Radio
World-class
Maureen Owen
TI are as chickenfeed compared con s he complicated politics of Northern with the politics of the Middle East and idering the scope for misunderstanding and the fact that he has survived 11 known assasesination attempts, it was probably quit brave of King Hussein of Jordan to cto London to appear on last Sunday's !I's gl o bal phone-in. This was the second of the by Your World series transmitted jointly the BBC World Service and Radio 4. with_Technically this was something of a feat questions coming from Dubai, Siu,,gaPore, Poland and Germany and only a sP
cauer from Skegness sounding as if he were eaking from terrestrial space.
c. urrent But as a affairs contribution the programme has been shot down as bland,1impid and a Pushover for whatever line the international tstatesman concerned wishes to establish; he Main danger being that the caller is elawed by the stature and fluency of the whenalready guest. Something of the sort "ad already happened the previous week hi Casper Weinburger swept all before "Itn with a Powerful telephone technique.
t Weinburger, Hussein had never although taken Part in anything like this before and
„ "6-11 he did not reiterate his recent ::aternent that the whole Arab Israeli situa- ourOns is hopeless there was a justifiable tinge \-12 this doont and despondency to his responses. occasion Michael Charlton was more successful at peeling away the layers :ncl Putting the probing supplementaries: me might say that the King of Jordan barns everything served up on a platter .efore tackling the heart of the matter — tilsirect negotiation between Jordan and Nrael'• Hussein was stung but still hedged. preAti week another man with an insoluble 4. -ailr211:1aprrinet Fitzgerald (Sunday, Radio 11 ',I° GMT): and BBC World Service _un holiday in Antibes I made a point of "stetting to the BBC World Service 'as
received' rather than seeking out certain programmes and was struck as much by its air of complete reliability as by its im- aginative approach to almost every kind of feature. This is helped by its unrivalled net- work of foreign correspondents and the en- viable ease with which they are able to cast about the world for the incisive comment. In The World Today, for instance, a topical subject (e.g. Reagan's visit to China or the Olympic Games) is examined and put into historical perspective in an astonishing 15 minutes. The World Service uses the same correspondents as the home services so the knack must be in the hands of the pro- ducers.
The BBC's external services are not only designed for Britons abroad of course. For some reason not clear to me the World Ser- vice at Bush House receives an exceptional number of letters from Arabs: 46,000 last year. And it now appears that Colonel Gad- dafi's best source of information during the St James's Square shooting was gained from the BBC World Service. A light touch, born of complete assurance flavours most programmes and something I had thought impossible was a highly amusing and entertaining sports programme called Saturday Special. The edition I heard was interlaced with a lot of good jokes from Brian Johnson and Rex Alston and includ- ed badminton from Kuala Lumpur.
In fact everything is more global and one soon enjoys the worldly feeling which comes from the absence of petty trivia which passes for news over here. Once abroad it is surprising, for instance, how soon one forgets Arthur Scargill, who does not feature greatly in the world news, so it was a bit of a jolt to find him on a pro- gramme called Good Books in which he chose The Ragged Trousered Philan- thropist by Robert Tressel.
The only thing which appears to have gone adrift is the World Service's new soap opera, London Royal, about the not ter- ribly interesting inhabitants of a privately owned hotel thought to be modelled on the Goring. After only 12 episodes London Royal is off the air, not to mention out of business, having conveniently received a take-over bid. Ironically both the series and the hotel may yet be saved by those prolific letter writers to Bush House, the Arabs.
A programme which many have had reason to be grateful for when driving through France is the excellent programme of continuous classical music transmitted by France Inter from Paris. No applause, coughing or shuffling about in concert halls, just uninterrupted high quality recor- dings; ridiculously simple really, but one of radio's great successes. It is too late to ex- pect Radio 3 to emulate this example as there are now too many people in there jockeying for prestige. Looking at this week's Radio Times 1 saw that on Monday Radio 3 had a concert by the BBC Sym- phony Orchestra in Germany followed by a reading from An English Tutor in Czarist. Russia, followed by a Bartok Concert, followed by a programme on economic planning followed by a harpsichord recital.
True, Radio 3 does not advertise itself ex- clusively as a music station although its re- cent programming has struck me as increas- ingly eccentric, if not a mish-mash. It can- not be long before someone decides to give Britain a simple and uninterrupted classical music station.
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