The series however came to an abrupt stop with yet another of Steedman’s spats with BBC authority

The series however came to an abrupt stop with yet another of Steedman’s spats with BBC authority. It was a huge success and won him fan mail from around the globe. He surprised the BBC engineers with his scientific know-how and modernising zeal. Improved BBC transmission throughout the entire corporation was the result.On retirement he continued to provide information world-wide with a weekly series of his own, About Britain. Broadcasting technology in the numerous American stations which clamoured for BBC output was state-of-the-art, far ahead of the BBC.

Steedman called on BBC Engineering to make his service competent to cope with this new technical challenge. His Topical Tapes, a 15-minute news magazine, is still mentioned with admiration. He became the Maecenas of the leading musical festivals, telling world-famous players how to improve their performance. He invented popular quiz games like My Word and My Music which were lifted into the home services.The fact that the Transcription Service was selling to the North American market presented Steedman with one of his major achievements.

It became one of the BBC’s biggest money-spinners and because Steedman was always an innovator he initiated new programmes. Meanwhile other parts of the corporation were casting covetous empire-building eyes at the European Service, which was soon to be subsumed into an all-embracing World Service.Later Steedman moved on to yet another largely anonymous department of the BBC, the Transcription Service, a mainly marketing job, the selling of BBC programmes globally. He was sidelined into becoming head of Overseas Regional Services (suffering from the acronym Horse), looking after the broadcasting needs of odds and ends that could not be fitted in elsewhere, the South Sea Islands, the Caribbean, the Falklands, before their hour of prominence. He would sit long hours brooding at his desk and if interrupted might treat the intruder to a lecture on how to make an atom bomb in three easy stages. In the course of giving an annual report he explained at length the working of lavatory cisterns.He paid the price for his eccentricity and his lack of collegiality.

Not for him the convivial canteen lunch or office intrigue at the club bar. Joan Yorke and Joanna Scott Moncrieff became pillars of the BBC’s forever popular Woman’s Hour.Steedman was never a conventional “corporate” personality. But he also enjoyed an intense loyalty and gratitude from those that worked closest with him and many went on to fine careers. Many was a slammed door that reverberated after angry departures from his office.

He could be brutal, even cruel, in his contempt for any failure to come up to his standards. Lord Denning contributed a series on justice and morality, Bertrand Russell spoke on power and Aneurin Bevan on loyalty, Hugh Gaitskell on equality.These people came not for the money, nor the kudos, but often for the stimulation which George Steedman provided, the dialectic argument which made brains buzz. The arts were not forgotten, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth were other firsts for the service and Matthew Smith gave it his only venture into broadcasting. Francis Crick was an early contributor before DNA and the Nobel Prize hit the headlines; Bruno Bronowski began his broadcasting career under Steedman.