Radio
Rough ride
Maureen Owen
t's been a long morning,' said Richard
Baker towards the end of Radio 4's first edition of Rollercoaster the other Thursday. But I thought the whole idea was to make a long morning seem like a short one. If the objective is to get the listener to whisk about only half listening to a stream of continuous chatter so that time goes faster, then Radio 4 have probably succeed- ed. But if the real aim is to make the listener forget to switch off I wonder if the BBC are not a little over-sensitive on this point. The most likely reasons people switch off, apart from the Daily Service at 10.45, are because they want to go out, talk to other people or simply conserve their batteries, rather than out of any deeply rooted disrespect to Radio 4 and all who serve on it.
Rollercoaster (every Thursday morning for six months) was like listening (or half listening) to Radio 2 without the records. The most charitable thing I can say about it is that some items were more gripping than others. These included a session with `Leonard', a one-parent family whose divorced wife won't let him see his little boy. Various optimistic and sympathetic women tried to tackle Leonard's problem, but as always when hearing only one side of the story it was impossible to arrive at any
already tried everything suggested. „i It is not a new idea to take nano' enemies and throw them together in front
mofenatn. Canuedkiefnicgehtiinngtihsennneamexeamofpleen coaster's set piece was to put Lady Olga Maitland and some GLC officials in a nuclear bunker with Pattie Coldwell as referee. This came off quite well. Shown round the £69,000 bunker Lady °Ig,a declared it to be run down, ill-equipped ano t Re rot la/ ei ti; a disgrace. Moreover it had external NVirl. dows. The finger of scorn was pointed at the council officials rather as though theY were negligent builders instead of high' minded ideologists. Given that LadY Olga must be the very stereotype of a nightn'are to a council worker, especially in CallIderh they did their number rather well.
As usual, Pattie Coldwell, Queen of the
bizarre, was undismayed by the fray. It bit smully in this boonker,' she remark'; and, 'Hold on, hold on, let Lady Olga 'av" a go.' There may be some who find pale Coldwell's accent with its flattened vovie (probably deriving from Scunthorpe) nhar-t- pealing. but a unique combination °f drollery and detachment plus a faint our °I.. the slagheaps make her a remarkable br°3,e caster. Good humoured and impartial, s"as has proved herself on such programmes _ You and Yours, which frequently teeters oil the brink of over-earnest self-righteous pod and would probably have been a g°°°, choice to face Arthur Scar ill on the recent rather disastrous Tuesday Call when Sandra
Chat came sadly unstuck. oot It has become clear that it is
necessarily sufficient to invite people of di,In fering views to take part in a programine ns order to produce sparkle. Recent of Any Questions have proved phis of
one particular programmeP,at duced some quaint surprises. Asked w ess',,
"0 the team did when overtaken by depr to Shirley Williams replied that she wenlt.le bed and put a pillow over her head, "`h she ..e understood Edwina Currie to say that sirlo cheered herself up by visiting disabled and r, mentally retarded constituents. As the 1:!ean son who had been responsible for insPirtri; her career, Mrs Currie all too Pr°111rs came up with Mrs Thatcher while veil Williams nominated her mother ine Brittain. As one can see, the Pr°gra,riliro- has deteriorated and probably w°°'` the prove until the excellent John Tirrigrhe joins it as chairman in the autumn. Ha ;iv. femalepoliticians shown a little more agination they might well have chosen r, an atinetiCdoelpdrweesIslanbto.th as an inspiration an a Radio 4' Nuffitd- The new Sunday serial on Ra7„,1„d, Curlew in Autumn by Edward Du) r'shecl started promisingly with an imPove one Scottish solicitor visiting agirl hospital with his unbelievably ru"' ,ant friend in order to trace an illiterate Petere, who is supposed to be locked uP there. Various mysterious ingredients were w, this convincingly into the first episode now, if need not stop you from joining it II°
°MY to discover more about the solicitor hero's financial position. This will take a lot of explaining as in my experience a solicitor may be senile, drunk or guilty of gross mismanagement of his clients' affairs, but he is seldom, if ever, broke.
Previous page
