Following the Royal Tour

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 949, 18 October 1957, Page 33

Following the Royal Tour

om HEN the Queen makes her visit to America this coming week a New Zealander will be there covering the event for the Commercial stations’ Women’s Hour. Shirley Maddock, on leave in America, has been given full press privileges (although this does not mean, as so many Americans seem to think, that she will get an exclusive interview with the Queen), and will be recording as much as she can of the visit. The tapes will be airmailed to New Zealand, where the Women’s Hour will play them as soon as possible. Shirley plans to take her recorder to Williamsburg early on the day of the Queen’s arrival, to introduce this Colonial city and record the excitement of the occasion before she goes on to describe the visit and interview people connected with it. The introduction of American scenes is a familiar task for her, as listeners to her programmes on America will know. When she left her position of Women’s Hour personality at Whangarei to explore the big continent, she began to send back programmes. The first seven, American Roundabout, were set on the West Coast, where she introduced such people as the film director George Stevens, and the singer Margaret Whiting, as well as towns like Reno and Monterey. When she went East, Shirley Maddock began the series of fortnightly newsletters which have made the streets of New York familiar to listeners as she describes the places, people and events of her American life.