TWO LITTLE WORDS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 668, 24 April 1952, Page 24

TWO LITTLE WORDS

N 1935 Selwyn Toogood (on the right) made his first radio | appearance in a 2YA play, Experiment X, and all he had to | say was "bwana-bwana." He had drifted into radio from ‘the \amateur stage. Came the war and on his return from overseas /he became interested in commercial broadcasting, appearing in — | 2ZB’s Breakfast Session. Since then he has learned the ABC of radio acting, having been anything from an Actor to a Bishop, to a Colonel. After the war he met Cynthia Webb, a Wellington trained nurse, and married her just after his biggest show, Posers,, Penalties and Profits. "She is my biggest profit,’ he told me the other afternoon, and my three-years-old son, Christopher, is my biggest poser." These days he is heard from the four ZB stations and '2ZA on three nights a week--Hit Parade on Tuesdays, Money-Go-Round on Thursdays, and the Quiz Kids on Fridays. "These programmes," he said, "all originated in New Zealand, and part of the id@& is to encourage local production. " As his job is completely tied up with radio he hasn’t much time for recreation. Once ski-ing was his favourite sport, but today it’s the theatre and: motoring. Golf?-he ought to have a good drive. "Haven’t the time or the money," he confides. I asked Toogood if his Quiz Kids had ever put him on the spot, as quiz kids are apt to do, and it seems that one very nearly did. When auditioning in Timaru, he was putting questions submitted by listeners. One, on a difficult musical subject, was answered correctly with surprising speed. Astonished, he asked the boy where he got his information. "Oh, I submitted that one myself," was the reply. Selwyn Toogood’s age? Thirty-six, and he’s still "the biggest. man in New Zealand radio"-+but that’s no new release. :