Samuel Gabriel 'Sam' Costa (17 June 1910 - 23 September 1981) was a singer and a voice actor on the show Much Binding In The Marsh. He was also a Radio Luxembourg

Radio Luxembourg (English)

Radio Luxembourg is a commercial broadcaster in many languages from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It is nowadays known in most non-English languages as RTL ....

 and 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...

 disc jockey

Disc jockey

A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...

.

Life

Costa was of Sephardic Jewish-Portuguese

Portuguese people

The Portuguese are a nation and ethnic group native to the country of Portugal, in the west of the Iberian peninsula of south-west Europe. Their language is Portuguese, and Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion....

 ancestry (Costa is a Portuguese surname). The son of journalist Gabriel Costa and Annie (née Sawer), he married Esther Comer in 1938, and they were married for over 40 years until he died in 1981. He was the great uncle of the radio presenter Andy Jacobs

Andy Jacobs

Andrew Eustace Jacobs is a British sports radio personality who presents the Hawksbee and Jacobs show alongside Paul Hawksbee on talkSPORT in the UK, every weekday from 1-4pm....

.

Career

Sam Costa began as a pianist with Bert Firman

Bert Firman

Bert Firman was an English bandleader of the 1920s, 30s and 40s.He was born as Herbert Feuerman in London. His mother was of Polish stock and his father was a professional musician who had settled in Britain from Austria-Hungary in the late l880's. His three elder brothers were also musicians...

's band and later became a popular band singer in UK in the 1930s making many records with bands such as Lew Stone

Lew Stone

Lew Stone was a British dance band leader and arranger. He was well known in Britain during the 1930s.Stone learned music at an early age and became an accomplished pianist. In the 1920s, he worked with many important dance bands...

, Harry Leader, Maurice Winnick and Jay Wilbur.

After his crooning days, his 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 career began with the It's That Man Again shows with Tommy Handley

Tommy Handley

Thomas Reginald "Tommy" Handley was a British comedian, mainly known for the BBC radio programme ITMA . He was born at Toxteth Park, Liverpool in Lancashire....

, then he worked with Kenneth Horne

Kenneth Horne

Kenneth Horne was an English comedian and businessman. The son of a clergyman and politician, he combined a successful business career with regular broadcasting for the BBC. His first hit series Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh written with his co-star Richard Murdoch arose out of his wartime service as...

, Richard Murdoch

Richard Murdoch

Richard Bernard Murdoch was a British comedic radio, film and television performer.Richard Bernard Murdoch attended Charterhouse School. He then appeared in Footlights whilst a student at Pembroke College, Cambridge...

 and Maurice Denham

Maurice Denham

Maurice Denham OBE was an English character actor who appeared in over 100 television programmes and films throughout his long career.-Life and career:...

 in Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh. On Sundays he did both Breakfast Time and Glamorous Nights and he also presented Housewives' Choice

Housewives' Choice

Housewives' Choice was a BBC radio record request programme broadcast every morning from 1946 to 1967 on the BBC Light Programme. It played a wide range of music designed to appeal to housewives at home during the day...

  and Midday Spin, transitioning into BBC Radio 2

BBC Radio 2

BBC Radio 2 is one of the BBC's national radio stations and the most popular station in the United Kingdom. Much of its daytime playlist-based programming is best described as Adult Contemporary or AOR, although the station is also noted for its specialist broadcasting of other musical genres...

 from 1967. Costa would sign off saying "Thank you for the pleasure of your company".

While he generally disliked TV work, he did appear on several Juke Box Jury

Juke Box Jury

Juke Box Jury was a musical panel show which originally ran on BBC Television from 1 June 1959 until December 1967. The programme was based on the American show Jukebox Jury, itself an offshoot of a long-running radio series....

shows.

On BBC Radio 2 he had various shows, morning, lunchtime, afternoon, drivetime, into the late 1970s.

Further reading

• Obituary, Jewish Chronicle, 2 October 1981

• R2OK! Radio 2 Preservation Society and Radio 2 Timeline Project (2007)
• This England's Second Book of British Dance Bands (2001).
• British Dance Bands On Record 2nd Ed. (1989) by Brian Rust
  Brian Rust
  Brian Rust , was an English jazz discographer.Brian Arthur Lovell Rust was born in London, and collected records from the age of five. He worked in the BBC's record library from 1945 to 1960, and supervised broadcasting selections...
  
  and Sandy Forbes.