Forum for former BBC staff

Forum for former BBC staff
http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl >> Notices, obituaries and tributes >> Frank Pagden http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1308473367 Message started by Administrator on Jun 19^th, 2011, 8:50am

Title: Frank Pagden
Post by Administrator on Jun 19^th, 2011, 8:50am

This is taken from The Guardian:

The Rev Frank Pagden obituary
by Albert Jewell
The Guardian, Thursday 16 June 2011

My friend and colleague Frank Pagden, who has died aged 80, was a pioneer in local radio, especially in religious broadcasting. His voice became familiar to thousands in the Yorkshire region as he produced and presented innovative programmes for BBC Radio Leeds, including It's Sunday, Dial A Hymn, and numerous Come and Sing Messiah broadcasts. He was also involved nationally with Sunday Half Hour, Songs of Praise and Praise the Lord.

Frank was born in Streatham, south London, and brought up in Eastbourne, East Sussex. He did his national service in the Royal Army Medical Corps and trained to be a Methodist minister at Richmond College, London. He served in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent (where he is remembered for encouraging the church to buy a Sunday school bus), Ellesmere Port in Cheshire and Southport in Merseyside. He moved to Leeds in 1967 and stayed there for the rest of his life.

Although ambitious plans to establish a dynamic church presence on the newly built Whinmoor council estate in Leeds were not at that time fulfilled, Frank established a working relationship with the then fledgling Radio Leeds, becoming a full-time BBC employee in 1970.

Frank was a born raconteur and wonderful humorist. These gifts were expressed in his books about a saint he invented, The Gospel According to St Lynas (1993) and The Acts of St Lynas (1996). Leaving the BBC in 1987, he returned to Methodist circuit work as a minister in Horsforth, where he galvanised his two churches with creative ideas which he was most effective in encouraging others to put into practice. His entertaining and stimulating preaching was much appreciated until he reluctantly ceased a few months before his death. Light of touch, he was a deep thinker and an avid reader who had no time for close-minded fundamentalism.

Frank is survived by his wife, Gladys, whom he married in 1956, his son, Jonathan, his daughters, Hilary and Suzie, and seven grandchildren.