All eyes will be on Andy Murray this week and perhaps next, but 50 years ago it was British women tennis players who were on top, with two of them fighting for the trophy in the final at Wimbledon. Christine Truman lost by a narrow margin but only after she fell and hurt her ankle. The victor, Angela Mortimer, afterwards declared, ‘Well, I knew I must make her twist …It’s not a nice thing to do …but I knew that if she has an injury I must exploit it.’
It was 1961. Who would have thought a woman could be so mercilessly competitive back then, years before the Pill and The Female Eunuch? And yet Mortimer, with her strawberries-and-cream accent, sounded entirely of her time, gently spoken, apologising for her victory, almost; yet with that thread of steel, not giving an inch.
We heard the clip again on Sounds of the 20th Century, Radio 2’s blockbusting series (produced by Heather Davies) that’s taking us on Thursday nights through the events of the past 50 years from 1951 to 2000, each year given a single programme, like turning over the pages of an audio scrapbook. It’s as if the Controller is trying to prove that the nation’s best-loved music station can outwit Radio 4 by coming up with an extended sequence of programmes by the end of which we are supposed to have changed the way we think — this time about the past 50 or so years of life around the globe (rather than the last two million).
Last week’s hour-long immersion of archive footage interwoven with the top music (this is, after all, Radio 2) gave us Yuri Gagarin’s first space mission — it took him just 108 minutes to put a girdle round the earth, which came out of the ether from a Pathé News bulletin and hit the ears as such a mind-blowing fact. Dave Brubeck hit the charts with ‘Take Five’, while Helen Shapiro at just 15 was taken to the No. 1 spot with the success of her single ‘Don’t Treat Me Like a Child’. Spurs won the Double with Danny Blanchflower as their captain, after which the commentator declared, ‘Modern standards of play are demanding more intelligence.’ Whatever did he mean?
Meanwhile South Africa declared itself a republic after being told that apartheid was incompatible with the ideals of the Commonwealth. In the USA, black and white freedom riders were viciously attacked in Birmingham, Alabama, because they were demanding the right for black people to travel on Greyhound buses. But at the same time President Kennedy was giving the speech in which he says, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’
The format works so much better than it would have done if made by Radio 4 because somewhere along the line a decision was taken to include no commentary, no analysis. Sometimes the lyrics meld into what’s being said on the footage, but there’s no conscious feeling of the material having been manipulated to present a particular big idea or great thought. Mostly it’s just full of surprises. The Beatles no longer sound so original after being reminded that the Twist arrived in New York in 1961 (and not with ‘Twist and Shout’). Tony Hancock makes a joke about traffic wardens — in 1961. Was parking a problem back then? Alan Freeman takes over Pick of the Pops from David Jacobs and, if anything, sounds even posher than Jacobs, with an accent that could cut through steel. When did he become Sir Fluff?
Radio 2 is attempting to turn itself into the BBC station of the moment, on Wednesday giving us its much advertised 2Day. Designed as ‘a celebration of its output’, the Controller, Bob Shennan, has obviously decided it’s time to assert his station’s individual character. Strangely, though, it’s a day all about the presenters, with not a social-action programme, or in-depth feature in earshot. Instead we have jazz wildboy Jamie Cullum riffing with ultimate smoothie Simon Mayo, while Johnnie Walker and Brian Matthew have been instructed to go at least ten rounds, slugging out the battle of the decades. Will the Sixties come out on top, or the Seventies? Meanwhile Claudia Winkleman (film and arts) has to find a way of establishing her musical credentials when pitted against Jo Whiley (ex Radio 1).
Will it convert anyone to the station? Or ensure the station’s survival in its present format (there is talk of a merger between Radios 1 and 2 to save money)? Putting unlikely people together can produce sparks, but you would have thought Radio 2 had heard enough of them after the ‘Sachsgate’ fiasco, when the experiment of putting two stags together in a windowless, claustrophobic studio without sufficient editorial control meant that the previous Controller lost her job. Is this designed for the listeners? To enhance their experience? Or simply a marketing exercpageviise aimed at impressing the BBC Trust?
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