The earliest BBC organ programmes were relayed from the Shepherd's Bush Pavilion and the New Gallery Kinema at 121 Regent Street.
The popularity of these programmes and the need for access during late hour live broadcasts led the BBC to install its own instruments.
[4] From 1936 the BBC Theatre Organ was used for frequent broadcasts by many organists, including Fredric Bayco, Dudley Beaven (who used it for the first episode of Music While You Work in June 1940),[5] Harold Robinson Cleaver, Frederic Curzon, Florence De Jong, Reginald Dixon, Reginald New, George Pattman, Dudley Savage, Donald Thorne, and Sidney Torch.
As staff organist Foort performed in the vast majority of broadcasts, followed by, though overlapping with, his eventual successor Sandy MacPherson from July 1937.
[6] When the BBC briefly switched to broadcasting only light music at the outbreak of war in September 1939, MacPherson played up to twelve hours per day whilst the organisation hastily evacuated its staff from London to various locations around the British Isles.
[9] In 1946 the BBC purchased the organ from Foort outright and installed it in the disused Jubilee Chapel, East Road in Hoxton (now demolished), where it remained for the next 18 years, until 1963.