Radio
A world unfurled
Michael Vestey
Before leaving for a holiday in Italy I realised I had some unanswered letters and e-mails from readers to deal with, and amusing some of them were. I particularly liked the one from Peter Sandenbergh in Botswana. After complaining about what he called the 'patronising tone' of some World Service presenters, and a left-wing bias, he said, 'My Spectator often completes its journey to me by dug-out canoe and is then savoured to the roar of a lion or with an elephant feeding a few paces away.'
I have fond memories of Botswana. In the early Eighties the late Joshua Nkomo was forced to flee Zimbabwe, allegedly dis- guised as a woman, crossing the border into Botswana. The BBC dispatched me from Bulawayo, where I then happened to be, to find him. I spent a pleasant but fruit- less few days wandering the capital, Gaborone, asking if anyone had seen a tall, fat man in a frock. No one had, so his dis- guise must have been very effective. Mr Sandenbergh's image of reading the maga- zine in the deepest bush will also linger with me.
As for the World Service presenters he dislikes, I don't listen to it enough to form an opinion. I know that Radio Four runs it during the night but I'm not an insomniac yet and don't stay up for it. The last time I caught it during the day on short wave it suddenly vanished mid-sentence and I couldn't find it again on any of the six bands. That was in the afternoon, though I have listened to its very clear reception during the mornings. Although it is also on medium wave in Britain, where I live it can be very fuzzy. Still, I will have been able to hear it in Italy and can then respond more adequately to Peter Haley-Dunn in Budapest who wrote to me about a revamping of World Service schedules in the spring.
It is difficult for those of us in Britain, with its richness of domestic radio, to understand how important the World Ser- vice is to people overseas. So it must have been infuriating to discover that pro- grammes listed weren't there, as Mr Haley- Dunn discovered to his chagrin. The streaming of programmes into news and features has caused him problems as Budapest, he says, is at a crossroads of radio waves, creating confusion for listen- ers. He makes another interesting point: as a teacher, he finds his students won't listen to the World Service on their radios but are happy to do so on the Internet. Why this is, he doesn't explain.
Another reader, Edward Bell, has e- mailed to say that he believes some reporters, announcers and presenters are deliberately using the flat 'a' in certain words when they don't actually possess northern accents and this is driving him mad. He clearly wonders if a plot is afoot. I had also noticed something of the sort but presumed the speakers were of northern origin and were therefore talking naturally. I will have to mount a flat 'a' watch.
He is particularly exercised by a Radio Four arts presenter who, according to him, in describing a scene from a play by the Spanish playwright Ramon del Valle-Inclan spoke of a priest boiling the bones of his `ant' instead of aunt. He noticed, too, that when the presenter was himself being inter- viewed he sometimes uses the long 'a' as if this was his normal form of pronunciation, rather than delivering a script. This impor- tant development will be monitored with Sherlockian intensity.
He's also suspicious of a Radio Three presenter talking about a composer called `Mailer' and allowing Bach to rhyme with lack. If this is a growing fashion to avoid sounding southern and posh, it reminds me of a period a couple of years ago when sud- denly the glottal stop began appearing on the lips of certain Radio Four presenters. That craze seems to have faded for the most part.
Talking of watches, my Blowers Watch of the summer has come unstuck thanks to the tempestuous nature of the Test series against the West Indies. I had been hoping to collate some of Henry Blofeld's wit and wisdom on Test Match Special on Radio Four long wave, but he barely gets to the microphone before everybody is out. Although we want England to win, doing it inside two days is just not cricket. As I was abroad during much of the last Test at the Oval I shall have to save it for next summer.
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