(6) The Friendly Road and Political Manoeuvres

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 943, 6 September 1957, Page 12

(6) The Friendly Road and Political Manoeuvres

es AUNT DAISY worked happily at the New Zealand Broadcasting Company’s Station 2YA for upwards of two years before she was dismissed. She revelled in the work.. Radio was life, change, variety; with a mass audience in the background to applaud if one made an especially good broadcast. "We used to have ripping programmes," she says, "on Sunday and Monday nights. And we made wonderful plans about what we’d do if the Government renewed the company’s contract." : Most of this planning took place over coffee and sausage rolls after 2YA’s Monday night concert. Daisy, aided by her two regular singers, Mesdames Amy Woodward and Alma Andrews, prepared the food over gas-rings in the basemert below Waring Taylor Street studios. This was regarded by the ladies as an act of high courage. The basement in those days was infested with rats. "When supper was ready," she says, "we'd take it up to the children’s studio. Clive Drummond, who did the dance session, would want to join us, and he’d say, ‘Just a minute; I'll anmounce the next four dances straight off -just one great gobful.’ "Oh! He sounded so dashing and daring! I wasn’t very modern in those days, fou see. The first time I put

powder on my face was at 1YA, Auckland. But I rubbed it all off again before the Station Director should see me. I was old-fashioned." To gather material for her broadcasts, Aunt Daisy went most of the places reporters, go, and a few besides. She went out by launch for a first look at Wellington’s floating dock as it was towed into harbour on arrival from England, She rode the footplate of a locomotive on the Khandallah suburban railway, delightedly blowing the whistle at level crossings. She described in colourful detail the first opening of Parliament by the newly-arrived Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe. ARLIAMENT, ungratefully, set about nationalising radio. The staff of 2YA were loyal to the private enterprise. They had hoped its contract to broadcast would be renewed. "We didn’t know if the Prime Minister was on our side or not," says Aunt Daisy. "We expected him to speak in the debate. But when the time came, Gordon Coates never opened his mouth." The Bill was passed, At midnight on December 31, 1931, Station 2YA ceased to be private property. Daisy and her fellow-broad-casters began the New Year as public servants. It was a sad time. Radio was then a more intimate and personal medium. "Clive Drummond was_ everybody’s idol," Aunt Daisy recalls. "He used to end every night with ‘Goodnight, every-bocy-Goooodnight.’ Everybody loved it. But when the Government took over they stopped Clive from saying it like that. It was heartbreaking. People used to weep!" During this time 2YA’s staff had once to lock and barricade themselves inside the studio. Unemployed men _ were staging a march on Parliament. Rumours flew that they would break into 2YA, seize the microphone, and put their case on the air. Nothing came of this scare, but the depression which gave rise to it seemed to grow deeper and deeper. A

One day Aunt Daisy was called into the office of John Ball, the Station Director. "I knew it must be something serious," she says, "because he didn’t call me Aunt Daisy. He called me Mrs Basham." She was not wrong. Ball told her that he was directed to employ men. He could retain only one woman, and Aunt Molly was the senior. Last to come would have to be first to go. Daisy left the office with the Director’s good wishes and one month’s notice to quit. She wasted no time crying over her misfortune. Instead, she walked briskly along to see the opposition. Nimmo’s Station 2ZW was a small private concern whose main purpose was to encourage the sale of wireless sets. It had a large following of listeners and was 2YA’s main local competitor. The studio manager, Les Strachan, gave her a job for a month. T was Daisy’s first contact with commercial radio. There were no singing commercials, and it was against the law even to mention the names of products. But Station 2ZW made a tiny income from a dignified form of sponsorship"This programme of music by Schubert comes to you with the courtesy of Booster and Beaver, Limited." The daily routine resembled that of a latter-day American disc-jockey. Daisy had often to select her own records, announce them, operate the turntable, monitor the transmission and answer the studio telephone. It was, she says, great fun. When her time at 2ZW expired, Aunt Daisy returned to Auckland. She applied for work at Lewis Eady’s Station 1ZR, Auckland’s equivalent of Nimmo’s. Tom Garland, otherwise Uncle Tom;. told her there was a job, but the pay would be not more than £1 a week. It was barely enough to keep out the cold, but was still not be sneezed at. Daisy accepted. . Soon after, in 1933, the Government bought 1ZR and Daisy shifted, with her fellow staffers, to 1ZB, which had been

