HUMOUR ON THE HUSTINGS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 541, 4 November 1949, Page 11

HUMOUR ON THE HUSTINGS

ROADCASTING is sometimes accused of taking the sting out of election campaigns, but then election campaigns are sober affairs nowadays, compared with what they were in the past. Certainly, speakers confronted with a microphone and conscious of their unseen and unseeing audience may be less ebullient (television may one day revive the art of platform showmanship), but if broadcasting is in part to blame for the comparative mildness of modern campaigning it can make some amends by recreating the hectic atmosphere of bygone elections, when speakers were less inhibited and audiences more unpredictable. Some entertaining material has been discovered by Bryan O’Brien in the course of research for a ZB preelection programme. A good deal of New Zealand’s political history is deadly serious, but there is plenty of comedy to be found if one takes the trouble to look for it, Much of Bryan O’Brien’s material has been culled from old newspapers which, again by modern standards, were sometimes remarkably venomous about politicians they disliked and causes they opposed. Old people, keen partisans in their time, have also been interviewed for the programmeamong them a member of one of Bal- lance’s election committees-and they too recall with relish some of the antics and the incidents which have no counterparts in present-day campaigns. The programme, Election and Political Humour, will be broadcast by the four ZB stations and 2ZA at 6.0 p.m. on Sunday, November 20.