The BBC Home Service was a British national radio station which broadcast from 1939 until 1967.

Between the 1920s and the outbreak of The Second World War, the BBC had developed two nationwide radio services, the BBC National Programme and the BBC Regional Programme. As the name of the latter suggests, as well as a "basic" service programmed from London, the Regional Programme included a large measure of additional, alternative, or rescheduled programming originating in six regions. Although the programmes attracting the greatest number of listeners tended to appear on the National, the two services were not streamed – that is, they did not attempt to appeal to different audiences; instead, they appealed to a single audience but provided a choice of programming.

On 1 September 1939, the BBC merged the National and the Regional Programmes into one national service from London. The reasons given for this included the need to prevent enemy aircraft from using differentiated output from the Regional Programme's transmitters as navigational beacons. To this end, the former "regional" transmitters were synchronised in chains on (initially) two frequencies, 668 and 767 kHz, with an additional chain of low powered transmitters (known as "Group H") on 1474 kHz appearing later. Under this arrangement "regional" broadcasting in its pre-war form was no longer feasible; however, much of the programming on the new service was gradually decentralised to the former "regional" studios (because of the risks from enemy attack/bombing/invasion in London) and broadcast nationally.

Home Service is a British folk rock group, formed in late 1980 from a nucleus of musicians who had been playing in Ashley Hutchings' Albion Band. Their career is generally agreed to have peaked with the album Alright Jack, which is usually considered one of the finest products of the electric folk genre and has been highly influential on later work. Several members of the band, including most obviously John Tams, have gone on to very successful solo careers and to take part in other significant projects.

Home Service was formed out of members of the Albion Band who had participated in what is often said to be the group's most successful album in its long history, Rise Up Like the Sun (1978). Their establishment was partly out of the confusion caused by line-up changes when the Albion Band were playing as, in effect, a house band in Bill Bryden's National Theatre productions in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Lark Rise to Candleford. Members of the group took part in an adaptation of Michael Herr's Dispatches without band leader Ashley Hutchings. In late 1980 eight members began to rehearse together in Southwark, London and had soon splintered off from the parent band. The original line-up was: John Tams (vocals, melodeon), Bill Caddick (vocals, guitar, dobro), Graeme Taylor (vocals, guitar), Michael Gregory (drums), Roger Williams (trombone, tuba), Howard Evans (trumpet), Colin Rae (trumpet) and Malcolm Bennet (bass). The large group was somewhat unwieldy and complicated by other projects, including the fact that both Evans and Williams were also members of Brass Monkey. Rae soon left and the remaining members initially chose the name 'The First Eleven' and then switched to Home Service, which had both associations of Britishness/Englishness and of a bygone world in the defunct BBC Home Service radio station.

Helen Mary Malcolm (15 March 1918 – 13 October 2010) was one of the first two regular female announcers on BBC Television after World War II. She became a household name in the UK during the 1950s.

The granddaughter of Victorian socialite actress Lillie Langtry, who was the mistress of King Edward VII of England, Mary was brought up in Poltalloch, Argyll, Scotland. Until the age of 16, she attended the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle in South Kensington, London. She began her television career in 1948, having gained broadcasting experience on the radio during the Second World War. As more and more men were called up to fight, women became increasingly in demand to fill posts at the BBC. Mary Malcolm was taken on and worked for the Home Service as a continuity announcer from March 1942. With the relaunch of the BBC's television service after the war she worked alongside Sylvia Peters and McDonald Hobley, with the trio averaging ten days' work a month each.

At this time, all television programs were introduced by an in-vision host or hostess and broadcasts were normally live. Malcolm received no training and became known for her spoonerisms: "By the end of the day I was tired, and when I came to the weather forecast I just read it out without really trying. My biggest fear was 'drain and rizzle', which I said more than once." With the advent of commercial rival ITV in 1955, the BBC’s reliance on announcers diminished. Commercial breaks quickly became popular and the BBC decided audiences no longer needed a hostess to soothe them. Malcolm left the BBC in 1956 although she continued to appear as a guest on various programs including an episode of the comedy series The Goodies. Her autobiography, Me, was published in 1956.

Louis Sebastian Theroux (/θəˈruː/ LOO-ee thə-ROO; born 20 May 1970) is an English broadcaster best known for his documentaries in the television series Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends, his BBC2 Specials and When Louis Met.... His career started off in journalism and bears influences of notable writers in his family such as his father, Paul Theroux and brother Marcel Theroux. He currently works with the BBC producing his documentaries and popular TV series.

Theroux is the youngest son of the American travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux (who is of French-Canadian and Italian descent). His mother, Anne Castle, was Paul's first, British, wife. His elder brother is the writer and television presenter Marcel Theroux. He is the cousin of American actor Justin Theroux. He moved to the UK when he was four, and was brought up in London.

Theroux was educated for a couple of years at Allfarthing Primary School then moved to Westminster School (where he was a friend and contemporary of the comedians Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish). Another of his contemporaries was Liberal Democrat politician, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg with whom he travelled to America. He then went to Magdalen College, Oxford where he gained a first class degree in modern history and was noted for his film reviews for the Grapevine magazine.