Speechification

I should really save some of this for the archive but I just can’t. It’s too good. In this entry and the subsequent two you’ll hear a sequence of three factual programmes, all from one evening on Radio 4 (last night, in fact), that I guarantee will leave you speechless. A classier, more interesting and provocative factual line-up you’ll not find anywhere in the English speaking world. So, to start with, here’s Will Hutton’s revisionist view of nationalisation in post-war Europe, complete with a cast of contributors you’d normally only find in one place at, say, Davos. Fascinating (MP3).

Only Radio 4 could come up with a programme described as “A light-hearted look at the history of the footnote in western literature”, and on April Fools’ Day no less (MP3). Yet it has all the hallmarks of the well-made one-off: bizarre attention to detail, strange obsessives, and occasionally over-reaching presentation tics (I’m generally fond of programmes that examine things impossible to replicate on radio - this programme’s tinkling, sotto voce attempt at ‘footnotes’ is a good/bad example).

The usual R4 suspects crop up (Hello, Lynn Truss!) but so do more interesting types, like the logorrhoeic Kevin Jackson, who I could listen to forever, and the always-entertaining Terry Pratchett, who claims to have introduced footnotes to the theatre (Dr Evil’s father springs to mind). A pity more time wasn’t spent examining the future of footnotes, currently experiencing a bit of a renaissance thanks to Wikipedia and friends.

My first post to Speechification: I hope you enjoy. Expect more of a literary bent, perhaps.

My wife put me onto this one: really special speech radio from Ray Kershaw, reportage veteran. Somehow I missed the first two episodes of this series, called In Living Memory, billed as a ‘contemporary history series’. This one’s a quiet and mournful piece about the awful deaths of six young potholers in Mossdale Caverns on a rainy night in the Yorkshire Dales in 1967 (MP3).