly we can’t ask Neil.

Dave Mundy

I was told that the cash-register bit was done by Neil Sadwick R.I.P., well known gram-op.

Geoff Fletcher

Neil Sadwick – TC5 – 16 March 1964.

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Here’s another view which will no doubt bring back memories of doing grams. TC5 16 March 1964 with Crew 4 doing CETO Inserts just before I went to Evesham on TO19.