Radio
Side by side
Maureen Owen
T have long maintained that the happiest 1 and most well-balanced type of woman is the genuine spinster. Having grown uP with a host of unmarried aunts, all energetic and excellent company, my experience has been that they do not go round weighing everyone down with their problems, form- ing pressure groups or running to the Euro- pean Courts of Justice with ill-considered complaints. That excellent programme Weekend caught the Dillon sisters recently, which is quite a coup as they have never been inter- viewed together before. Theresa, 86, is a professor' of physics; Oona, 80, ran the famous Dillon bookshop; and Carmen, 74, became a film art director. None have ever married.and all live agreeably together in a large and beautiful Edwardian flat. Their lives, both personally and professionallY, seem to have been extremely successful. It was clever of Weekend to find them as they now seldom go out except to Farm Street where even among that rarefied congrega- tion they cause quite a stir when arriving for Sunday Mass. Oona does the driving.
Although interviewer June Knox Mawer tried to say that they must have been in the vanguard of the women's liberation move- ment, they would have none of it. Theresa was entirely taken up with .pure science, 'abstract science actually', Oona, who started her bookshop in the inauspicious year of 1939 'with no good will at all', had a thoroughly good time selling books to peo- ple like Betjeman and Osbert Lancaster. Only Carmen had a spot of trouble, or what would now be the subject of a court action, 'I had to call myself an assistant for a long time because officially they didn't have women art directors, but I didn't really take much notice and it all worked out all right.' She went on to be come the art director and designer of such films as Henry V, Accident and The Go-Between. If there's anything the Dillon sisters dislike it's titles like 'Chairperson' or 'Ms'', 'Mzzzizz', they all went like a swarm 0' bees. 'If you're ashamed of being a Miss', you should have got married,' said one, 1 think it was Theresa.
I had not listened to Weekend recently as I had taken it to be a sort or What's On programme. Instead it turns out to contain discerningly selected material 03 various aspects of British life which are, either new to most of us or in danger 01 vanishing. It is on Radio 4 at 11.15 on Sun- day mornings; just the time when the Dili° sisters are liable to be in church. If anything, I underestimated the fascina- tion Jimmy Young's programme of poPola! music (Radio 2) seems to hold for P°141,- cians. Thirsting for converse with JirrnItY
last week were Tony Benn on Monday and Richard Wainwright on Wednesday, who was followed by Ted Heath. Peter Shore and Enoch Powell appeared on Thursday, and Roy Jenkins and Geoffrey Howe on Friday. By the time Jimmy had got Geof- frey off with a number called 'Don't Let It Steal Your Heart Away', housewives were phoning to ask what had happened to the recipes. 'Is it all getting too much for me, I ask myself?' remarked the genial disc jockey more than once.
I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue (Radio 4, Monday 6.30 p.m.) continues to be fairly good fun. Last week Willie Rushton and Tim Brooke-Taylor and their adversaries played `Mornington Crescent', the word game which is sweeping the country (or part of it), but which few people seem to know how to play properly. If there are any definable rules to this game, which for max- imum effect needs to be played in moods of deepest gloom or restless boredom, 1 would be interested to hear from anyone who can tell me exactly what they are.
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