BIG FAN MAIL FOR FIVE BBC NEWS READERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 85, 7 February 1941, Page 11

BIG FAN MAIL FOR FIVE BBC NEWS READERS

Magic Voices Now Known By Names

INCE the news readers of the BBC began announcing their names with every bulletin, the BBC has had to open a new department to deal with fan mail, writes a London "Daily Mail" reporter. The names were given so that listeners might become familiar with their voices in case an enemy country tried any radio trickery, It was never expected that anyone of the five men reading British broadcast news would rival, let alone displace, film stars in fan mail popularity. But that is just what has happened. The BBC thought they had got speakers whose voices concealed their

personalities. They know better now. When Frank Phillips was taken off news reading recently, Broadcasting House was deluged with queries asking if he were ill or had been injured or killed. 4 The stream of tablets, mixtures, and prescriptions which flowed to Broadcasting House after the night that Stuart Hibberd coughed, was a mere trickle compared with this flood of anxious inquiries, Liddell-Dart Player The senior news-reader is 32-years-old London-born Alvar Liddell. He arranges the duties of all announcers, and takes his turn at reading the news, Alvar tried various jobs, including working in a bank and acting on the stage and in films,

before he went to the BBC as an announcer in Birmingham in 1932. He has been at Broadcasting House for seven years, and his hobbies are singing Lieder and playing darts. Alan Howland has a perfect recording and broadcasting voice. Many people who heard him reading the news for the first time, recognised his as the voice which had accompanied all the sports pictures in British Movietone News. But I wonder how many recalled the days around 1927 when he was heard as "Columbus" in the Children’s Hour? McLeod-Barrister The other day I was listening-in in a friend’s house, when over the air came the words: "This is the one o’clock news. .. ." and my friend interjected, "and this is Joseph reading it." Joseph MacLeod, barrister, author, private tutor, lecturer, and play producer, went to Russia to study what was being done on the Soviet stage. On his return, he broadcast a talk on what he had seen, That with, two further talks in the Children’s Hour on birds, made him an announcer. Joseph is a Fellow of the Zoological Society, Belfrage-Actor "The voice with the bite in it" they call Bruce Belfrage, who came to the BBC after 12 years on the stage in London, Canada, the United States and South America. At first he was in the Drama Section, casting and hiring players. He still does that in what is comically called his "spare time." Frederick Allen’s eyes sparkle with fun. His mouth seems to be just on the point of breaking into laughter. Freddie, former concert and variety artist, teacher of elocution, adviser to music publishers, radio actor and singer, is now first relief news reader.