THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 480, 3 September 1948, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

A Newer Spike MITATION is said to be the sincerest form of flattery, and in the series An Unusual Musical to be broadcast soon from 2YD, listeners may notice a_ slight resemblance to, those satirical purveyors of noisy musical nonsense, Spike Jones and his City Slickers. An Unusual Musical is played by the well-known Australian danceband Al Satian and his Hot Dogs (Blue, Spot, Fido, Rover, Shaggy, etc.), and from the first dusty bark it is evident that Spike has now got a strong rival for his position as otr greatest musical clown. Although Al Satian doesn’t use all the motor horns, anvils, firearms, police whistles, crashing. glass, washboards, gurgles, garglés, and evéry other conceivable human or inhuman noise that Spike does, he gets almost as much fun out of such songs as "Laura," "The Merry Peasant," and "Broken-Hearted Clown." The Hot Dogs introduce each programme with a chorus of yelps, followed by the tuneful ditty "You know nothing, we know nothing, the only thing we know is how to laugh, ha, ha, ha, ha!" Listeners may or may not egree, but in any case 7.30 p.m. this Friday, September 3, is the time to*tune in to 2YD for the first hectic broadcast of An Unusual Musical. Roll Up the Carpet F home dancing (hearthrug-cutting, as the Americans might term it) is popular in Christchurch, its devotees will have Eric Winstone’s Orchestra to play for them on BBC recordings this week. The band, which is made up on mainly orthodox lines-five saxophones, three trumpets, three trombones, piano, drums, and bass-also sports a vibraphone and, of course, vocalists. Winstone built up -his® popularity through his insistence *on using really first-class musical arrangements. Before he took up dance music as a career, he was a journalist, and for some time he wrote, all*day and played in dance bands for a good part of the night. His big chance came when he specialised with the Ppiano-accordion at a time when. that powerful if monotonous’ instrument suddenly became a craze with dancers. Station 3YA will present Eric Winstone in London Dances To .... (a session of modern dance music for half an hour at 10.0 p.m. on Tuesday, September 7. Motilda Mouse . ATILDA is a Mouse who Gets About. Her permanent home is behind the kitchen wainscot in the house of a family called Flitctoft, in Manchester, England, but as she shares a wanderlust with Bill, the Flitcroft’s sailor son, she joins him from time to time on his voyages, and has adventures all over the place. Being a British mouse, however, Matilda doesn’t let strange sights and places turn her head. Adventurous she may be, but she remains practical and capable at all times. The story of Matilda Mouse and her adventures was written for the BBC by Dora Broome and is told (in a rich North Country accent) by Wilfred Pickles, producer

of the famous BBC quiz programme Have a Go. Matilda Mouse will start in 3YA’s Children’s Hour at 4.30 p.m. on Wednesday, September 8. More Dumas HE BBC has followed up its successful adaptation of The Three Musketeers with a serial version of its sequel, Twenty Years After. The adventures of d’Artagnan and the three musketeers -the gigantic. Porthos, the clever Aramis, and the melancholy Athosand their defence of the honour of Anne

of Austria against Richelieu and the machinations of Milady, are brought down to the death of Buckingham in 1628 in the first book, and Twenty Years After is the first of two sequels with which Dumas gratified his readers. The second, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, presents « mature d’Artagnan, promoted to Captain, and contains the magnificent account of Porthos’s death. There are also at least 14 unauthorised sequels to The Three Musketeers, ‘the bestknown of which is The Son of Porthos, but these have all been proved to be from other hands than the master’s. In this BBC production, some of the parts are played by the actors who made such a success of the first serial, and it should provide just as good listening. Twenty Years After starts from 1YD at 8.0 p.m. on Monday, September 6. Why Is Humour? "| AUGHTER is such a spontaneous and fleeting phenomenon that it simply does not occur to us to reflect about: its causes or to analyse its nature, yet philosophers and psychologists have found it extraordinarily difficult to discover a theory which would cover satisfactorily all the thgusands of ssituations which make people laugh." In ‘this manner J. Laird, lecturer in philosophy at Auckland University College, introduced a series*of Winter Course Talks from 1YA on humour. In the first talk Mr. Laird spoke of some of the theories of humour, including Plato’s view that malice or envy is at the root of all comic enjoyment, the suggestion of Aristotle that laughter is usually caused

by some defect or ugliness which is not too painful or disturbing to the mind, | and that of MacDougall, the Scots psychologist, who considers we laugh at trivial misfortunes because our minds would be subjected to too much strain if we sympathised with everyone in their small everyday troubles. In addition to these three related theories, the, speaker mentioned a second main theory-that humour is based on incongruity, and a third, the Freudian view that laughter is a means of escape for repressed tendencies: Having thus introduced his subject Mr. Laird will, in his second talk to be given this Thursday, September 2, at 7.15 p.m., speak of primitive humour as found particulatly in animals and children, though adults are by no means excluded from his comments. Next week at the same time he will talk of sophisticated humour, and in the following weeks he will deal with some aspects of Western humour, and, to conclude the series, comment on the function of humour. A Speaking Bing RADIO programme in which Bing Crosby takes part but doesn’t sing may seem unusual to some listeners, but it is the case with The Man Without a Country, which will be heard from 2YD at 9.20 p.m. on Friday, September 10. This is a dramatized version of the classic story of a man’s love for country written by the American author Edward Everett Hale. It is the story of an incident in the Civil War which did: much to further the Union cause, and in this version, produced by Robert Welch to music. by Victor Young and his orchestra, the leading role is Ghee by Frank Lovejoy, and Bing speaks the linking narrative. (see ste graphs on page 21.)