Meet the LADIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 37, 8 March 1940, Page 47

Meet the LADIES

LTHOUGH there is no radio artist A better known, there is probably none less publicised than Aunt Daisy. She needs no advertisements other than those which her remarkable talents give her. The majority of listeners do not even know her proper name-Mrs. F. Basham. Those whose duty takes them among the people of 2ZB know her as an intensely vital woman with a personality as piquant and charming as it is refreshing. This, then, is simply a brief biography of a woman whose chatter on the air is so vital, amusing and human that, though you may not know her name, or even her face, you feel that she is numbered among your friends, A Londoner, and proud of it, she is descended from a very well-known English family noted on the father’s side for its prominence in the profession of architecture, and on the mother’s side for an equal prominence in law. After the death of her father, she and her two sisters, while still children, were brought by their mother to New Zealand, the family settling at New Plymouth. Daisy received her early education at the New Plymouth High School, where the winning of every scholarship for which she was eligible secured her easy entrance to the teaching profession as a pupil teacher at the Central School, under Hector Dempsey, who afterwards became one of the Dominion’s bestknown Education Board inspectors. She quickly graduated out of pupil teacher class, going on to accept higher responsibility for several years in various parts of the Taranaki province. At this time, as Miss Daisy Taylor, she first achieved popularity and recognition as an unusually gifted contralto, as the result of an inherited love of the best music, assisted by an intensive training in singing and voice production, She later married Fred Basham, engineer to the Hawera County Council, and later to the Eltham, Patangata and Hauraki Plains County Councils. Mr.

Basham was a pioneer of modern sealed roads in New Zealand. Aunt Daisy was first attracted to radio in the old 1YA days, which was then, with the other YA stations, under the control of the Radio Broadcasting Co., Ltd. Her first appearance before the microphone was as a partner in vocal duos and trios. She later relieved in the Children’s Hour at 1LYA with such success that she was officially given charge of a special children’s session at 2YA Wellington. Also, at 1YA, she gave lecture recitals on the lives of famous composers, these being very ably illustrated vocally and musically by the late Barry Coney and Cyril Towsey. Her staff appointment at 2YA, in between looking after the requirements of her "Cheerful Chirpers" in the Children’s Hour, necessitated the arranging of classical programmes and recorded music. The purchase by the then Government of the YA stations left her without a microphone, and it was from her entry to the B stations at this time that her great success began. Those were the days when the staff of 1ZR consisted wholly of Uncle Scrim (C. G. Scrimgeour, now Controller of the NCBS), Uncle Tom (T. Garland), Dudley Wrathall, and Aunt Daisy. Those were care-free days, when " everybody made their own arrangements" and, as often as not, had to make hurried excursions into other rooms for something to keep the station alive, when the record on the air at the moment had less than half a minute to run. In no time at all, or so it seemed, Aunt Daisy built up a big block of listeners. This was a very real asset to Station 1ZB when it came into being after the purchase by the Government of 1ZR. In 1935 she spent a well-earned holiday in Honolulu and America. She has a grown-up family of two sons and one daughter, Barbara, whose voice is frequently heard " chipping in" | with Aunt Daisy in her daily national | broadcast, and who accompanied her mother in her tour of America and England in 1938, Aunt Daisy made success--ful broadcasts from KGU Honolulu, from the Columbia Station at es, Francisco, and from KFI Los as well as from three different Chicago Broadcasting Stations and for the NBC and the Columbia Networks in New York. In London and Glasgow she gave talks at the BBC, and also experienced the thrill of a televised interview by Jasmine Bligh at Alexandra Palace. During her six months’ absence from New Zealand, Aunt Daisy was still on the air every day from all ZB stations, by means of travel talks which she recorded in Honolulu, Hollywood, Chicago, New York, and London, and sent back to New Zealand. It is, scarcely surprising, therefore, that this very remarkable lady should have been the first radio celebrity to be regularly relayed over the whole of New Zealand from Wellington to Auckland, Christchurch, and Dunedin. Indeed, Aunt Daisy has often been described as "the greatest woman personality that New Zealand has attracted to radio." (This concludes the series in which we have enabled you to " Meet the Ladies" of the ZB Stations. Hitherto they have been " just voices" to you, but we feel that having read | about them you will have come to know them a little better, and that their broadcasts will now have a | greater interest for you), |