Festival madness

It happened again on Sunday morning, that wish-you-were-here, tee hee hee style of radio broadcasting, guaranteed to infuriate the listener. Radio Four, in true reflection of the new British middle-class obsession, has become an ardent festival-goer, never failing to turn up with a tent for a weekend of greasy burgers and excitable chatter. In May it seemed like the whole of Portland Place had decamped to Hay-on-Wye for the book festival; in June you couldn’t escape the feeling that only losers have never been — and will never go — to Glastonbury. On Sunday, lazing in bed as woolly clouds raced past the window, I realised yet again what a failure I must be since I’ve never even heard of the Latitude Festival, let alone packed my tent and camped there for the weekend. Latitude? In Southwold? It made no sense to me. Nor were its secret rites ever disclosed, at least as far as I could tell above the din of laughter from the ‘live’ audience in the Broadcasting House tent. Did the producers decide to give it a go after discovering how ‘hot’ Southwold was going to be this summer, having been chosen by Gordon Brown for his summer hideaway? Or was this gallimaufry of inane conversations about conga-dancing between the tents after lights out planned long in advance?

The ace BBC reporter Charles Wheeler was far too much of the old-school (by which I mean he had the ability to combine objective, accurate reportage with real insight into the important human aspects of the story) to dabble on air in such casual festival chit-chat. This week Radio Four has been marking his death earlier this month with a tribute of repeats from the archives. Wheeler’s success also had much to do with his voice, that combination of clipped professionalism and yet warmth of character. On Monday we heard his Sony award-winning programme (made for the 60th anniversary in 1999) about the evacuation of women and children to the country on the outbreak of war in 1939. I hadn’t realised how many were involved — one and a half million, including 800,000 children from five to 15, who left home not knowing who they would end up with, or where. The story, said Wheeler, ‘is best told by those who lived it’ — and with impeccable skill he guided it along.

Wheeler understood the power of simple narrative, and the importance of establishing chronology, something that is disappearing fast in this age of cluttered website design and instant but often incoherent information, letting the impact of his programme build from the early meetings in May 1938 when the plan was born in Westminster under the aegis of Sir John Anderson, a former governor of Bengal. ‘He was not friendly in any way...he didn’t have the normal sentiment,’ we discovered from one of Wheeler’s interviewees, who had been on the original committee. ‘So why was he put in charge?’ asked Wheeler, purposefully.