THE BRAINS TRUST

Readers sufficiently long in the tooth to remember the Second World War may also recall listening to The Brains Trust. The wireless, along with the newspaper - in our case, the News Chronicle - was the main source of information during the blackout, and our oval-shaped Philips radio had the added attraction that, as in countless other homes, it brought the family together around the fireside or at the meal table.
You listened together, chewed over the information together and sometimes even laughed together. Thus The Brains Trust fitted comfortably into that parcel of essential listening which, for us, also included the Six O'Clock News, ITMA, Workers' Playtime, Variety Bandbox, and Arthur Askey or Vic Oliver.
The Brains Trust was invented somewhere in the bowels of the BBC during December, 1940, at a time when thousands of men and women all over the country were on duty guarding against the threat of invasion, and it was devised to give them something to listen to, laugh at, and talk about. The idea was that four or five experts, with a question master and chairman, would discuss subjects and questions sent in by the general public.
In fact, nearly a third of the population listened in on a regular basis. And fascinating listening it was, too, the programme slowly evolving into a sort of witty and oft-times argumentative university of the airwaves. Quentin Reynolds, Dr CEM Joad, Julian Huxley and Cmdr AB Campbell: they were some of the names on everyone's lips, along with the name of the question master, of course. Donald McCullough.
Among many other things, Donald was a writer. He also became known nationwide for the patient and amusing way he handled the on-air squabbles of Joad and Huxley, and still managed to keep the show on the road. When I met him in the mid-1970s, a quarter of a century after The Brains Trust's run had ended on the wireless, he had retired to Norfolk and was living on the north Norfolk coast within sound of the sea.
He was a dapper and genial host. Rather delightfully, tea and tiny sandwiches were offered. Then he answered every question, reminisced about being Roy Plomley's guest on Desert Island Discs in 1943 (choosing, among others, Will Fyfe, Tchaikovsky, Fritz Kreisler, and the Polish Army Choir), took me to task for momentarily being unable to recall Fougasse (a popular illustrator and cartoonist, particularly during the 1940s), and came to the door and waved me off when the interview was over.
Before I left he also gave me a little book he had written some years before, How to Run a Brains Trust, published in 1948 on economy standard paper, and within which he had inscribed, 'To Bruce Robinson, with grateful good wishes. Donald McCullough, Flagstaff House, Overy Staithe, 15th of May, 1976.'
Donald McCullough, so I believe, died in King's Lynn in 1978, and he deserves to be remembered as one of that hallowed coterie of public figures and entertainers who brought pleasure and enlightenment to so many millions of people during some very dark days indeed.