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Both Phillip Hodson and Anna Raeburn had previously written advice columns for magazines, and continued to do so alongside their on-air appearances. Until they made the move to broadcasting, the tradition of the aunt/uncle had been predominantly based in literature, bringing with it a precise restriction in word-count and a stringent selection process. According to Kent⁵³², the problem page was invented by John Dunton with the birth in 1691 of the Anthenian Gazette – allowing seemingly, for the first opportunity for audience participation in the history of publishing.⁵³³ As a magazine publisher, Dunton believed that his reader’s dilemmas would be far more interesting that just reporting politics or current affairs – as well as a cost effective way of filling content.⁵³⁴ Even so, the first letters were not just about emotional questions, but about the mysteries of the world, and the columns became so popular that both male and then female writers were hired to cope with the amount of letters.

Later employed by Dunton, Daniel Defoe, (the author of Robinson Crusoe), could also be seen playing the part of Man Friday in his ‘Weekly Review’ from 1704. Benjamin H. Day, pioneer of the US Penny Press era has also been credited as one of the first to adopt this form of public written exchange during the 1830’s, yet McKernan has recently suggested that Defoe’s style of collecting material published for his other, more journalistic reports, contained the same ingredients we now find in a conventional print and broadcast interview. Defoe may well have used the interview to start to gather together information through the use of question/answer techniques.

Journalists find the information they require often by asking someone questions, and then using the replies they receive as the substance of their report. That is interviewing, and Daniel Defoe employed it as a news reporter for his Weekly Review much as today’s journalists do 400 years later⁵³⁵

The first of its kind intended to answer queries only from women was The Ladies Mercury which began in 1693. Fifty years later female advisers began to play a more central role. The popularity of Mrs Eliza Haywood (Female Spectator) and Miss Frances Moore, (Old Maid), established the area of advice columns as a primarily feminine domain.⁵³⁶ Content was tightly controlled and any answers to sexual problems were not published – rather the readers of Glamour (1939) were asked to pay for booklets which were to be posted out

532 Kent 1979

533 John Dunton is credited with launching the first interactive agony uncle columns. After having an affair he realised there was no one he could ask for advice about it without revealing his identity. He went on to publish the Athenian Gazette.

534 See Carey 2009

535 McKernan 2014

536 Mangan 2009

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to them in plain brown envelopes.⁵³⁷ Advisors were often anonymous - using pseudonyms and an idealized pen and ink illustration for their portrait, in complete opposition to the modern day problem broadcaster who was reliant on their public persona.⁵³⁸ In factory girl publications, the agony aunts used names like ‘Joyce’ or

‘Margaret’ to sound like their readers. Later more homely and matronly names were used, including Anna Raeburn’s, alter ego, Evelyn Homes.

The agony writer appeared unafraid to rebuff or dismiss letters, scornfully criticising them for poor levels of spelling or literacy. For instance, a response from The Weekly Magazine in 1859 proclaimed,

W.O. – Your handwriting, if it deserves to be called such, is as bad as your composition, which is only equalled by the vulgar taste in which you have thought proper to address us.⁵³⁹

Until Anna Raeburn’s arrival at Women in the late 1960’s, these brisk Agony writers, who were responding to letters in publications such as the Ladies’ Home Paper and Lucky Star appeared to be principally preoccupied with upholding moral values, standards and etiquette.

Question: My chum and I are always arguing on this matter. Should a girl let any boy with whom she goes out walking kiss her and embrace her as a lover?

Response: Certainly not! No, my dear girl, don’t let any boy kiss you. I don’t mean that you should be a stiff with your boy friends, but you can be a perfectly good pal without any silly nonsense of that description.⁵⁴⁰

From the 1970’s onwards, agony aunts attempted to assist their readers with a wide range of topics. Letters were written during a ‘climate of emotion’, where the agony aunt would answer each letter, giving information about helpful organisations, telephone numbers and addresses, ‘we were queen keepers of secrets and sources of help and, sometimes, comfort that only, it seemed, we could deliver.’⁵⁴¹ The likes of Proops, Kantz, Ironside, Rayner and Raeburn were not only thought of as the public face of publications, but as champions of information delivery– creating booklets, sending out phone numbers or addresses, raising awareness of support groups or public services and answering letters.

These advice columns represented the curious interface of personal and public worlds, where private issues or anxieties become available for consumption, created within an emotional community and open to scrutiny by

537 Ironside 2006

538 Also see Carey 2009

539 Carey 2009, p.199

540 The Happy Home, 1920, cited in Carey 2009, p.18

541 Ironside 2006, p.68

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a mass market.⁵⁴² This tension would later be played out via the radio phone-in. There is also a sense that these agony aunts/uncles were separate from the traditional artificial expert – but none-the-less had access to a large amount of privileged information.⁵⁴³ Writing the Evelyn Home feature in Woman Magazine, and the advice section in Spare Rib⁵⁴⁴, Anna Raeburn found the existing rules imposed by her bosses constricting, and fought to challenge the conventions.

“In women’s magazines, we had a fight initially about the length of response. “No, we would like you to do eighteen letters on the one and a half columns”, and I said, “I can’t tell you that I’m going to do that” ⁵⁴⁵

Before moving to radio, Philip Hodson had also established a career as a print agony uncle alongside his broadcasting work, writing the Daily Star hotline, (“by Philip Hodson – Man who Understands”) and throughout his career for The News of the World, Cosmo Problem Pages, She magazine, Family Circle, Woman and Home, the Guardian and the Times. Like Anna Raeburn, Philip Hodson found freedom in broadcasting, viewing print problem journalism as obstructive, driven by the agenda of an editorial team. In these columns, questions and answers could be edited before publication, with little opportunity for right of reply or reciprocity. Although she does not directly reference the ‘agony’ genre, Wahl-Jorgensen’s work on the production of a newspaper ‘letters to the editor’ column is of interest here.⁵⁴⁶ Her work identified four gatekeeping rules which governed the publication of material in the newspaper: relevance, brevity, entertainment and authority. More unconventional or ungrammatical letters that failed to meet these criteria tended not to be published – as Phillip Hodson observed.

“I remember sitting in this house writing my column for the News of the World and my particular Features Editor ringing and saying “The owner says he wants more sex in your column this week” or “we are not doing homosexuality, sorry” ⁵⁴⁷

Meanwhile letters that were entertaining, ‘punchy’, relevant and authoritative were accepted. We will find that the production teams on Philip Hodson’s and Anna Raeburn’s call-in shows employed their own set of criteria, which governed the selection of callers to air. In his study of gatekeeping processes on Israeli call-in shows, Dori-Hacohen reflected on Jorgensen’s rules and suggested that brevity/entertainment would fit under the medium demands, while relevance and authority position themselves in the public sphere bracket.⁵⁴⁸ Undoubtedly, the caller has more of a say on their own participation on a call-in show, rather than newspaper

542 Jackson 2005

543 see Turner 2009

544 1972-1993

545 Interview, Anna Raeburn, London, 2012

546 Wahl-Jorgensen 2002

547 Interview, Phillip Hodson, Tetbury, 2013

548 Dori-Hacohen 2013

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or magazine columns, which allows more opportunity for flexibility and negotiation. I suggest that callers to personal phone-in shows additionally face different sets of participation criteria than callers to current affairs programmes. Later we will see how hosts, operators and producers have their own guidelines on what they expect from a successful call – and the terms under which they reject or offer other support.