UNSWEET TONES REMEMBERED NOT
The media: Paul Johnson
thinks voices a key to good broadcasting
TELEVISION is a visual medium but the element of sound in conveying its message should not be forgotten, as it often is. In the days when I made television documentaries I was irritated by the low priority given by the director to the sound engineer, as compared to the camera crew. He was often ignored or told to 'get on with it' and his efforts to produce a high-quality sound-track, involving re- takes, dismissed as 'fussiness'. Yet clear sound is essential to a successful television film and often when the results appear confused or difficult to follow, it is not usually the quality of the script or shooting but a poor sound-track which is responsi- ble. In my experience television sound- men are diffident, rather silent individuals, passionately dedicated to their work, who frequently are pushed around by the more flamboyant members of the unit. 'In the beginning was the word,' and the word is the key to meaning and so to control of minds, and thus power. The Jesuits, the great Counter-Reformation order, understood this well: they were fighting against forces which could appeal strongly to reason, the prestige of the new learning, to deep puritan instincts and the natural love of sobriety to be found among highly intelligent men. Instead they con- centrated on the equally pervasive appeal of irrational splendour, gorgeous colour and sound, and the excitement of verbal extravagance. Their churches, internal and external, their sung masses, and the man- nerist and early Baroque painters they patronised were histrionic almost to ex- cess, and the Jesuits encouraged the de- velopment of the most elaborate theatrical performances (of an elevating nature, needless to say) at all the courts they influenced.
This cult of the theatre was still strong when I was a boy at Stonyhurst and the Jesuits went to great trouble and expense to stage frequent and well-rehearsed pro- ductions, with elaborate scenery, profes- sional costumes and, above all, great atten- tion to speech. Elocution was very well taught by men who knew their business and for a time I had the additional privilege of coaching from the late Robert Speaight, then I suppose the finest speaker of verse in the country, not excluding John Giel- gud.
The Jesuits were keen to emphasise that there was, at any given moment, a correct way to pronounce English, and that pro- vincial variations had no claims. I believe this to be broadly true, in the interests of a national unity of understanding, for while both a Glaswegian and a Cornishman can understand perfectly a BBC announcer speaking received pronunciation, each finds it hard to comprehend the other. RP seems to have had its late-mediaeval ori- gins in the accent of east Mercia, which included London and reflected court talk. The system began to settle down in the late 16th century, when leading actors began to imitate court accents. We know exactly how Queen Elizabeth I spoke because Henri IV's ambassador did an imitation of her drawling vowels: 'Poor Dieu, paar ?ma foil' etc (though, according to John Au- brey, many grandees from distant shires 'carried their counties on their tongues'). English was probably spoken most purely, consistently and admirably in the 1930s when the influence of the BBC toned down the extravagances of the gratin and raised middle-class standards, through the public schools, to a uniform level of excellence.
Now where are we? In a state of growing confusion. The BBC has a pronunciation department for guidance on foreign place- names and so forth but there appears to be no consistent policy of imposing RP even
'Be careful — it could be a poverty trap.'
for news. There is a Scotch woman announcer, for instance, who annoys me because I am not always sure what she is saying. It is true that provincial accents can be delightful. J.B. Priestley, whom I was fortunate to know well for the last 30 years of his life, retained to his death on the eve of 90 a slight but unmistakable Yorkshire lilt which gave everything he said a succu- lent flavour of the Dales and mill towns, without in any way drawing your attention from his meaning. John Arlott was another broadcaster who made highly successful use of (in his case) West Country cadences. There is a young man out in the Gulf today, the BBC's defence correspondent Mark Latey, who has become my wife's favourite broadcaster for this very reason. Nor must we forget that funny Ian McCas- kill, the weather man whose odd manner of getting out his words — it is not exactly an accent, more a weird form of elocution — is the secret of his charm and appeal.
However, I admit I am sometimes so fascinated by the way he talks that I fail to take in the forecast. Therein lies the danger. I have now got so used to John Cole's amazingly thick Belfast vernacular that I follow what he is telling me, but for years the accent (not the medium) was his message. When I switch on to Anne Robinson's Points of View, I do not listen to what she is saying at all, being entirely preoccupied by the way she is saying it. Most unfortunate of all, I think, is that excellent television reporter Brian Barron, who always seems to pop up in places of unusual difficulty and danger, and who must be one of the most hard-working and courageous foreign correspondents in the world. But again, I find the way in which he pronounces his vowels so grating that I find it hard, sometimes impossible, to concentrate on what he has to say.
Good broadcasting voices, like good prose, should be transparent sheets of glass, through which the sense of the message comes through clear and undis- torted. It is no accident that all the best announcers today are old-fashioned RP subscribers. The best men, as always, are on the Third Programme. As for the women, I am hard put to choose between Sue MacGregor of Today, who conveys truth and intelligence in equal proportions, and Anna Ford, a rare beauty who also possesses a low-timbred voice of unusual clarity and warmth. Such people are the models on which the BBC should rebuild its once unrivalled reputation for teaching the British people how best to communi- cate with each other — no small mark of civilisation.
THE BBC authorities have now convinced me that they did not issue instructions that British troops were not to be referred to as 'ours', except in cases where confusion might arise with other allied troops, and I gladly withdraw any imputation on the Corporation's public spirit.
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