Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 732, 24 July 1953, Page 24

Open Microphone

" NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD.

By

Swarf

¢€¢ CYKILL in driving a car is of far more importance than good driving at golf, tennis, cricket, or any other sport; and if the art of preserving life isn’t worth serious study, then neither

is any game." Jack Kennedy, who conducts 2ZB’s session For the Motorist (Mondays, 10.0 p.m. to 10.30 p.m.), and who made these remarks, feels very strongly about the car driver who _ takes his responsibilities lightly. He is better qualified to talk about motoring than most people because in his time he has owned 55 cars-sometimes as many as three at once-and 10 motorcycles; he has been a racing driver and has taken part in gruelling road tests and hill climbs. The reason why he has had so many cars is that he likes buying new models and then changing to something else when the novelty of driving them wears off. During the war he drove all over the Middle East. Mr. Kennedy started driving in the early 1920’s because he was "interested in skimming over the ground as rapidly

as possible." He had his first unofficial lesson from a mechanic friend while on a holiday.in Dunedin. He also did a little’ poking around with a very early model in a neighbour's shed, which he entered by removing a board in the back wall. "I was quite satisfied just to get the motor going, and too scared of the owner to take the car on the road," he said. I asked Jack Kennedy what was gained by punishing a car and its driver over a hill climb. His answer was that most climbs were short and exceptionally fast, claiming the driver’s whole attention to negotiate sharp corners and varying surfaces. "We like it; we also get a lot of frights; but we feel that the more people there are taking part in such tests of skill, the more safe drivers there will be on the road." What did Mrs. Kennedy and the family think about Jack’s hobby? "Since my wife saw me in one hill climb she’s not been at all keen about it. But she’s a golfer, and I contend that racing a car is eminently safer than walking past a golf course." The various motor clubs, said Mr. Kennedy, considered that the public should realise that there was more to driving a car than just fiddling about with gear levers, "I do not subscribe to the idea that speed in itself is the cause of most car accidents. The trouble is that too many drivers don’t know what to do in an emergency because they haven’t been told or they’re not interested enough to find out. For that reason I would like to see drivers given an opportunity to have advanced tuition after getting their licences." Mr. Kennedy added that his ambition now was to "have a crack at the Monte Carlo Rally." *

BUSY BIRD

| | UGH ROSS WILLIAMSON ("Jackdaw" of John o’ London's Weekly), whose play Queen Elizabeth has been

heard as a BBC ttran- x scription by many listeners to NZRS ctatianc

has written His Eminence of England, a play on Cardinal Pole. This forms the

second play, in time, of a tetralogy in which he has given a chronicle of the history of England during the 75 years between the fall of Wolsey in 1530 and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The first is a one-act play on Wolsey, The Cardinal’s Learning, the third Queen Elizabeth, .and the fourth, Gunpowder, Treason and Plot. Williamson’s new modern play, Diamond Cut Diamond, has just been published in Elek’s Plays of the Year. Listeners to 2YC will have another opportunity of hearing Queen Elizabeth at 8.30 p.m. on August 2. *

: SOIL EROSION

PIE is a complacent New Zealander who is not a little uneasy about soil erosion in this country, While the BBC ‘series of talks and discussions called

Man and the Soil (now coming to an end at 3YC) was

being produced, there came news of the discovery of Krilium. a substance which

the scientists hope will alleviate soil erosion. Professor J. H. Quastel, of McGill University, who spoke earlier in the series on the nature of soil, was associated with the original research on Krilium, and a recording of some of his comments on the subject will be included in the general summing up from 3YC on Monday, July 27, at 7.33 p.m. Ritchie Calder, scientific journalist and broadcaster, who acted as adviser in planning these programmes, will summarise the various views expressed during the series. Others taking part are H. N. C. Stevenson, Head of the Department of Social Anthropology at Glasgow University, and Dr. J. M. Mackintosh, Professor of Public Health in the University of London, He has also been Dean of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a member of the Expert Commission on Public Health in the World Health Organisation. Ritchie Calder worked with Lord Boyd Orr in. the Food and Agriculture Organisation ‘of the United Nations. He also undertook an investigation of the arid areas of North Africa and the Middle East’ for Unesco. Last year he was heard over NZBS ' stations in

Jungle in Retreat-transcriptions of three BBC dramatised programmes based on the findings of a United Nations investigating team sent to South-East Asia in 1950. Man and the Soil has now been transferred to 4YA for broadcasting on Wednesday evenings. "7 *

FOR JET PIANISTS

"HE music of Max Reger, German composer, is not often heard nowadays, but in his time he was regarded as a leader of the modernist school.

But for all his modernism he kept fairly closely to academic rules of composition. He liked poking

fun at the ultra-modernists. In 1906 he published a parody on extreme modern-ism-a piano piece called Ewig Dein, marked Opus No. 17,523. He indicated the tempo, "Faster than possible," and recommended that the piece be played backwards "to please those who hate dissonance and love harmony." As a man, Reger; who died in 1916 at the age of 43, lived his life with relish. x

FOR SPEED "KINGS

* x M OTOR-CAR racing is getting very 4 A popular in New Zealand, and at times there are between 20,000 and 25,000 spectators at an event. The sport

should receive a distinct fillip during the visit to New Zealand of the Queen, for there will

probably be an International Motor Race-the first of its kind in this coun-try-with drivers and cars invited from all over the world," Jack Kennedy, who conducts 2ZB’s For the Motorist session, told me the other day,

"SWEET" MUSIC

* ALTHOUGH he somewhat resembles a 4 e . noted wrestler who was in New Zealand recently. the hapvv-looking

character here has a different claim to prominence. . He is

Wayne King, whose recordings are often heard from the NZBS stations. He specialises in what initiates in the dance

band world describe, with a superior air, as "sweet" music. y

ETONIAN JAZZMAN

LD Etonian Humphrey Lyttelton, whose band of non-professional Musicians has represented Great Britain at International Jazz Festivals in’ Europe. used to plav the mouth organ

during O.T.C.. route marches. But the crash of hobnailed boots on the roadway was too

much for him, so he cast about for something noisier. One afternoon. after slipping away from an Eton-Harrow match at Lords, he acquired a trumpet

and set off for his uncle’s place, where he was staying the night. Up in the top-floor bathroom he propped the instruction book against the soap rack and after 10 minutes’ solid practising produced his first note. The first tune Lyttelton mastered was "Whispering." Leaving Eton shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, he took his trumpet with him into the Army and spent every spare moment on it. Recently he recorded two half-hour pro- | grammes of jazz music for the BBC Transcriptions Service under the title of Jazz Concert, and these are now going the rounds of NZBS stations.