The Common Touch
T seems to me that to conduct sev etal weekly radio sessions and. stil) hold the interest of listeners requires either complete detachment and insensitivity or exceptional resilience and awareness of public taste. The strain of selecting music, material and speakers for these programmes must be as wearing as being the gag-man for a radio comedian. Rod Talbot, whose Diggers’, Turning Back the Pages, and Men, Motoring and Sport sessions have been heard for so long, seems to hold his public as much by his "common touch" as by his skill in picking bright, out-of-the-ord-inary music. Even those who find Mr Talbot’s voice over-lugubrious get pleasure from his public-spirited admonitions to sportsmen, his range of material and the experts on all kinds of esoteric sports, crafts and trades whom he dredges up. These sessions have about them something of the atmosphere of a club, one in which fish-stories are solemnly compared and for membership of which bonhomie is the only requirement. And it is worth while listening through talks on swordfishing and motor fuels for the sake of hearing recordings as nearly risqué as the authorities will allow.
J.C.
R.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19500120.2.20.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 552, 20 January 1950, Page 11
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193The Common Touch New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 552, 20 January 1950, Page 11
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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