Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 791, 17 September 1954, Page 28

Open Microphone

_ NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, * ON AND OFF THE RECORD

cc IS is Professor Shelley speaking. We would like you to go to Japan to open a radio station for the troops there." To Ulric Williams, working as a bank clerk at Napier in 1946 ("I hated the bank, too," he says now) these telephoned words from the then Director of Broadcasting in Wellington came as a complete surprise. He caught the next train to the capital, and soon found that his two and a half years of A.E.W.S. work in Fiji during the war had not been forgotten by the Army Department. When the Army and the NZBS put their heads together over the question of providing radio entertainment for J Force, Ulric Williams was the man they thought could do the job best. Ulric got back into uniform and was soon officer in charge of Station WLKW Yamaguchi, giving daily programmes of entertainment and news for

New Zealanders in the British Occupation Zone. When WLKW closed down six months tater Ulric Williams came back to New Zealand and was given the job of staiting the NZBS shortwave service, Radio New Zealand. This service began broadcasting to the Pacific Islands with the call-sign ZL3 and ZL4 on September 27. 1947, the 40th anniversary of Dominion Day. Ulric Williams has remained as officer-in-charge until the present time. But that is only one aspect of his broadcasting work. He is_ probably better known to the public at large for his comedy roles in such variety shows as One Minute, Please (which was recently heard from 2YA), and the earlier Time to Sing and Wizards of Quiz. He also has a strong interest in Maori music and he arranged a series of programmes called Song and Story of the Maori, which Radio New Zealand has broadcast weekly ever since it started. It has proved so popular that it is now being heard on some local stations as well. Then as organiser and compere of camp concerts he has become known to each new batch of 18-year-olds as they have been called up for service. Over the past two years ah important part of his work has been the formation of concert parties for Korea. Five parties have been sent from New Zealand in that time, and he is at present busy organising a sixth. He went personally to Korea with the second concert party, in 1952, and in September of the following year he went to England on board an R.N.Z.A.F. Hastings as NZBS representative in the London-Christchurch Air Race. In December of that year he became one of the two producers (the other was J. B. MacFarlane) who helped organise the NZBS broadcasts of the

Royal Tour. And last month he accompanied the Ministerial mission to the Cook Islands, where he took down on a tape recorder (he filled 20 tapes with Island music and interviews with local. personalities) enough material for a lengthy feature programme about New Zealand’s often forgotten Dependency. This week the NZBS is saying goodbye to Ulric Williams, as he goes to a senior executive position in the business world outside broadcasting. But although the NZBS is losing him his name may still be heard over the air in future, because ¥ since that memorable day in Napier } eight years ago broadcasting has got into his blood. 4

WALTZING MATILDA

SPRY ‘seventy-year-old is the author of the "Napoleon Bonaparte" stories from which the current feature Ininja the Avenger (see page 23) is adapted. Arthur W. Upfield migrated from England -to Australia as a vouth. A thirst

for adventure drove him outback, to jobs as various as mule-driving at Momba on the Darling

River, camel-driving, opal-mining and gold prospecting. A roamer by aature, he humped his swag all over the continent, absorbing its colour and atmo--sphere, meeting the men and women who were later to be featured in his novels, The aboriginal detective,

Napoleon Bonaparte, for instance, is eighty per cent based on a _ halfcaste he met, the son of a_- station owner, This aboriginal was also uni-versity-educated and wholly civilised. City life is Arthur Upfield’s aversion, and he never feels comfortable in city

clothes. He is a typical bushman in appearance and disposition. Nowadays he spends eight months of the year at his home at Airey’s Inlet, a remote spot on the Victorian coast, with the bushland at his back and the ocean spread out before him. Two of Arthur Upfield’s fast-movirig mystery novels have been put out by Perguin Books. His fluent, easy style has brought him world-wide popularity and the lacing of aboriginal lore in the stories gives them a quality unique in detective fiction.

HUNTIN’, SHOOTIN’, SHOPPIN’

x AL GRIFFITH’S greatest asset is probably enthusiasm, whether she applies it to her daily shopping session at Radio 2XN, Nelson, to her Hint

Hunt session on Wednes- , days, her Children’s Session on Fridays, or to her outdoor hobbies. Her greatest ambition? To land

an eight-pound trout after playing him in the Wangapeka River in the backblocks of Nelson. But for all her tramping, shooting and fishing excursions Val admits she loves cooking and new hats and frocks. When she left school Val Griffith went to the Nelson Evening Mail as general editorial staff rouseabout, then she worked in the cable sub-editor’s room for most of the war years. In 1946 she joined the staff of the Amalgamated Press in London as a sub-editor on one

of their many dozens of magazines. "It was an experience," she said. "But I couldn’t breathe in London. I felt as if? millions of people had breathed the air before I had and my lungs felt smutty and horrible." After a year as a shepherd in the Welsh mountains. she became deck-hand on a 35-ton ketch cruising in English, European and Irish | waters. Back home again, Val is enthusiastic about Nelson and the things she describes in her shopping session. "I get

so carried away,’ she says, "that I usually end up by selling myself the things I'm talking about. This shopping reporters job will make me bankrupt, but I love it." .

SUMNER ANCHORAGE

SUMNER, Christchurch, may seem an inappropriate place for a worldwanderer to settle down in, but it suits Allan Sleeman very well, because it’s not only places and events he’s interested in, but people most of all. That explains

his keenness on his job as radio features producer at 3ZB, Christchurch, All sorts of in-

teresting people have found themselves in front of his microphone, including Randolph Churchill and Lord Kilbrackep, great-grandson of John Robert Godley, founder of Canterbury. As a producer Allan Sleeman is a stickler for realism. If a man’s supposed to be climbing Everest, he’s got to sound like it, both through the use of sound effects and the conviction he projects himself. That’s why Allan will rehearse a tiny "cut" over and over until » it’s perfect, and he often takes his casts outdoors for greater realism. At 21 Allan Sleeman "had already travelled as a journalist with the Duke and Duchess of York on their New Zealand tour, Then

he left for Australia, where he did a series of stories on Sydney’s_ underworld. That gave him the itch to crack Chicago, then at the height of its gangster-ridden days, and he spent three vears in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The lively

interest he took in people and places reflected itself in the tales he wrote, and found a ready market for, wherever he went. It’s often been the accidental encounter which has sparked off a particular course of action in his life-for instance, the wanderings in Canada, which came about through sharing a shipboard cabin .with Big Bill Reilly, a "sourdough," or Alaskan veteran, and chief dog driver of the first Byrd Antarctic Expedition. For radio in New Zealand Allan Sleeman participated in the well-remembered

Challenege of the Cities programme, in which he contested for news honours with Jack Maybury, Selwyn ‘Toogood and others. His 3ZB Round Table was a happily-inspired programme and for four years, once a week, Al took the chair at these sessions of radio controversy which, as all radio people know, are notoriously difficult to handle. He writes his own scripts as well as narrating and producing his programmes for both National and Commercial Divisions of the NZBS. And he has an attentive listening audience in his own home, tooa wife, two Sons and a cat.