Radio
Men's talk
Mary Kenny What Tariq Ali said on Radio 4's Start the Week on 10 July should not go undocumented: the aim of the 'socialist revolution' is to undermine the family, dispense with the Church and subvert the media. You could really feel, over the airwaves, that the other people sitting around the table were quite shocked; nice leftish liberals like reporter Bernard Falk who has been jibbing away for years at anything he considers traditional or fuddy-duddy actually challenged Tariq, actually seemed on the point of contradicting him. Tariq, who doesn't exactly enjoy a mass following, nonetheless pronounced himself well pleased with his progress over the past ten years: the family was on the way out, the church was more or less dead, and .. • well' he didn't actually say that the media was subverted. It stood out a mile. Start the Week is nearly always worth lis tening to, though I think they should watch the balance of the programme. There was one Monday when it was made up alinost totally of re-treads — everyone on the programme had a grievance, and it was broadlY the same grievance: that the world was not paying enough attention to their egos. During the summer holidays, Desmond VVilcox, now astonishingly, famous for being Esther Rantzen's husband, is being the anchorman onStartthe Week and that changes it entirelYHe's much more up-market than the usual chairman Richard Baker and concerned with Serious Discussion as opposed to the professional orchestration of a talk show; Still interesting, but hard to get right: imagine the listeners prefer things as theY were. They generally do, following the sound instinct of Leave Well Alone. Still, I shouldn't complain about hol1da4 relief standing in for the regulars: I mYseJ have had the honour of appearing on th other radio talk show, Stop the Wee x (Saturdays, 6.50 p.m.). It was indeed a e e
privilege and an honour, but I imagine listeners like the regular team best, and f.ew women can participate in the conversation of men as subtly and as brilliantly as Anat till Leslie, the regular lady. I understand tha., the problem with women's voices is s regarded as a problem at Broadcasting House: I thought all that went out ages ag°' but apparently, no. The Problem is —ostensibly — that if a woman's voice is womanlY,; Cordelia-tike and attractive, then it does° carry authority; and if it carries authority; then it isn't womanly. Or, if the wools° 1,s articulate, she's 'aggressive'; if not, She 'dumb'. Anyway, that is what producers consider to be the Problem. The real problem is that most of these radio games, whether they be Start or Stop the Week, Critics' Forum, Just a Minute, or Quote Unquote are by definition male: they are an extension both of the rabbinical tradition of Philosophising and the jokery of the officers mess. All over the world men talk while women work; this is what Jesus was doing When Mary and Joseph found him in the temple. He was fulfilling an important male role — talking. On the whole, most women talk best in the company of other women, rather than competing with men, which is Why Woman's Hour remains the best example of women talking. A recent conversation (13 July) between Nora Beloff and Olga Franklin, with Sue MacGregor in the chair, — about the Russian dissidents — Was the best treatment I heard of the whole sorry subject. Sue MacGregor is a darling broadcaster (her solo programmes, ConPersation Piece, being repeated in a series un Wednesday mornings at 11.05 a.m. on Radio 4, are always super) but she should be more sceptical. She let Mr George Pinker, Princess Anne's gynaecologist get away a bit easily when she talked to him on Wednesday last week. Mr Pinker was saying it,ew wonderful epidural anaesthesia is in childbirth. He should have been asked, if it is so fantastic, why do forceps have to be used in the 80 per cent of epidural deliveries? She also let a ghastly sociologist tell us the week before how useless self-help gre'uPs were because they didn't `challenge the system.'
There, is, in the BBC, a naive awesolneness for the 'expert'. Ivan Ivanov is right: experts are a conspiracy against the Public. Also, many 'experts' are not objective sources of specialised information at all, but political lobby groups pushing a very Particular line. The Low Pay Unit (formerly iFbe Child Poverty Action Group) and the amity Planning Association come to mind, yet their spokesmen, and the information "leY provide are treated as gospel. ,,The programme about Maria Callas Vcadio 4) was breathtaking and just what a Profile should be. It told you about Callas's Childhood (she was fat, her mother was a L141% stage mother, Callas wanted to be °eautiful, loved, the queen of the world) and as much as is known about her emotic)
rhu life. Lord Harewood described her voice: 'dark, stormy, edgy, powerful' and effirelli described what lay behind her I
ove-life: 'She loved Onassis because he ?ave her a great emotional experience.' All it lacked was Philip Hope-Wallace's dAeseription of the Callas magic: 'Looks like 'Inthony Lejeune and sings like a cat, but is Perfection.' Musicologues might have Iv. anted a litte more of Callas actually singing.1 suppose I need hardly remind Musicologues of the Proms on Radio 3 currently, each weekday evening; for so many radio listeners, this is the great annual exPerience. George Gale, on his LBC phone-in dur
ing the afternoon last Friday was complaining away about the Irish, and how they shouldn't be allowed to vote in this country. George gets an awful lot of racialists listening and phoning in to him and I think it's quite a good tactic to divert the flak away from the poor Bengalis, and besides, logically, he is right, the Irish shouldn't really have the vote here. However, with England slipping downhill morally so swiftly, somebody has to do the missionary work and it may be that like the ancient Celtic monks we have been sent to evangelise the godless mainland.
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