Breakaway was BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 radio's first regular consumer travel programme, conceived by producer Roger Macdonald. It was launched on 29 September 1979 and ran live for an hour at 0900 every Saturday morning for more than a decade, with two regular presenters, first Barry Norman

Barry Norman

Barry Leslie Norman, CBE is a British novelist, impresario, film critic and media personality. He was the BBC film critic on television from 1972 to 1998.-Early life:...

 and later Bernard Falk

Bernard Falk

Bernard Falk was a United Kingdom television reporter and interviewer perhaps best known for his contributions to the BBC current affairs and magazine programme Nationwide in the 1970s and the BBC Radio 4 travel programme Breakaway in the 1980s.He was born in Southport, Lancashire the son of a...

. Breakaway took the BBC into a different dimension, far removed from the idealised travel dreams of the Holiday programme, reporting without fear or favour on the reality behind the glossy brochures. Macdonald favoured reporters who were members of the Guild of Travel Writers, hardened travel professionals, and schooled them in the art of radio journalism. A regular commentator was Nigel Coombs then editor of Travel Trade Gazette

Travel Trade Gazette

Travel Trade Gazette is a weekly newspaper for the travel industry.TTG, as it is widely known, was launched in 1953 and claims to be the world's oldest travel trade newspaper. It features news, destination reports and careers advice for the travel and tourism industries...

 who provided knowledgeable insights into the travel industry. The mix of 'warts and all' location features with studio badinage and the irrepressible Falk's interviews with luckless travel executives desperately trying to defend the indefensible, found almost universal favour with the audience. Sometimes the programme came entirely from far-flung places, such as New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

, Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

 and the Great Barrier Reef

Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world'slargest reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,600 kilometres over an area of approximately...

, and famously on one occasion live from Boulogne on the weekend when a ferry ran aground.

The distinctive Breakaway theme tune was a version of the Jack Hylton

Jack Hylton

Jack Hylton was a British band leader and impresario.He was born John Greenhalgh Hilton in the Great Lever area of Bolton, Lancashire, the son of George Hilton, a cotton yarn twister. His father was an amateur singer at the local Labour Club and Jack learned piano to accompany him on the stage...

Orchestra's 1929 song Breakway