Norman Painting His ashes were scattered at Painting's Plantation in Leamington Spa, with a memorial service at St Martin-in-the-Fields in May 2010. He left his recordings, scripts, books, papers and letters to Birmingham University Special Collections. Norman Painting Norman George Painting (23 April 1924 – 29 October 2009) was an English actor, broadcaster and writer. He played Phil Archer in the BBC Radio 4 soap opera "The Archers" from the pilot episodes aired on the BBC Midlands Home Service in summer 1950, after the series went national on the Light Programme on 1 January 1951, until his death in 2009, when he
BBC Radio Manchester the Day". In 1983 and 1984 the radio station ran a series of experimental community stations, each of which used the 1296 kHz AM frequency in turn. The stations were BBC Radio Bury (late 1983/early 1984), BBC Radio Oldham, BBC Radio Rochdale (eight weeks from 14 May 1984), BBC Radio Trafford (which operated from a mobile studio in a school playground) and BBC Radio Wigan (summer 1984). The stations were part-time services which opted out from the main BBC Radio Manchester service. The experiments were never repeated. From October 1988 until 3 April 2006, the station was named BBC GMR