Items From The ZBs

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 79, 27 December 1940, Page 25

Items From The ZBs

EWSPAPERS are continually hearing reports of odd happenings such as five-legged calves and showers of frogs; now 2ZB has unearthed an oddity which deserves a place in Ripley’s collection of Believe-It-Or-Not’s. In a Wellington home has just died a cat which was a faithful 2ZB fan. To be more correct he was a children’s session fan for, every day, five o’clock found him perched comfortably on his special mat beside the radio, listening intently to "The Young New Zealand Radio Journal." Recently he died, at the ripe old age of 13. * * * FRED HYDE, of Station 3ZB, who has a regular session "Fred Hyde at the Piano" every Thursday afternoon at 3.0 o’clock was born in England and began to study music there. Coming out to New Zealand he took up architecture, but returning from the Great War, he turned to music exclusively. He taught pianoforte, and conducted the Timaru Orchestral Society, which had a successful life for some years, and was featured in early relays from 3YA. In 1932 he left New Zealand, and after an interesting year on Norfolk Island, arrived in Sydney and plunged into the musical world there. He took part in repertory work, gained some useful experience in radio, was heard frequently over Station 2CH, and appeared in several early episodes of "Fred and Maggie Everybody." He was musical director and choir conductor for the Sydney Savage Club, and was made a life member when he returned to New Zealand a year ago. His picture appears on the opposite page. % * =X UNDAY, December 29, will see a programme entitled "Meet the Ladies Again" featured from 2ZB. Apart from its feminine interest, it is expected that a lively time will be had by all, so in the words of J. M. Barrie, Shall we join the Ladies? * * * 4 SECRET DIARY," a new programme which will shortly be heard from the ZB stations, combines personal revelation with crime thriller, as it pure ports to be the intimate diary of a woman who is tried for the murder of her husband, and whose daughter is chief witness against her. There are all the thrills and unexpected denouements one would expect in a feature of this type. * * * IR PHILIP SIDNEY is likely to be remembered as long as there is English history, and all because history has seized on a dramatic utterance on the field of battle and immortaliséd it. For it was Sir Philip Sidney Who passed his water bottle on to a wounded soldier with the remark "Thy need is greater than mine." But there was a lot more to Sir Philip than that. Soldier, courtier and poet, he was one of the brave band of Elizabethans who spread England’s renown through the known world. His story will be told in detail in an epi« sode of "Magnificent Heritage" from 2ZB on Thursday, January 2.