IN AND OUT OF THE EAGLE 24

In his book Agent Zigzag, the story of Edward Chapman, a British double agent in the Second World War, Ben Macintyre dealt with one of the most important figures involved in counter espionage against the Germans, Captain Ronnie Reed. Writing about his skills with radio, Macintyre said: “He could build a wireless from scratch and with his schoolfriend Charlie Chilton (who went on to become a celebrated radio presenter and producer) he would broadcast to the world from his bedroom with a home made transmitter: Ronnie would sing a warbling rendition of Bing Crosby’s Dancing in the Dark while Charlie strummed the guitar. The outbreak of war found Reed working as a B.B.C. radio engineer by day and flying through the ether by night with the call-sign G2RX.”

After the War Charles Chilton became the creator of the popular radio series Riders of the Range which later became one of EAGLE's most popular strips. Another popular radio series he created was Journey Into Space. Charles mentioned Reed in his own autobiography Auntie’s Charlie. Indeed he included and acknowledged the exact quote from Agent Zigzag given above. However Charles also pointed out that their broadcasting activities caused problems for the neighbours. He wrote: “The trouble was that everyone in the district who had a radio could hear us too and their reception of the B.B.C. was ruined, so we received many complaints and were lucky the police never found out about what we were doing because it was totally illegal.” By the outbreak of war, Charles had become a B.B.C. producer and after his call up served in the R.A.F. as a radio operator, later working for Allied Forces Radio (South East Asia Command) in Ceylon.