Greenwich Time Signal a station jingle during Jakki Brambles' early show and Simon Mayo's breakfast show. This was not strictly crashing the pips as they were not intended to be, or mistaken for, an accurate time signal. At 8 am on 17 September 2008, to the surprise of John Humphrys, the day's main presenter on the "Today" programme, and Johnnie Walker, who was standing in for Terry Wogan on Radio 2, the pips went adrift by 6 seconds, and broadcast seven pips rather than six. This was traced to a problem with the pip generator, which was 'repaired' by switching it off and
BBC Radio Orchestra disbanded in 1991, with the BBC Big Band retained as a full-time ensemble till 1994 when the corporation made the band a freelance unit, whilst allowing it to retain its name and identity. When the BBC Radio Popular Music department was formed in the early 1960s, it inherited both the BBC Revue Orchestra and the BBC Variety Orchestra and immediately began to investigate the possible amalgamation of the two ensembles, which had similar instrumentation and virtually duplicated each other's outputs. Michael Standing, the then head of sound broadcasting at the BBC, suggested creating an orchestra that would form a flexible