purchased by various citizens of Auckland for the Fellowship of the Friendly Road, Inc. She worked hard. She was an earlier riser than her colleagues, Uncle Tom, Uncle Scrim (C. G. Scrimgeour), and Dudley Wrathall. In consequence she drew the job of putting the station on the air each morning. She would let herself into the deserted studio, sit down at the mike, and salute the waking world with a hearty, "Good Morning, everybody:"’ It was the beginning, a quarter-century ago, of the greeting which still rings through numberless New Zealand homes. This cheerful salutation was the keynote of 1ZB’s day. Programmes were conversational and folksy, lively and topical. Daisy often visited unusual places in order to share her experiences with the listeners. Her visit to the rubbish "destructor" at Freeman’s Bay almost coincided with the friendly inspection by a wayward elephant from a visiting circus. In the monkey house at the Auckland Zoo she was too slow to take evasive action, and watched with mixed feelings while the monkeys tried on her hat. UT the climax of 1ZB’s week was Sunday. Uncle Tom conducted a children’s sérvice in the morning, with his well-known children’s choir. Other services were broadcast later in the morning and in the evening. The latter was followed by a programme of kerbside philosophy conducted by Uncle Scrim and entitled The Man in the Street. The title of Friendly Road derived from the station’s attempts to bridge the gap between differing religious sects-"You go to your church and I'll go to mine, but let’s walk along together." In the hard years of the early thirties, this fraternal formula appealed to a wide section of people. Aunt Daisy recalls that groups would foregather to share the station’s broadcast services. At the end a collection box would be passed round and the money sent in to help support 1ZB. Income from the only permitted form of advertising was so insufficient as to be almost unnoticeable. The Friendly Road station was true to its name. It was so friendly the studio frequently looked like a street on late shopping night. There was continuous coming and going, with donors bringing in clothes and layettes and the like, and those in need coming to collect them. And Aunt Daisy compounded the traffic problem by issuing an invitation to her listeners to come up and see her on Fridays, Friendly Fridays, she called them. ‘"‘We’d be so pleased to see you," she said. Came Friday, Daisy almost regretted her invitation. She had underestimated the magnetism of radio. "They all came," she declares, "and the lift in the Queen’s Arcade building would hardly go. The liftman couldn’t stand it. He finally resigned in protest." HE Friendly Road’s unusual brand of religion won it unusual support. Aunt Daisy~ recalls the following dialogue between Uncle Tom and a visitor (continued on page 14)-

The Aunt Daisy Story (continued from page 12) to the studio. He was a Scot with a purpose: "Are you Uncle Tom?" "Ves." "I'm a Presbyterian." "Oh, yes. I’m a Methodist myself." "T'd like you to know," went on the Scot, "that I think:a lot o’ you. I think you’re-a fine chap, even if you're a Methodist. I’d like to give ye a donation. I can afford it, y’know. I'd like to give ye something." "That’s very nice of you," said Uncle Tom. "We can always do with a little money. We've a lot of expenses." "Here y’ are, then, Uncle Tom," said the Scot. "I’m verra pleased to. be able to do this. Here’s hauf-a-croon." Among 1ZB’s services to the needy was the dispensing of quantities of a weed growing about Auckland which the Maoris call Kumarahou. Pakeha motorists who found it useful after a breakdown called it soap-plant, for obvious reasons. "The Maoris said that if you boiled the leaves of the Kumarahou and drank the water it was good for rheumatism and asthma," says Aunt Daisy. "So people used to bring in sugar-bags full. Old people and young ones with rheumatism or wheezing with asthma would come to the studio and the office girls would hand out portions

