IF you are planning to go to Wales next summer, here’s a phrase you must remember — “Sut Mae?”

Roughly translated, it means “How are you?” But there’s a lot more to it than that.

It’s the current catch-phrase in clubs and pubs and schools and tea-rooms from Cardiff to Caernarvon.

And the man responsible for it all is Tommy Eyton Jones.

I met Tommy the other day in his bungalow which overlooks the Conway Estuary.

Tommy announces the sport in Granada’s Welsh programme, Dewch I Mewn. He is big and cheery — and utterly Welsh. You might describe him as the Gerry Loftus of Wales.

He started the catch-phrase craze when he first used it to introduce his weekly sports item in Dewch I Mewn.

“It wasn’t a deliberate choice,” said Tommy. “It seemed the natural, friendly thing to say, that was all.”

The combination of Tommy’s bluff appearance and the phrase itself, however, caught viewers’ imagination.

“We didn’t realise just how popular it had become until Granada asked me to drop the phrase,” he explained. “They thought the programme needed to change, so I started with something else instead. We got hundreds of letters complaining — so back went Sut Mae!”

Now Tommy cannot go anywhere without being greeted by it. It has become his nickname in Wales.

“I even got it in the boat across the Channel on my way to Italy,” he grinned.

When he isn’t talking sport on television Tommy is kept busy as sports editor and news editor of the North Wales Weekly News, which is printed in Welsh and English.

He started with the paper at the age of 14 as a printer’s assistant. Before long he was promoted to the editorial department, and his journalistic talent soon emerged.

He met and interviewed the Duke of Windsor — then the Prince of Wales — when he visited Penmaenmawr. And he covered the story of the sinking of the submarine Thetis, off Llandudno, in 1939.

“I think the future of Welsh soccer is very bright indeed,” he said enthusiastically. “There are some really promising youngsters coming up.”

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TAKE a pianist, guitarist, bass player and drummer. Give them a tune. Pick a rhythm that has an exciting beat. That’s the style of the Derek Hilton Quartet, which has been presenting a new sound on some Granada programmes.

Viewers have heard it in The Youngsters, People and Places, Sharp at Four and even in a Shadow Squad night club scene.

Welsh viewers hear it even more frequently. For Derek adds something new to traditional Welsh ballads for Granada’s Welsh programme Dewch I Mewn, seen on Channel 9 only in the North.

The quartet’s clear, haunting style reminds me of another group – the Modern Jazz Quartet. So I was hardly surprised when Derek said: “They are my favourites. I have many of their records, and like their style.” Derek admitted that this kind of music was not yet very popular. “But it will be,” he prophesied, confidently.

Certainly Derek’s modern jazz interpretations are keeping him busy, and his quartet is used in many Granada programmes. Derek himself used to play the piano in Spot The Tune!

He does the arrangements which are played by drummer Red Carter, guitarist Les Beavers, bass player Bob Duffy and Derek on the piano.

Derek Hilton, who is married to a Dutch girl he met when he was in the army, does not have a piano at home, so I was interested to know how he works.

“A piano would be no help,” he explained. “Arrangements that are good on a piano do not always sound well when played by a quartet. A piano would be a hindrance, and that is why I do not have one.”

Derek has a keen knowledge of music, gleaned since he began learning to play at the age of seven. “I read the music and can hear the tune in my mind,” the tall, bespectacled band leader told me.

Derek has to work quickly, for he spends so much of his time playing. Since his quartet first began broadcasting on the Welsh programme, he has arranged more than 30 Welsh ballads to suit his team’s style.

“I find Welsh songs are easy to arrange. They have a clear melody, and I enjoy playing them much more than some of the new songs which are being published today,” he said.

Derek explained: “The scope for arrangements in modern tunes is limited, but I can do a lot with Welsh tunes.”

He has the music for 60 Welsh ballads. “I think that most of the country’s folk songs have been published,” said Derek. “but I am on the lookout for some more.

“I would be glad if viewers would tell me of any lesser known Welsh songs which we could play in the programme.”

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RHYDWEN WILLIAMS is the sort of man who is never stationary for more than two minutes. To hold a conversation with him or longer than that it is necessary to follow him round.

So I did. For a whole day. I followed Rhydwen, producer Granada’s Welsh-language programme Dewch I Mewn and company’s representative in Wales, on one of his whirlwind research trips.

Hs cream saloon car headed out of Manchester towards the hills of North Wales on a fresh journey of discovery. It was the beginning of a new chapter in the story of Rhydwen’s constant seach for talent for his own programme and for the Northern magazine, People And Places.

It was only 8.30 am. But 40-year-old Rhydwen had already had breakfast and done an hour’s writing.

Rhydwen, born a miner’s son in the Rhodda Valley, believes in keeping fit. So he weight-lifts.

“Wherever I happen to be,” he told me. “Even by the roadside, sometimes.”

Rhydwen’s first call on the 233-mile trip was in Mold to see an old friend, Dr Haydn Williams. He is the man who just won his two-year battle to bring National Eisteddfod of 1961 to Rhos, Wrexham, the place they call “the biggest village in Wales.”

After another call in Mold and a hasty lunch in Denbigh he was off again. Into the hills.

The car hummed along A543, which crosses Hiraethog mountain. It halted by county council roadman Bill Roberts.

Bill, 43 and a bachelor, has been keeping tidy his section of A543 since he came out of the Army in 1946. He told Rhydwen: “I can’t imagine being happy in any other sort of life.” A few miles further on Rhydwen stopped again. This time he talked to 12-year-old Gwenda Williams, who sat astride her pony, Goldie. With her on Goldie’s back were her brother, Eryl, four, and schoolfriend Haf Davies.

Farmer’s daughter Gwenda is likely to find herself in the TV studio playing the harp, sending Christmas good wishes to the children of Wales and talking of her life on the farm at Bylchau.

Later, the car left the main road and edged carefully along a rock-strewn path to the farmhouse home of 16-year-old Ann Roberts. The sound of singing came to our ears as we walked to the porch. Ann was at the piano, singing a traditional Welsh air. Rhydwen was impressed.

We visited several more places and saw several more people.

But even after we returned to Manchester it was not the end of Rhydwen’s day. There was more writing to do. Songs, poems, children’s stories. Rhydwen has written about 400 in three years.

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