Leave It To The Hangman - BBC Saturday Night Theater - Bill Knox

William (Bill) Knox was a Scottish author, journalist and broadcaster, best known for his crime novels and for presenting the long-running STV series Crimedesk.

Born in Glasgow, Knox became the youngest journalist for a Glasgow newspaper at age 16. He went on to report on crime, on motoring, and to become a news editor.

He began writing crime novels in the 1950s. Knox often wrote under pseudonyms, frequently for the American market. These included Michael Kirk, Robert MacLeod and Noah Webster. He published over 50 crime novels, including several series, notably the "Thane and Moss" books.

In the 1970s, he was approached by Scottish Television to present a series asking for public assistance in solving crimes in the central Scotland area. Knox presented the fifteen-minute slot for over ten years, always signing off with the promise that any calls to the police "can be in confidence". At this time he also made a series of short programmes called Tales of Crime, also for STV, in which he recounted famous Scottish criminal cases.

His crime novels from the 1960s onwards, and in the 1970s his Crimedesk television series, publicised the Glasgow slang term "neds", referring to petty criminals or small-time hoodlums.[1][2] A 1982 analysis of crime fiction discussing Knox's 1977 novel Pilot Error noted his description of Strathclyde Police as being unconcerned about "neds" getting hurt in a fight as long as no one else was affected.

His final novel, The Lazarus Widow, was unfinished at the time of his death, and was completed by Martin Edwards.

Saturday Night Theatre was a long-running radio drama strand on BBC Radio 4. The strand showcased feature-length, middle-brow single plays on Saturday evenings for more than 50 years, having been launched in April 1943. The plays featured in the strand included stage plays, book adaptations and original dramatisations. For most of its history, programmes ran for 90 minutes and were largely entertainment-centred, such as thrillers, comedies and mysteries.

Saturday Night Theatre was noted as the major drama of the week on BBC Radio 4, until it was scrapped as a programme strand in 1996. Shorter plays continued to be broadcast on Radio 4 on Saturday evenings from 1996 until the relaunch of the channel's schedule in April 1998 by James Boyle, when single dramas were removed from the Saturday evening schedule. Since 1998, the main weekly play on the station has been The Saturday Play, a daytime programme that runs for 60–90 minutes.

There have since been campaigns to bring back Saturday Night Theatre, but in the context of BBC budget cuts, that have included the 2010 axing of Radio 4's Friday Play (established in 1998, when Saturday Night Theatre was abolished), any return looks unlikely.

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