Rex Bawden – journalist and broadcaster 1921-2012

The man who led the creation of BBC Radio Merseyside’s news operation more than 40 years ago has died.
Rex Bawden was appointed the station’s first News Editor in 1968 and went on to become Manager from 1970 until his retirement in 1981.
A journalist for sixty years, he died in hospital on Wirral, Merseyside, at the age of 90.
Born in Tranmere and educated at Birkenhead Institute, where he was captain at cricket and Victor Ludorum at athletics, he began his career at the Birkenhead Advertiser. He once recalled he was ``paid eight bob a week – six shillings and 10 and a half pence after deductions!’’
After he served in the army for five and a half years as a radar pioneer in the ack-ack before transferring to combined operations, he returned to newspapers and worked for the Liverpool Evening Express, Manchester Evening Chronicle and Sunday Times, as Deputy Editor of the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, Editor of the Aberdeen Evening Express and chief sub editor for the Manchester Evening News before becoming chief sub editor at the Liverpool Echo.
He joined the BBC as local radio was developing from its experimental phase and nurtured many talents at Radio Merseyside including two of the stations present presenters, Roger Phillips and Billy Butler.
No fewer than six of his staff went on to become BBC local radio managers.
He was also personally involved ion programme-making. An extended interview with the then Prime Minister and Merseyside MP, Harold Wilson, led to the revelation that he had fallen in love with his wife Mary at a tennis club and made national newspaper headlines at the time.
Mr Bawden was also a knowledgeable musician – he was a member of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic choir and the Halle choir among others – and used that expertise to present his own classical music programme on Radio Merseyside.
On one occasion, for a lunchtime magazine programme, he sang ``In cellar cool’’ in a branch of the Mersey Tunnel after a celebrated diva had described the acoustics of the Royal Albert Hall as resembling those of the tunnel.
His final task at Radio Merseyside was to oversee the move from the station’s original studios in Commerce House, Sir Thomas Street, to purpose built headquarters in Paradise Street.
After his retirement from the BBC he became chief music critic for the Liverpool Daily Post
Mr Bawden had lived in Oxton for well over 40 years and had recently moved to Greasby. He is survived by his wife Sylvia, longest serving soprano in the Phil choir (where the two of them met), and his daughter Sheena, also a former BBC journalist.
The funeral takes place on Tuesday June 12 at Landican Cemetery in Birkenhead at 2pm.