Call Sign January 2003 - Page 20 - AS DIAL-A-CAB ENTERS ITS FIFTIETH YEAR

AS DIAL-A-CAB ENTERS
ITS FIFTIETH YEAR
CALL SIGN UNCOVERS
A PLOT TO STOP IT!

Dial-a-Cab has finally arrived at the anniversary year that not too many years ago, we thought we might never survive to see - let alone as probably the number one radio taxi organisation in Europe! January 2003 officially sees us entering into our fiftieth year of serving London and its suburbs with taxis.
   1953 was the year in which the world threw news items at the public to try to get them to overlook the formation of ODRTS. Ok, the year contained some reasonably important events that attempted to compete with this Society's launch; there was the Coronation of HM Queen Elizabeth II, which some lucky owners managed to watch on their new 9 inch black and white television sets which for that one day at least, they shared with a house full of neighbours who couldn't yet afford this new luxury in home entertainment.
   Also in that momentous year, trying to take the spotlight away from the 43 year-old Bonnie Martyn's venture to begin an owner driver's radio taxi circuit, was a New Zealander named Edmund Hillary who, with his sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay, climbed the tallest mountain in the world - the 29,028 feet Mount Everest. But why would they have climbed it then? Let's face it, the mountain had been there for several millenniums yet they chose 1953 to climb it. Was it to coincide with the Coronation? Of course not! The obvious answer was that they were acting under instructions to stop the formation of anything that was likely to grow into a company called Dial-a-Cab!
Even on the sporting field, there was no let-up in the conspiracy to undermine the achievement started by 8 licensed taxi drivers - Bonnie Martyn, Frank Duncan, Arthur Cutmore, Eric Stoffel, Alec Cobden, Doug Naismith, Albert Hall and David Fiertag - when an elderly and hitherto unfortunate footballer named Stanley Mathews was so determined to win a FA Cup Final medal for his team Blackpool that he beat their opponents Bolton Wanderers on his own! After being 3 goals to one down, a superb display by Sir Stan helped Blackpool run out 4 - 3 winners! But he'd appeared in several Cup Finals and never played as well as that. Why suddenly in 1953? And even so, the question remains: Is that a greater achievement than the setting up of ODRTS and would he have done it had it still been 1952?
   And then there was the music. We've several thousand bushels of proof that there were plots galore in that field. Bands and singers had been going along their merry way until suddenly in 1953, some wise guy - no doubt under orders from the Government to stop this company in its tracks - decided that Britain's Top Tunes would become the 'Hit Parade'. Were there no depths that these hidden powers would not stoop to in order to keep ODRTS down?
   Now we had stars 'hit' records making front-page news; Eddie Calvert's Oh Mein Papa may have been thrown in to try and convince us that the German's were behind the plot, but then Mantovani's Swedish Rhapsody came along to confuse us again! Then Dean Martin showed up with That's Amore and suddenly Italy was showing in the suspects list. Crying in the Chapel from Lee Lawrence, Answer Me by David Whitfield and Ricochet from Joan Regan were probably sent in to

172 Pentonville Road is opened

The only surviving headed notepaper from the early days

Busy taking calls at the Pentonville Road office

Was television just a plot to undermine ODRTS!! This ad was first published in Lilliput Magazine 1953

confuse us, so Call Sign publishes with no comment the record that was at number nine, The Happy Wanderer by The Obemkirchen Children's Choir.... Yes, Call Sign's point exactly!

   But nothing was going to stop us...
   On Thursday January 29 1953, Bonnie Martyn met Albert Hall to talk about leaving their current and now unsuccessful radio circuit, the Radio Owner Drivers Association (RODA) and two months later (March 29), a famous meeting between Bonnie and three other RODA drivers took place in the back of Bonnie Martyn's Oxford taxi parked on the rear of the Grosvenor Gardens rank and decided that a new circuit was needed...
   Sunday June 7 at the Albany Tavern at the top end of Great Portland Street saw the meeting that many who were around in those days consider to be the real start - 25 drivers put their hands in their pockets and between them come up with Ł200 - a huge sum for 1953 with most present putting a day's takings into the pot...
   Three weeks later at the Barley Mow pub in Horseferry Road, a further meeting attracted 67
drivers of whom 39 'signed up' as members of the fledgling Owner Drivers Radio Taxi
Service (ODRTS). By opening day, the 39 became 47.
On Monday August 10 1953, Bonnie Martyn and Alec Cobden were shown premises at 172 Pentonville Road that were available on a lease. They looked, met briefly with the others and then took it.
   On Thursday 12 November 1953, the first Board meeting (although they still referred to it as
a Committee meeting) took place at Bonnie Marty's House in Hendon. The main topic of conversation was whether they should go for Marconi or Pye radios. Pye took the vote.
   Then on Thursday 24 November 1953, bad news that probably turned into the best thing that
ever happened to this Society. Bonnie Martyn received a telephone call from Jack Rose apologising and telling him that the building in Pentonville Road was now to be sold for Ł2400 and although ODRTS would have the first option to buy it, if they couldn't then they would have to get out within four weeks!
   Another meeting was called and seven of the eight Committee members agreed to sign a document taking responsibility for buying the building and for keeping up the payments. Albert Hall felt unable to sign for personal reasons. We now owned the premises and full scale testing started soon after. It was almost the end of 1953 and ODRTS had made it -without any help from HM Queen Elizabeth II, Edmund Hillary, Stanley Mathews or The Obemkirchen Children's Choir!
   So, a very Happy Anniversary to everyone who has ever been involved with Dial-a-Cab and which from its humble beginnings, now stands proudly as the number one radio taxi organisation in Europe...