‘Radio is a way of binding people together,’ says Lesley Douglas, former Controller of Radio 2 in a Guardian magazine cover-story this week celebrating the richness of British radio.
‘Radio is a way of binding people together,’ says Lesley Douglas, former Controller of Radio 2 in a Guardian magazine cover-story this week celebrating the richness of British radio. It could be the answer to our editor’s quest for what it means to be British, since 90 per cent of us are supposed to listen at some time to a radio station of some kind, whether it be local and illicit or the behemoths created by the BBC. Douglas was writing about what it takes to be a radio presenter. Unsurprisingly, she made no mention of either Jonathan Ross or Russell Brand (whose unruly antics cost her the job), but she concluded that the truly great radio voices, such as Terry Wogan, ‘make the everyday better’ by talking about the mundane matters of his life and making them seem universal. Maybe that’s why radio has become such an indelible part of our island story. It touches us as individuals but also draws us together in community, whether it be through a shared enthusiasm for hip-hop and Asian beats or for the dense thickets of ideas conjured up by Melvyn Bragg and his guests on In Our Time. It’s almost impossible to spend a day without tuning in to something that will take you beyond the irritations of this life.
On Radio Four this week, the return of Sue MacGregor’s The Reunion (Sunday) brought together five founder members of the National Theatre. We were like flies on the wall as they recalled working under Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic in the early Sixties. One night Maggie Smith had to die on stage as Desdemona in London and the next she was up north in Bradford trying to make the audience laugh as a character in Noël Coward’s Hay Fever. We overheard Smith and co. giggling helplessly as they remembered the extraordinary production of The Royal Hunt of the Sun in which Derek Jacobi stood on stage, half-naked and covered in gold paint as an Inca. Every night at six, the entire cast was called on to stage by the Tannoy system to rehearse the key scenes: ‘Everybody on stage for the Toil Song and the Massacre!’
Buried in the schedule later in the week was a fascinating programme in which the composer Jocelyn Pook traced her attempt to write a new piece for voice and strings inspired by Handel’s ‘Hallelujah’ chorus. First performed as part of the Messiah in 1741, I guarantee there’ll be a performance of it somewhere close to you in this Holy Week leading up to Easter. On Hallelujah (Radio Four, Tuesday lunchtime), Pook took as inspiration not just Handel but also Leonard Cohen, Stravinsky, a Hebraic version of Psalm 117 (the shortest hymn of praise in the Psalter) and the gospel sound of the People’s Christian Fellowship in Tottenham. She also talked to biblical scholars and musicians to find out why Handel’s chorus has become so hugely popular. The word ‘Hallelujah’, she concluded, is such a versatile and non-denominational hymn of praise to the divine that it’s impossible to sing without joy in your heart.
But perhaps the most provoking thought of the week came from a woman interviewed by our editor Matthew d’Ancona for his programmes on Britishness on Radio Four. She suggested that a suitable national symbol could be the scone. It sounds ludicrous, but maybe she is on to something. Once upon a time the production of a batch of air-filled circles of buttery dough, just firm on the outside, meltingly soft in the middle, was a skill shared by the Scots, Welsh and English. And as Dr Johnson once said, ‘The true state of every nation is the state of common life.’ It’s the little things that count, and if we’re looking for something that could truly unite us, let’s bring on the perfect scone.
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