Radio Radio

Broadcasting a nightly evening show On BBC West Region for the past two weeks has put a crimp in the blog. Sorry. One more week to go and I should be back to normal.

The kind of radio shows I like to do are stream of consciousness, go anywhere programmes that you hear so seldom. To be given the freedom to broadcast this kind of show seldom happens. Everything is tightly formatted, all the music is pre chosen by a computer programme, every link timed, every piece of the jigsaw's edges smoothed so the listening will be lulled into believing what they are listening to is 'great radio'. That, of course, is bollocks.

I won't retread my arguments about this again, I've written about this subject before. What I will say is that sitting there for the past two weeks with 'nothing' is for me the most freeing experience a broadcaster can have. Some hate it. Like the writer scared of the blank page. I love it. A colleague said to me the other night, who gets the programme ready for you? I told her no-one, I fly by the seat of my pants.

She said, "How do you know what to say?".

If you work in radio and have to ask that question you wouldn't understand my answer.

I don't know what I'm going to say until I open the mic. No idea. The record ends and I start to speak....hopefully it is amusing, entertaining, bizarre, surreal, informative and worth listening to. I arrive ten minutes before the show, with a few notions scribbled on a scrap of paper and off we go. I go where the listener takes me and I lead them where I think they might like to go. It's a fool who expects the listen to come up with comedy gold but I've been doing this, on and off, for enough years to know how to create the smoke and mirrors necessary to make it work. It helps if you know your listeners and they know you. I'm in that lucky position.

Comedy on this kind of show works in a different way to the kind of thing we'd recognise on TV or the stage or film. Here the atmosphere is more intimate. You are talking to ONE PERSON. The text machine gives me access to comments and stories - but here's the mistake I hear so many young broadcasters make:

They read what is in front of them.

Not enough.

You need to play around with it, read ahead, comment, go off at a tangent, speak directly to the writer, speak to the listener, get conspiratorial about things, 'we are all in this together', it's you and me versus THEM, whoever they may be. It's those atmospheres that create the tone of the show.

I know I'm swimming against the tide of received management wisdom - they believe everything must be the same. I believe in constant surprise and innovation.

But then if I didn't believe that I wouldn't be a writer.

Long Ago and Far Away

Back when I was still at primary school kid's TV was a lure once the school bell signalled the end of the day. We'd run home to catch an hour of our favourite shows before heading out to play.

An hour.

Not come home, flop in front of the TV, retreat to the bedroom and fire up the X box and stay all night. An hour of kids TV.

There were usually two programmes and that was it, the end of children's telly for the day. Seems incredible now that kids have so much 'choice'. Of course that choice is to sit and watch five hours of Hannah Montanna. Canned laughter is alive and well and plastered all over American teen comedy shows.

For us, an hour was just enough. We'd fill our heads with Robin Hood and William Tell, The Lone Ranger, Timeslip, Just William and Ivanhoe and off we'd go to recreate the moves our heroes had just made - or kick a ball around.

The 'choices' available to kids today aren't choices at all. By giving them what they want, endless episodes of one show, we give them no variety. Some of our shows may have been corny but we had variety; Casey Jones, Circus Boy, The Freewheelers - one about a train engineer, one about a kid in a circus troupe, one that involved lots of speed boat chases and kids searched for Nazis in 1970's England! (Surf Nazis Must Die!)

And then the thing that prompted this blog, a show that suddenly pooped into my head after 40-odd years - Mr Piper.

Suddenly there it was, the opening song from the show and I couldn't get it out of my mind. It was sung by a rotund tenor called Alan Crofoot who was Mr Piper. From what I recall he introduced various segments, 'Down on Animal Farm' and 'Port of Call' I remember. I think there were cartoon in there too.

But how about that. More than 45 years on, not only I am singing the words to the theme tune (in my head) but I can remember bits of the show. I wonder if the kids watching TV now will have the same kind of fond memories of their shows as I do.

Hunky Dory, 1976 and The Long Hot Summer

I grew up in the 60's and 70's. A kid in the 60's - which looking back seemed more like the 50's, grey, old old cars, nothing open on Sundays, church. I was a teenager for most of the 70's, I loved the 70's. I can taste what that decade felt like; taste it, smell it, I can close my eyes and see it.

Ricky Gervais tried to capture it in Cemetery Junction, and went some way to bringing it to life. Some way, it has plenty of flaws.

But watching Hunky Dory, the new British indie movies, felt like I was back there, living it all over again. You sometimes wish you could go back - step into a time machine, relive moments in your life, or watch as a spectator from the future. Flip back, take a look, flip forwards. This movie was my time machine.

It is set against the heatwave of the the summer of 1976 that had we Brits gasping for water, filling bottles from stand pipes and being told to take baths together,  the birthrate went up 9 months later. Here, we find ourselves in South Wales where keen drama teacher Vivienne (Mini Driver) fights the heat, curmudgeons in the school and general teenage apathy to put on an end of year musical version of Shakespeare's The Tempest. 

All the songs are covers of classic pop songs from the 70’s, including The Who, The Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, and a brilliantly glamorous performance of David Bowie’s song Life on Mars (a track off the record Hunky Dory, from which the film takes its name). Not only are the young cast all immensely talented singers, in particular the focal student Davey, played by Aneurin Barnard, but there was also not a bad performance to be seen.

Beautiful boy Aneurin Barnard (he is going to be such a big star) leads the teenage contingent, growing up, having his heart broken, falling for 'Miss', singing like an angel. But this is an ensemble piece and every single character that speaks a line here has an arc. They all have a story, however small, they are all three dimensional. That director Marc Evans and writer Laurence Coriat have managed such a feat in such a small - but wonderful picture - should be shouted from the rooftops. It can be done, it can be done.

This is quite glorious, funny and dramatic, full of hippy weird and full-on racist attacks (the skinheads here felt horribly real) performances that capture the teachers of the time and the kids and parents too.

 

There were just four of us in the cinema, it was lunchtime, but laughter rang out - and tears were wept. It did that thing Alan Bennett does so well; shows you something you think only happens inside your head, or something only you think you've experienced. Suddenly you discover that amongst the universal truth up there is also a specific truth. 

It's supposed to be a feelgood film - and it is - but it has 'bottom' as they say. It really affected me; watching my youth up there on the screen portrayed almost perfectly. You never feel a period prop has been placed, a room decorated, a costume newly made. This feels like the real thing. 

It won't get much publicity - and what the tired critics will do is link it in some way to Glee. That's bollocks, this is way better, a marvellous little movie, a gem. When people sing here there are real musicians, playing real instruments. 

And it feels just like the real summer of 76. Go and see it - it deserves to find an audience.