TELEVISION and RADIO
IT is ridiculous and unnatural for a man talking on television to an audience of a mere million or so to pretend to be chatting to a few people 'by their own firesides.' Yet this in their efforts to be `natural' at all costs is precisely what a number of talented and interesting television speakers do appear to assume. All this lighting up of cigarettes with a loud explosion of the match too close to the microphone, all this taking off and putting on again of spectacles merely in order to use the hands, all this grimacing into the eye of the camera is quite uncon- vincing and often embarrassing to watch. At the risk of stiffness it would be far better for the speaker who has something to say not to pretend at all, but to be as nervously direct as he feels inclined to bc.
Then there is another kind of pretence. Sir Malcolm Sargent is one of the few effec- tive straight speakers on television. Why then in his short talk before the opening of the Proms did he try to put over on us all that coy business about not knowing whether he was in his own flat or in the Albert Hall? Why also did he allow his pet budgerigar to crawl all over him while he was talking? Sir Malcolm is an experienced enough show- man to know the old theatrical maxim that a live animal always steals the show. Had he been announcing the discovery of a tenth symphony by Beethoven we would not have paid much heed. Our attention was all on the bird. There was an almost audible gasp of relief from all over Great Britain when it flew away. Let it be added that, when a few minutes later we really were taken in sight to the Albert Hall where Sir Malcolm really was concentrating on the job, all was forgiven and forgotten in one of the most purely pleasurable• half-hours of tele- vision broadcast music that we have enjoyed for a long time.
Mr. Aidan Crawley in his 'Viewfinder' programme has long ago acquired the gift of speaking really naturally and directly without frills 'or affectation to his by now surely immense audiences. In thisiihe is an example to many. As an interviewer, how- ever, and when his approach to us is more oblique, he is less at case. When in a pub in Galway last week his body was carefully leaning on the bar his mind was not even as comfortable as that, but was tautly set upon Johnbulldozing his way over the Irish peasantry, extracting from them the infor- mation he was determined to procure. Though it may not have been premeditated, Mr. Crawley's interviews in Southern Ireland threw a devastatingly clear light not only upon the difference between Celt and Saxon, but upon Anglo-Irish relation- ships over the centuries.
MORAY MCLAREN
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