EIGHTY years ago on Monday, the first football commentary was broadcast over the wireless waves. A notable first. It allegedly created the phrase "back to square one", and it signified the arrival of the British Broadcasting Corporation as an institution with mass appeal.

But The Northern Echo's headline on its radio guide on that historic day read: "Community singing to be relayed."

Because, in 1927, community singing was bigger even than football.

The BBC was formed in 1922 as a private company. Initially, football authorities and newspaper proprietors banned it from broadcasting matches as they feared people would be driven from the turnstiles and the newsstands.

On January 1, 1927, the BBC received its Royal Charter which gave it the right to broadcast major sporting events. On January 15, the England versus Wales rugby match from Twickenham became the first event to be broadcast live, with the wonderfully-named Henry Blythe Thornhill Wakelam at the microphone. On January 22, he had a go at Arsenal versus Sheffield United.

His producer, Lance Sieveking, had drawn a plan of the pitch divided into eight numbered squares. The listener sat at home with the plan - printed in the Radio Times - on his lap. Someone - probably Mr Sieveking - stood behind the commentator and called out into the microphone the number of the square in which the ball was.

The early tapes are lost, but you can see how a phrase entered the English language from this extract from the 1933 FA Cup final commentary: "There it goes slap into the middle of the goal SEVEN. Cann's header there EIGHT. The ball comes out to Britton. Britton manoeuvres. The centre goes in BACK TO SQUARE EIGHT."

Still, on that historic day in 1927, the Echo concentrated on community singing. Its report of that ground-breaking match read: "The community singing, led by the band of the Grenadier Guards, proved more enjoyable than did the football in a drawn 1-1 game between Arsenal and Sheffield United. Indeed, had not a surprisingly large crowd of some 20,000 people braved the wretched weather, largely no doubt to take part in the choruses, it is doubtful whether the game would have been played for the referee must have had grave doubts about permitting play on a frozen surface."

Extraordinarily, the referee had been forced to keep the game on not by money-grasping clubs or radio or TV companies, but by the fact that so many people had turned up for a sing-song.

But this was the way of the world in 1927. Newcastle were top of Division I, on their way to the title, with Hughie Gallacher, on his way to a record 39 goals in 41 games. They were at home to fifth-placed Bolton Wanderers. Did the Echo reckon the enormous crowd turned up for the crucial football match, or for the singing?

"A great game was expected from this pair, who both aspire to League honours, and over 50,000 people lined the arena at St James' Park," said the Echo. "Before that, the spectators had raised their voices in community singing led by the Marsden Colliery Prize Band, and Newcastle's "singing Lord Mayor", who conducted the huge choir from an empty ginger-beer box placed in the midst of the bandsmen."

Just to prove it, the Echo had a magnificent picture of the "singing Lord Mayor", resplendent in his plus fours and flat cap, bellowing from his ginger-beer boxes in the snowy centre circle.

"The huge crowd, however, was disappointed as far as football went for the ground was in a treacherous condition," concluded the report.

Eighty years on, the huge crowd reading this will be disappointed if they expect a pithy ending - but we'll return next week to this tuneful social phenomenon.