I feel an urge to enter (remembering to wipe my
feet) and join in a human giggle.
Mr. Ed Murrow in New York talked to Mr. Bing Crosby thousands of miles away in his Hollywood home. We saw Bing's full-size billiard-table, his nineteen golden discs given to him for having sold over ore million copies of each, and his large canvas of a hunting scene by Sir Alfred Munnings. Mr. Murrow and Mr, Crosby seemed to come closer to- gether, despite their continental separation, than did Lady Barnett and interviewer Berkely Smith.
Mr. Bustahi, in Panorama, engaged in an intelligent and revealing conversation with Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge. Mr: Muggeridge has mastered this apparently difficult art of interviewing. Politely he puts a clearly phrased and penetrating question. He then waits calmly for the answer. If he gets it, he goes on to another question. If he does not, he repeats his question in a different form. He never bullies and is certainly never\ineratiating. He pays all his subjects the compliment of assum- ing that they too arc adult. Other interviewers.
please copy. •
Sound radio has one interviewer who could also be studied with profit by some of the eager beavers who seem to regard an interview as a challenge to suppress the subject's • per- sonality so that they may projeet their own slick charni: Miss Nancy Spain. She is far and away the best woman interviewer I have heard on British radio.
The words 'And Radio' at the head of this column nag me. Many of you do not watch television and arc regular radio listeners. What can, or should, a critic do for you?
Very little. Radio is too formula-bound. You have to hear Hare A Go or Take it From Here or Any Questions? to get-the formula: then you decide whether it is on your listening list or not; then the same programme` is put on at the same time and the same day for your convenience, welded together by the aloof. patronising gentility peculiar to the BBC. The listener is conditioned to the formula of 'knowing what he likes.'
antique shop, as the well-meaning companion MI6 nudges and says, 'Why don't you have that?' But at the risk of irritating you in this way, I must draw your attention to two satis- fying programmes I heard on the Third, in case they are repeated: Sheherazade, by Tew- fik cl Hakim. translated and adapted for radio by Christopher Sykes. Fine words beautifully spoken by a distinguished cast led by Miss Mtirgarot Leighton • and , Sir John Gielgud. George Bernard Shaw was a patchwork por- trait made up of impressions by some who knew him. I listened to this because I wanted to hear Lord Glenavy sing. In Dublin recently he told me. in his dry, throw-away fashion:
'First time I appeared as a barrister I was alone before the Lord Chancellor on the Woolsack.
'First time I was involved in public affairs I was assistant to Winston. who insisted on my accompanying him to cabinet meetings until, after some months, he suddenly wheoled round and said, "You shouldn't be here at all." That watt the end of that.
'First and last time I was on the wireless it was as a singer on the Third.'
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