Belated Tribute

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 451, 13 February 1948, Page 8

Belated Tribute

HIS is a very belated tribute to a broadcaster who for a long time past has been nothing but a name to me. I can’t advance a reason why I have not switched on Tusitala before (possibly because the printed programmes don't. always state details of his broadcasts, and I like to know what I am to hear as well as who), but having heard him for the first time I am annoyed at the number of good yarns I must have missed. The one I heard from 4ZB was about a diver-not the marine sort in goggles and suit, but a swimmer who took a plunge into a bathing pool and didn't emerge again. He did this several times, it seems, vanishing into the water like a ghost, much to the perturbation of the one obser%er who saw him do it. The denouement of this tale was less exciting than its beginning; the incident was explained away as a prevision of approaching disaster, leaving the listener with the feeling that the same story has been written many times before. But I thought the narrator "one out of the box," a speaker with an easy, (continued on next page)

LL TT (continued from previous page) flowing style, who ialks rather than reads his stories, and whose pronunciation might well be taken as a model by announcers and, all those who wish to wean the average New Zealand accent away from Cockneyism, while avoiding the equally unsuitable over-cultivated "Oxford."

THESE. notes arO not written by the staff of "The Listener"' Or by any mernber of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service: They are inde- pendent comments for which "The Listener"' pays outside contributors;