Captain Leonard Frank Plugge (21 September 1889 – 19 February 1981) was a British radio entrepreneur and Conservative Party politician.
Early years and political life
Plugge was born in Walworth, only son of Frank Plugge (1864–1946), a commercial clerk, and his wife, Mary Chase (1862–1924). His father was a Belgian of Dutch descent. Plugge was educated at Dulwich College, the University of Brussels and University College London, where he graduated with a BSc degree in civil engineering in 1915. In the First World War, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and in 1918 transferred to the Royal Air Force, where he became a captain. He stayed with the air force until 1921, and in the same year was elected a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. Many others joined during the life of Radio Normandy (the station used this anglicised spelling in its British literature and advertising).
The power of the transmitter increased after Plugge convinced film studio and 280-strong cinema chain owner Gaumont British, owner of the Sunday Referee, an entertainment-based Sunday newspaper to sponsor him and print Radio Normandy's schedule. A new studio was established in a house in the town.
Radio Normandy by now had a large audience as far north as the English Midlands, and many big names of the day. Among them was Roy Plomley, later famous for creating and presenting Desert Island Discs for BBC radio.
Silenced
Plugge broadcast from Fécamp and later from a new transmitter and studio at Caudebec-en-Caux, France. World War II began soon after the studio opened and, according to some histories, German troops overran the transmitters in 1940, using them to broadcast propaganda to Britain until the RAF bombed the Louvetot transmitter out of action. The French website L'Histoire de Radio Normandie remembers it differently: "After the Louvetot transmitter closed in 1939 because of the war, IBC went on broadcasting under the name Radio International Fécamp from Radio Normandies first transmitter at Fécamp for "several weeks". On 10 June 1940 French troops sabotaged the transmitter on the eve of the German invasion.'
A 22 October 1939 British War Cabinet memo marked 'SECRET: To Be Kept Under Lock And Key' notes that:
:It was learnt that an obsolete station at Fécamp, controlled by the International Broadcasting Company (of which Captain L. F. Plugge, MP, is the chairman), has been modernised, and had started to work with programmes in English, Czech and Austrian [sic]. The danger of allowing a station so near the Channel to work on its own...was felt by the Air Ministry to be grave...The French Service(s)...are in complete agreement with the British point of view...[and] have confessed that the private interests concerned have got the ear of the civil powers [in France] without reference to factors of national security. It is hoped that the French Service view will shortly prevail.
It appears the British government was not interested in Plugge's invitation to broadcast Allied propaganda from Radio Normandy transmitters, even if they had not been destroyed.
Plugge hoped to restart transmissions from France after the war but changes in broadcasting regulations and a different attitude to radio listening meant that this never happened. The post-war president, Charles de Gaulle, also had a different attitude to the station.
Radio Normandy had a bigger audience in southern England on Sundays than the BBC. Under Lord Reith, the BBC was off the air until late on Sundays to give people time to go to church, and offered little but serious music and discussions. Broadcasting historians have said that Reith reluctantly agreed to lighten the BBC's programmes on Sundays after his audience deserted him for Radio Normandy's light music. That, some have said, was a reason that Reith left the BBC, feeling his mission to educate, inform and entertain with what he judged to be programmes of high moral tone had been cut away by rank commercial entertainment driven by money.
The IBC's original London offices were in Hallam Street, near the BBC's Broadcasting House, then moved to nearby 35–36 Portland Place. This was taken over by a British weapons development unit MRI(c) at the start of the war but later bombed. The BBC's Radio 1, inheritor of the audiences that Plugge's offshore successors had built until the 1967 Marine Broadcasting Offences Act made them illegal, later moved into the Hallam Street building. After the war IBC became a recording studio and stars including The Who, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix recorded there.
It has been suggested that Leonard Plugge was the inventor of the two-way car radiotelephone. It is also claimed that the term of "plugging" something by advertising was derived from the name of Leonard Plugge. Plugge pronounced his name "Plooje", claiming Flemish origins. It was only when he stood for the parliamentary seat of Chatham that he agreed to the slogan "Plugge in for Chatham" and accepted the way everybody else pronounced his name.
Later life
In the 1960s and 1970s, Plugge moved in a social set that included Princess Margaret, her husband photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones, broadcaster Julian Pettifer, Molly Parkin and English model April Ashley.
The film Performance, starring Mick Jagger and James Fox, was partly filmed in Plugge's house in Lowndes Square. Plugge moved to Hollywood, California in 1972, and died there on 19 February 1981 at the age of 91.
Her twin brother, Greville, died in a road accident in Morocco a year later.
Etymology of "to plug"
In his book Red Herrings and White Elephants, the English language researcher Albert Jack writes that Plugge partially financed Radio Normandy by receiving payments to play and promote records, which is probably the origin of the verb to "plug" a record. However, the Oxford English Dictionary contradicts this suggestion, dating the first use of "plug" in the sense of "promotion" to as early as 1900.
Rupert Vansittart played Plugge in the 2008 film The Bank Job.
References
Bibliography
External links
- Roy Plomley closes down a day's broadcasting by Plugge's Radio Normandy (format: MP3, file hosted at http://www.lmradio.org/Sounds.htm).
- Radio Normandy Calling – Roy Plomley previews programmes (format: RealAudio)
- Radio For Sale: Sponsored Programming in British Radio during the 1930s – Sean Street, Bournemouth University
- British War Cabinet secret memo on Plugge's broadcasting, October 1939
- Time, Pioneers, Monday, 21 January 1935
- IBC Studio The early days of Radio Normandy (includes pictures of Plugge and of one of Radio Normandy's mobile units)
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20110719142523/http://www.offshoreechos.com/radionormandie/RadioNormandie00.htm] https://web.archive.org/web/20110719142523/http://www.offshoreechos.com/radionormandie/RadioNormandie00.htm
- Captain Plugge on Radio Normandy (website in English and French)