11137 BBC LIVING AIR final 28/10/05 2:33 pm Page 1 The LivingAir Writers on Broadcasting 11137 BBC LIVING AIR final 28/10/05 2:33 pm Page 3 Contents Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Extravagant Sky, Worlds Near Introduction Living Air and Far by Fabian Monds by Anna Carragher by Anne Tannahill 6 8 10 12 14 Sam A.T.Q. John Christina Michael McAughtry Stewart Morrow Reid Longley 16 18 20 22 24 Jonathan Seamus Bernard Sam Marianne Bardon Heaney MacLaverty McBratney Elliott 26 28 30 32 34 Frank Graham Ciaran Annie Martin Ormsby Reid Carson McCartney Lynch 36 38 40 42 44 Medbh Malachi Paul David Anne McGuckian O’Doherty Muldoon Park Devlin 46 48 50 52 54 Glenn Colin Sinead Jo Daragh Patterson Bateman Morrissey Baker Carville 11137 BBC LIVING AIR final 28/10/05 2:33 pm Page 5 2 3 Extravagant Sky, Living Air Worlds Near and Far I found myself also thinking of the innovation that As a small child I had a passion for all things Chinese and makes the air alive, from Marconi’s radio experiments of one evening my father woke me up – at half past eight! – over a century ago between Ballycastle and Rathlin, to and took me downstairs in my dressing gown to listen to the creative and technical skills of today’s programme a programme about China on the Home Service. It was makers and broadcasters. From my childhood, I rare for anyone in our large family ever to have our remember well my own first hand-crafted one-valve parents all to ourselves so that evening – me, them, the radio receiver, with coils lovingly wound and capacitors radio – is vivid and alive nearly half a century later. carefully adjusted, and the excitement of listening to radio stations from far away. As darkness fell, the And suddenly, magically it was mine. Miss McArdle population of competing stations grew, and so did the entered a poem I had written in class for a BBC diversity of content. In today’s digital broadcasting Northern Ireland Children’s Hour competition. It won, world, choice and diversity can be somewhat and aged ten I came into Broadcasting House, Belfast, overwhelming, making quality, always the key, all the for the first time. I read the poem live on air and my baby by Fabian Monds more precious. by Anna Carragher brothers and sisters sat on the floor in silent amazement as my voice came out of the brown Bakelite box. One of This bouquet of memories is a treasury of literary riches, The BBC’s public service responsibilities are nowadays If there was a time before radio I don’t remember it. them cried, thinking I had gone to live in radio land. and its value is enhanced by the directness of their often characterised in terms of quality and in the values A brown, Bakelite presence, glowing valves and sounds personal connections with our lives, homes and of citizenship, culture, education, connecting with that crackled out of nowhere to live among us and By the time they were in secondary school I was at communities. The reflections and reminiscences are communities and a global perspective. This collection become part of our lives. It is Proustian in its intensity – Queen’s and soon after I was going through those doors mainly based on the content of remembered broadcasts, brings life, affection, understanding and relevance to Mrs Dale is my mother listening as she ironed; the in Broadcasting House, first in London, then again in on broadcasting itself and on consequential influences. these critical elements of public value. Our contributors rhythmic, helter-skelter commentary from Clones or Belfast every day. The children were right – I did go to The sense of gaining access to the wide world, and to a have made it so, through their originality, insight and Croke Park is the smell of my father’s Sweet Afton radio land. better knowledge of our local world, is evident generosity, and they are most deserving of our thanks. cigarettes; Two Way Family Favourites the noise and throughout the writings and perhaps is best captured bustle of Sunday lunch; Listen with Mother and by Seamus Heaney in these lines from his poem Children’s Hour my little sisters and brothers clapping ‘The Skylight’: and joining in the singing. It was geography – those strange, exotic places, Hilversum, Athlone, Cologne; it But when the slates came off, extravagant was history as presidents, prime ministers, poets, Sky entered and held surprise wide open. Anna Carragher musicians, film stars talked in our living room; it was Controller, BBC Northern Ireland So it is with The Living Air. The value of this collection education, concerts on the Third at home, music is in its literary excellence, eclectic span and individual Professor Fabian Monds and stories in Miss McArdle’s dusty, sense of connection and access. BBC National Governor for Northern Ireland cream-painted classroom. 