of Kumarahou." This herbal remedy was later to have an important effect on Aunt Daisy’s career. In her broadcasts, Aunt Daisy also campaigned against a plague of fleas which then afflicted the Auckland Province. This, too, brought a curious reaction. A woman visitor raised the question one day, and Aunt Daisy prepared herself to hear yet another cure for fleas. But the woman had a glitter in her eye like the Ancient Mariner, says Aunt Daisy. "A flea is one of God’s creatures," she said. "Now do you think we have any right to kill them?" "Oh!" Aunt Daisy was horrified. "But you must. Look at all these poor little children bitten all over. And their mothers worried to death about them!" "Catch them, yes," said the woman, "but not kill them." Aunt Daisy allowed the point to pass. Then, as now, it was a part of her personal philosophy to try to understand people, to see their viewpoint, and never, never to feel superior. "When I see a flea," continued the woman, "do you know what I do?" Aunt Daisy indicated limply that she couldn’t guess. > "I pick it up between my finger and thumb," said the woman, "and I take it to the window. I drop it out and I say, ‘God go with you.’ " "It goes to show," says Aunt Daisy, "how careful you have to be of people’s feelings in broadcasting." ISY’S build-she is under five feet in height-made her the occasional butt for studio humour. Uncle Scrim would tell inquirers, "Yes, Aunt Daisy’s about somewhere. You'll see her come in, a tall, rather massive woman, with a big bust." She took it all in good part, but one day when Scrim an-nounced-"with an extremely wicked smile"-that a man in his office wanted to see her, she knew something was in the air. "This man said there was an election soon," says Aunt Daisy. "Would I consider standing for election to Parliament? You know he never even asked me if I had any politics! He wanted me to stand for the Government party, I think it was. I said I’d have to think about it-ask my husband, and so on. "The same day Scrim with another wicked grin told me another man wanted to see me. It was the other side! They had got wind that the National Coalition people were after me. They asked me to stand for Labour!" Prodded by the horns of a sizeable dilemma, Daisy took her problem to Uncle Scrim, "Go on, Aunt Daisy," he counselled. "It's worth &300 a year. Give it a go." . "That’s all very well," she said, "but which side?" "It doesn’t matter which side," said Scrim. "But you want to be careful. They'll rake up anything you’ve ever done. Have you got a lurid past?" At home, Daisy’s husband also whooped with delight. "That’ll be fine," he said. "I shall imagine you at Bellamy’s, standing with your foot on the rail, having a quick one With Gordon Coates." In the end it was a third party, so to speak, who made the decision. "I was then writing a page of recipes for the Weekly News," she says. "They paid about two pounds a week, which was a fortune. I got only one pound from the Friendly Road, plus, I think, four and sixpence for each sponsored announcement. I didn’t want to lose the Weekly News column, and Dad said they might not want to. be associated through me

with Scrim and his side in politics?" Daisy decided to ask. 4 Henry (later Sir Henry) Rotten: Aunt Daisy remembers as a blunt, opinion= ated man of strong and dominating pers sonality. He greeted her brusquely. "IT understand," he said, "that you are looking for a Parliamentary honour." The remark made Daisy so angry she lost her nervousness. "Not at all, Mr Horton!" she retorted. "I have no wish to go into. Parliament, but I’ve been asked by both parties, What I want to know is whether it will make any difference to my position with the Weekly News?" "Tf you stand: for Labour," Horton told her, "it certainly will. I wouldn’t have the paper associated with you." "Thank you, Mr Horton," said Aunt Daisy. "That’s all I wanted to know. I value being on the Weekly News more than anything. It’s more important to me than Parliament." So ended the political career of Aunt Daisy. Was she ever attracted by the idea? "Not at all!" she says. "I wouldn’t be in Parliament for worlds! Scrim might say it was worth £300 a year, but what. is there in Parliament? You can’t do any good." It was better, Daisy decided, to travel and improve one’s mind. She chose a country where the clash of political — ideas seemed less frenzied-where the parties had been likened to two bottles, one labelled Champagne and the other Burgundy, and both empty. She bought a’ second-class ticket. to the United Seeeet. (To be continued)