Will Waspe
One of the sufferers in the recent swingeing reorganisations and economies at BBC Radio London was my colleague lain Scarlet, who was ousted with remarkable dispatch with his 'Crime and Justice' programme which he has been broadcasting for the past four and a half years. When he walked into the studio the other day he was told he was sacked and that the broadcast he was about to do — live, as usual — would be the last. Offered £12 in compensation, Scarlet thought it worth taking up the matter with the Director General. He was replied to by Ian Trethowan, managing director of BBC Radio: "I am sorry that you are upset at the way Radio London handled the end of your long-standing programme item. The conclusion of a series of this sort is always a difficult matter, and the intention was to arrange it with sympathy and understanding on both sides." Waspe is curious enough to wonder how it would have been 'arranged' without that noble intention.
Retiring
A peculiar little performance in the auditorium at the Royal Ballet's opening in Battersea Park might have told an interested observer more about the world of ballet than anything that happened on stage. While everyone waited for
Princess Margaret (we always have to wait for Princess Margaret) in the second interval, Sir Frederick Ashton, former director of the company, returned and stood by his seat long enough for someone to recognise him and start a round of applause. The notoriously `shy' grand old man responded with many a regal wave and a surprised though delighted smile. In the last interval he must have been gratified to meet applause once more as he returned to his seat, and repeated the performance, greatly touched by.such loyalty and affection. The fact that the audience was actually applauding the conductor and orchestra at the time might have come as a.shock to him, but I don't imagine the vain old gentleman even noticed.
Sinking
There can never have been a television series that has deteriorated so sharply and so totally as BBC1's The Brothers, which has long ceased to deserve its peak Sunday-evening spot. Once a relatively interesting, nicely researched yarn about the road haulage business, it is now the sort of heavily-padded emetic pap that would, be hard to get away with on radio's Waggoners
Walk.
havingtalents My concern is for the actors whose and careers are being obliterated by
to recite thus humdrum trivia week after week, and my special congratulations go to Gabrielle Drake who had herself written out of the rubbish before the present series got under way. She deserved better luck than a flop in Reyes for her pains.
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