Radio
Famous faces
Michael Vestey
It was almost a shock to hear Kate Adie's measured tones linking despatches in the newly extended From Our Own Correspon- dent on Radio Four (Saturday). It took me back to the 1950s and I fully expected her to offer me a cup of Horlicks with the stern reminder that there should be no talking after lights out.
Radio Four presenters tend not to speak like that these days. She has perfect, pre- cise diction. There is nothing slovenly about her delivery and she reads a script with great naturalness. In fact, she has given the first two editions something of a lift which, judging by some of their materi- al, they certainly needed.
Her first programme kicked off with the mawkish Fergal Keane, the 'sobbing Celt' as one Spectator reader described him, droning on about the Northern Ireland peace agreement. He was back the follow- ing week boring us with his dental prob- lems in Jerusalem. I had hoped it might be lockjaw but it was some other molar com- plaint. One of the few reports that stood out was from John Simpson. He delivered an evocative description of how Moscow had altered since his previous visit which had been during the Cold War.
I have always liked FOOC and used to enjoy contributing to it but it can be uneven. Adie is a television reporter and Margaret Howard, the former presenter of Radio Four's Pick of the Week, now of Classic FM, says BBC radio is no longer interested in voices. It wants faces. She's right, of course, but there is nothing recent about this. It's been happening for years. She was complaining in the Daily Mail about the arrival of television faces to pre- sent some of Radio Four's new pro- grammes; people such as Adie, Peter Snow, Martin Bashir, Michael Buerk and Jonathan Dimbleby.
It is thought in radio that television faces increase radio audiences. They might for Radios One and Two but not, I believe, on Four. Much as I like Adie and Buerk I wouldn't tune in simply to hear them. As I've written before, BBC radio became so mesmerised by the dominance and popu- larity of television it lost its collective nerve. The people who ran the network overlooked the broadcasting talent under their noses and recruited people from tele- vision in the hope that some of its success might rub off on their programmes. It is rather patronising to believe that we'll only listen if we're familiar with the face.
Curiously, the one network, apart from Radio Three, that hasn't pursued this poli- cy is the youngest, Radio Five Live. Glanc- ing at the list of its presenters I can't see any who made their names in television, or at least whom I recognise from television. This might be because the first two con- trollers of Five Live spent their careers in radio and weren't bewitched by the box. One of its voices, Eddie Mair, is presenting a new programme on Sunday mornings on Radio Four, Broadcasting House, described as a 'fresh approach' to news. It is more a fresh approach to dogs' breakfasts, unfo- cused, dull and lacking direction. I won't say more yet as the programme can only improve. Can't it?
I've been gripped by Power and the Press, a four-part series presented by Anthony Howard on Radio Four (Thursday), not just for what it tells us about newspapers but politicians as well. In the final pro- gramme next week, In and Out of Love, the self-deluded Lord Hattersley says that the Sun cost Neil Kinnock the 1992 election. The truth is the country didn't want the Kinnock-Hattersley 'dream ticket', thank you, nor their policies. Even the then Sun editor Kelvin Mackenzie doesn't believe the paper robbed Kinnock of victory.
In an earlier programme Sir Bernard Ingham said both Harold Wilson and John Major got too close to the media. 'It always goes sour.' Mackenzie relates that the night of Black Wednesday Major telephoned to ask how he was going to play the story. `Well,' began the editor, 'I've got a bucket of shit on my desk, here.' Oh yes ... "And I intend to pour the whole lot over you.' According to Mackenzie, mimicking Major, the PM said, 'Oh, you are a wag.' Embit- tered old Sir Edward Heath tells Howard we have the worst press in the world and that newspaper proprietors 'have no inter- est in us as a country or our future'. Truly remarkable coming from the man who would destroy Britain as an independent nation, turning us into a region of a Euro- pean superstate.
Power and the Press, edited by Gwyneth Williams and produced by Mark Savage, offers a fascinating insight into the turbu- lent relationship between politicians and the press. It's always a pleasure to hear Howard whose knowledge of post-war poli- tics is immense, though I don't share his apparent suspicion of the media moguls. Whatever one thinks of Rupert Murdoch's tabloids, he did, as Lord Deedes acknowl- edged, save newspapers in this country from the over-mighty and sometimes cor- rupt print unions.
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