Reportage

to confess to looking forward to insomniac I’m a well-balanced individual though with the programmes have been on air for longer old age when I plan to train myself to doze chips on both shoulders and not a zealot. Let than 40 years. They feel like Victorian off to ‘Sailing by’ and the late night ‘Shipping us celebrate the achievements of Radio 2, battleships sailing on majestically, Forecast’. Europe’s most popular radio station. By all impervious to transient changes of taste. means try the rest, including the ones with Think of ‘Desert Island Discs’ (1942), ‘Any Marjory A Greig adverts. Then come home to the best. Questions’ (1948), ‘Brain of Britain’ (1953), ‘The Reith Lectures’ (1948), ‘Women’s Hour’ * * * * * Max Inwood (1946) and ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’ As I write this, I am on the Radio 2 website, (1947, and claiming to have answered listening to Benny and the Jets from Elton * * * * * 30 000 questions). ‘Gardeners’ Question John’s O2 Arena concert on the BBC listen Someone recently observed that we never Time’ is very English anomaly. Like ‘The again feature. It sounds like a great concert. see ugly or unattractive newsreaders on the Living World’, this is surely a programme I know that it doesn’t have the street cred of television. Radio, of course is different. I designed for television. How does it manage Snow Patrol but it is great music and you can don’t have a clue what Charlotte Green looks to continue its existence on radio? It’s a hear all the words. Where were you when like, but her voice is a marvel, something to reminder of another pre-Radio 4 oddity, you first heard ‘Philadelphia Freedom’? make one feel safe and secure, like being ‘Educating Archie’, which ran for some years Of course, the other BBC stations have tucked up in bed with a hot water bottle. The with an extraordinarily talented range of their uses but only for specific purposes. kaleidoscope of voices is one of the tutors for Archie. But Archie was a Like a toilet brush perhaps. Does anyone attractions of Radio 4, each one with its own ventriloquist’s dummy. On radio. listen to Radio 1 these days? When you instantly recognisable identity (in passing, And when you get fed up with Radio 4 you eventually tire of atonal music on Radio 3 can anyone tell me what the memory can always complain to ‘Feedback ’. Nobody and endless political speculation on Radio 4, process is in this — how a few words spoken from the BBC ever apologises, or admits to it is good to get back to Radio 2. Like a well- down a phone are enough to tell us who is any error, but like Radio 4 itself, it’s worn pair of slippers, there is no question, it speaking?). I can remember distinctly voices quintessentially English: a well-mannered, is the place to be, today, tomorrow, and from at least 40 years ago: the morning civilised, exchange of views. In impeccable always. rumblings of Jack de Manio doing ‘Today’ received pronounciation English. There is something quite special and (all on his own in those distant days); the connecting with the past, about starting the wonderful journalist William Hardcastle on What is the matter with Radio Four? day with someone who I remember from my ‘The World at One’ — a medical school I’m not an old fart and I’m not an schooldays. I know that Terry’s other listener friend said that he was one of the few people old bore would agree with me that his wit and who sounded fat; or the patrician tones of Or a grumpy old bugger like observations on life grow more true with Derek Cooper on ‘The Food Programme’. Evelyn Waugh, each passing year. Like most GPs, I don’t Perhaps this is all a middle class conceit, But it doesn’t half stick in my craw! hear much of Ken Bruce in the forenoon but that visual appearance is a shallow quality, Jeremy Vine over lunchtime never fails to while voice is altogether more serious. From ‘Now we are Sixty’, by Christopher produce interesting debates before handing Without doubt voice can be very persuasive. Matthew (after AA Milne). over to the unique talents of Steve Wright The duo Flotsam and Jetsam sang on radio and the madcap Chris Evans at drivetime. (long before the birth of Radio 4): David Jewell Who could forget giants of the past such as John Dunn and Jimmy Young? Brian Little Betty Bouncer Matthews is back after a long illness. Loves an announcer Jonathan Ross on a Saturday. Bob Harris on Down at the BBC. a Thursday. These are household names. It is She doesn’t know his name not too strong to say that they contribute to But how she rejoices my understanding of what it means to be When she hears that voice of voices. British. Gentle, civilised, but with a hint of self-deprecating humour. Perhaps I am just being seduced by an Radio 2 is not all pink and fluffy. It also has endless supply of talk enunciated in what my the power to stir strong emotions. It engages wife describes as ‘English Fruity’. with the affairs of the day. Some of the If it were only mellifluous voices uttering evening magazine programmes have impeccable received pronounciation English gripped my imagination causing me to listen we would soon be bored. The glory of Radio to the end. Stories about Karen Carpenter, 4 is the breadth of content: news and current Pavarotti, and just last week, one about the affairs, documentaries, fiendish quizzes, career of the Sex Pistols were as good as comedy, soaps, drama, arts, religion, history, anything on Radio 4. and philosophy. Remarkably, a number of

British Journal of General Practice, November 2007 925