Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 927, 17 May 1957, Page 20

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS ON AND OFF THE RECORD

AUCKLANDER

"CNE of the most inspiring things about my job is that I see good people trying hard." Jim Boswell was talking to us about his work as Talks Officer at Auckland and particularly about. broadcast. discussions, which he finds amongst the most fascinating programmes he has to produce. "They’re so

completely unpredictable," he said. "Here is a group of people

carefully chosen to represent different points of view. Each of them wants to do justice to his case-often it’s his one and only radio appearance. It becomes almost single-handed combat. You

know, when I leave the studio before they go on the air I feel as if I’m pushing off the Kon-Tiki raft." James Boswell-he’s. Jim, of course, to his friends-has been in broadcasting for 20 years, if you don’t count his earlier experiments with crystal sets. Before he joined the Commercial Broadcasting Service he was a free-lance writer, for like many other young men who grew up in the depression years he had no regular job waiting for him and no chance of going to university--which was something the badly wanted to do. As a free-lance he had quite a bit of success not only in New Zealand but in _ the English and Australian market. He still sends off an occasional ‘item, and writes and records items.about New Zealand life for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation-items that have the flavour of New Yorker reports from abroad. His 10-minute letter on Kawerau was entered by CBC for publication among the work of some of the great news commentators, and was printed in New York last year in the Grolier Society’s annual "Story of our Time." Another spare time interest ‘is’ local history-not surprising in a man whose great-grandfather landed on the beach at Auckland in 1842-and Jim told us he was amused to find that 1YA stands on a section which Willoughby Shortland resold after he had acquired it in his special position as a colonial servant. Jim Boswell’s first job was as publicity officer for the Commercial Broadcasting Service, but he was soon active

in programme organisation. Then ,after a few years he was’ able to realise his academic ambition-five years as a part time university student. He doesn’t make much of it now, but he admits they were pretty tough years. He had married Laura Dromgool, an Auckland librarian, at about the start of this period, and not long after graduation they set out to spend a year abroad. He free-lanced in Canada and in New York spent about two months working; in the United Nations Secretariat as an _ interne, nominated by the New Zealand Government. Apart from his fascination for his day to day job in the Radio Division, he was able to look in on some of the more dramatic moments in the life of UN-a Soviet walk-out and so on. From New York the Boswells crossed to Britain for two months in London, two months travelling in their own light car all over Britain, and two months on the Continent. "Incidentally," Jim said, "the old car is still carrying us around here in Auckland." Jim and his wife arrived back home on the 364th day of their year’s leave with only £2. "Of course everyone has been abroad these days," he said, "and there was nothing special about our trip. But I’ve found the fact that Ihave been away an enormous help in my job." Jim Boswell transferred to the Talks Section of the NZBS soon after he came back from overseas. First there was a short spell at Head Office, throughout which this "most Auckland of Aucklanders" pined for the north-or so he used to tell us. Since then he has looked after spoken programmes at 1YA and 1YC. There he gets a lot of enjoyment out of meeting broadcasting deadlines which would give many journalists grey hair overnight. Sir Anthony Eden’s arrival in New Zealand was one instance he mentioned. "We knew only at the last minute that. Sir Anthony was too ill to give us a separate interview, so we had to be content with a recording made under great difficulties at the Press conference. Doug Laurenson came back from the ship at 7.40 with a tape that needed much editing. Our story had to be fed to Australia at 8.15, then to Wellington, and to London at 9.45. Actually Radio New Zealand ‘had it on the air at 8.30." But Jim believes that broadcasting should be an _ up-to-the-minute mirror of the times, and we didn’t doubt that the zest and amusement with which he told us that story reflected what he really felt at the time. Be

FOUNDATION MEMBER

ind [|-THEL WALLACE, a. foundation member of the National Orchestra and well known to musicians throughout the country, has left the Orchestra to return to Dunecin, her home town. .

A popular member of the Orchestra, she was always closely associated with its

social life. At a farewell, the Leader, Vincent Aspey, presented her with a silver water pitcher and tray and spoke of her fine work as a violinist, while the secretary of the Orchestra’s social committee, George Booth, paid tribute to her valuable help. Ethel Wallace, who in private life is Mrs. John

pga began her musical career Westport, where she studied the visi Later, in Dunedin, she taught the violin and appeared as a soloist. She was at one time leader of the 4YA Concert Orchestra and was a soloist with the Centennial Orchestra during its Dunedin season, *

THREE LARRIES

"THE name, of course, ig Adler, of ‘" harmonica fame, but when he appeared at the Royal Festival Hall in aid of Jewish charities he showed three Larries (writes J. W. Goodwin from London). First there was the

witty speaker. "Artists are often asked to speak on all sorts of subjects and, such is our egocentricity,

we seldom refuse. Lack of knowledge is no barrier,’ he declared. "But I feel I can talk about Jewish childrenI've been one for so long." Then there was the musician. Pulling a harmonica out of his pocket, he played a moving German folk song which had been taught to him by an eight-year-old boy in a displaced persons camp in Berlin. Finally came the warm-hearted donor as he gave the mouth-organ to be sold for charity. A day or so later, incidentally, he quoted a leading London music publisher as saying: "If Gershwin came to me with his whole portfolio of songs, unpublished, I wouldn’t know what to do with them-they’re far too good for today’s market."

SPIKE

= \V HEN Terence Alan Patrick Sean Milligan told BBC listeners a few months ago what records he would take with him if he had to spend the rest of his life on a desert island, many people were surprised to find that he actually had been on a desert island, "when I was about: 14." This was Diamond Island, just off Rangoon, where he was brought up. They should

not have been surprised, for it seems_ possible to believe almost anything of Spike Milligan. Spike, who more than anyone else, is responsible for The Goon Show, that craziest of talking-type wireless shows, declares that he is a keen worker in the cause of trying to bring about the -downfall of the human-~ race. If he brings it off mankind will, at any rate, fall down happy-with a guffaw or a gurgle rather than a bang or a whimper.

Spike-the Only irue Living Goon (the others, wouldn’t dispute it)-is, of course, a wild

Irishman, though this doesnt stop him from being anything else that his scripts demand-such as Eccles, Minnie Bannister and Count. Jim Moriarity. In India, where he was born, his father was a sergeant-major, and Terence Alan Patrick Sean himself intended to be a pilot, and might have been if he had passed his examinations. Instead he

ended up in the artillery. As Open Microphone mentioned a few months ago, he met Harry Secombe in Italy during the war, and when these two and Peter Sellers got together a few years later that was that. Last time we heard, by the way, he had shaved off that beard to show a quite handsome face beneath -an intense face which, we're told, sometimes looks bitter and sad. There seems little doubt that Spike and his boys have. won a big audience in this country since they first assaulted our startled ears last year, and ZB listeners will have another chance of hearing them on Sunday nights in a Goon Show series which -starts on May 26, replacing A Life of Bliss. The ABC also. reported recently that it was repeating The Goon Show "in response to public demand." In Britain a few months ago its audience was 6,000,000, and its popularity grows in America.