Speechification

It seems to be my job to bring you the heartbreaking stuff round here (I think I’d like to switch to the cheery shift). This is an excellent programme about the Piper Alpha oil platform disaster, in which 167 men lost their lives twenty years ago. What’s fascinating is that the most affecting stories are not those of the survivors or the bereaved but those of the secondary characters: the hospital chaplain, the helicopter pilot… The measured contribution of the oil company’s PR—whose job was to tell the media what was going on out in the North Sea that night—is somehow more moving for its detachment (MP3).

This show went out as part of the Radio 4 Choice podcast, which is definitely worth signing up for. I was also interested to read that Radio 3’s contribution to the programmes marking the anniversary of Piper Alpha was a ‘real-time drama‘ set on that terrible night that went out on 6 July but I missed it and, obviously, it’s now been replaced by the following week’s drama so it’s gone for good. Do drop me a line if you saved a copy. It would be great to feature it here.

There is plenty of video relating to Piper Alpha at bbc.co.uk too: a news piece from 1988, interviews with survivors and widows, and a piece about the anniversary,

Britain (long before it was called Britain, obviously. I think it was called ‘Ugghh’) used to be joined to continental Europe (’Hagghh’). The land between the two long ago sank below the waves but down there, on the bottom of the ocean, is a pristine archaeological site. Not a narrow ’causeway’ as people used to think but thousands of square kilometres of settlements, paths, riverbeds and burial grounds. From speechification’s collection of ’scientists who can’t contain their excitement’ here’s a 2005 show about the exploration of this mysterious and inaccessible domain, only recently uncovered with the help of oil industry seismic data. Fascinating (MP3).