11137 BBC LIVING AIR final 28/10/05 2:33 pm Page 7 4 5 Introduction This idea of the air being alive, full of crackling energy, For Frank Ormsby, his father’s ‘welfare wireless’ had ‘an The BBC’s crucial role as talent scout and coach suggested the title for the anthology. It’s from ‘Tintern aura of mystery and promise’ that ‘might give us access was warmly acknowledged by many of the writers. Abbey’, Wordsworth’s poem about the past being caught, to anywhere’. And while ‘the lit blips of the stations, A succession of producers taught Sam McAughtry that held and handed on by ‘something . ./ Whose dwelling London, Hilversum, Athlone, Helsinki, Moscow’ hinted ‘radio sets a stern test for writing. Every word must work is the light of setting suns,/And the round ocean and the at a wider world for Ciaran Carson and the late-night for a living’. Bernard MacLaverty discovered that ‘the living air,/And the blue sky, and in the mind of man . .’ shipping forecasts told Seamus Heaney that ‘the world more words you took out the better the story got’. would be watched over until you woke again’, for some Jonathan Bardon, writing history programmes for Arranging the contributions in roughly chronological writers it was the advent of television that brought the schools, was excited at being involved ‘in a collective order revealed an intriguing shift between the narrow outside world into sharper focus. Marianne Elliott’s campaign to show that the real history of an increasingly intimacy of older writers’ memories and the wider family bought the first television set in the fractured country was not dull, but could be gripping horizons of television-age writers like Sinead Morrissey, neighbourhood to watch the Grace Kelly wedding, and and enlightening’. And the financial side was not to be Jo Baker and Daragh Carville. ‘our house became a mini-cinema’. A few years later, sniffed at: BBC commissions were for John Morrow ‘an a harsher world was brought into the living room with outlet for my early work at a fraught time’ and for Sam by Anne Tannahill Michael Longley described huddling with his brother the assassination of John F. Kennedy. McBratney, it was ‘amazing to write something, send it inside a wigwam pitched in the living room, not really away, and hear it on the radio. And get paid for it!’ When Mark Adair of BBC NI suggested that I compile understanding the jokes on ITMA, but full of happy All too soon, instead of merely listening to and watching a short anthology of writers reminiscing about listening contentment at their parents’ overheard laughter. the news, we ourselves became the News. Martin Lynch, For all the writers, there was a clear link between what and viewing, it sounded like a pleasant enough little on his way to Broadcasting House to talk about David Park called ‘the perfect catalysts of the child’s project. The first indication that it was going to be Sam McAughtry recalled BBC concerts being broadcast a new community play, witnessed an assassination and imagination’ provided by radio and television and their something altogether more interesting was when I tried from the Ulster Museum seventy years ago, and he and found himself in demand for the news bulletin as well as own developing urge to write. And Paul Muldoon, the idea out on a few writers and realised that something his mother stopping what they were doing ‘to listen to the arts programme. Malachi O’Doherty began to beginning his career at BBC NI, found that the power was starting to hum – they could hardly wait to begin. Mozart, Bizet, Verdi, or to switch off Wagner’. realise that the apparently safe world, under the control of the imagination to ‘summon the smell of the sea . of Richard Baker’s civilised ‘balance’, was in fact the taste of herring from a few evocative words’ became Then the contributions started to arrive, bringing A.T.Q. Stewart remembered his confusion when his anything but safe. Marianne Elliott, studying in the US the underpinning for his work as a poet as well as with them a buzzing web of recollection and reflection. father said that he had just seen Franco (a neighbour’s when ‘the province erupted’, recognised that ‘from now a radio producer. David Park yearned to hear again, ‘through the dark tide nickname, as it turned out): how had the Spanish on only negative things would be reported about of the ether’, about the laughing policeman and the old general, whose advance on Madrid was being reported Northern Ireland’. Compiling this anthology has been not just a pleasure woman who swallowed a fly.