GET YOUR NAMES RIGHT B.B.C. AND JOHN SERGEANT

Yesterday, (Sunday) I found myself shouting at the radio. My dander was up, 'it' was just so wrong.  I don't suppose I am the only one to  get annoyed with an inanimate object. 

There is a radio programme called 'Profile', during which some individual, not necessarily an amazing celebrity or anything, has the outline of the their life and marvellous activities almost laid bare.  Some of the narrations are done well. A few are not.  When that happens, why bother to broadcast the programme? The answer is, it probably filled a blank slot, or, stepped into a breach. 

I digress just a little.  The latest offering drifted through the waves via the sound of a 'bored-caster', who, was exceedingly ignorant about place names in the United Kingdom. The BBC used to have a pronunciation unit.  With the example of this programme, I can only assume, the unit has been axed.  Surely though, there must have been someone around who could have picked up on the glaring error.  

So, there I was shouting, "Y-O-U  D-O  N-O-T  S-A-Y   I-T   L-I-K-E  T-H-A-T!!"  The guy who was being profiled, was born in Scotland in a place that was mispronounced,  and he went to school in that mispronounced  locality.  And the next mis-pronunciation heard me shouting in sheer frustration, "You say it like this!" ........

John Sergeant, of more recent  dubious T.V. ballroom dancing prancing renown, than broadcasting prowess, it was inexcusable of you to tell us that your subject had been born in 'Ban-tchory'.   Talk about a talent for complete name distortion, you had it, and in spades.  According to you, the guy grew up in 'Ban-tchory',  in Scotland, and had also been to school in 'Ban-tchory'.  

Take note John Sergeant and the British Broadcasting Corporation; the 'ch'  in Banchory is pronounced like a 'k', thus, Mr Seargeant,  the place name should have been pronounced, Bank_ory...  Banchory, nestles in Aberdeenshire.   Your producers should have done their homework, and got you to correct yours.  Quality assurance was woefully adrift.

A HISTORY OF THE WORLD - BBC STYLE - IN A HUNDRED OBJECTS

There has been a BBC Radio 4 series titled 'A History Of The World In A Hundred Objects'.  Each programme is broadcast for fifteen minutes.  The BBC are currently broadcasting the third and last tranche of the series.  Each week  there has been a focus, such as a certain element of development, culture,  faith,  or exploration, through objects.  

A certain frisson is building up as the last - the hundredth - object that will bring us up to modern times, is not yet known.  Today I heard there is a short-list of five objects.  I wondered about the validity of the announcement as one of the five possibilities was a football shirt.  I am sure a fifteen minute broadcast could be devised around such an object, but would it be a fitting finale and descriptor of our predominately electronic times?

Having heard that the BBC programmes could be downloaded to keep, I searched for a link that would allow me to copy the episodes to my computer hard disk.  Failing to do so, I finally contacted the BBC.  It seems I may have misunderstood what  'downloading to keep'  means.   The programmes are not available to download in CD/DVD format. We can access the BBC iPlayer and 'listen again' to episodes, I was advised, through the following link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/programme

All that said, the episodes can be downloaded in MP3 format. and I currently have the episodes broadcast to date, on my iPod.  I will ensure I obtain all of them.

I have visited the British Museum where the objects referred to in the programme reside.  Time did not permit me to see as many of the 100 objects as I would have liked.  I have seen object 91, yet to be broadcast.  When it is discussed, very soon,  I shall listen and recall what I saw.  It will be the first time I will have been able to combine my visual experience  in advance of one of the broadcast episodes.

Museum staff say that there have been lots of requests for a CD of the BBC Radio series; they, like the visitors to the museum, (and many listeners to the series, I suspect) hope that a CD will be produced.  For maximum effect, it needs to be done really soon.

MEMORIES OF CHILDREN'S PROGRAMMES

Early children's television programmes were full of spoken received English, (previously known as the King's or Queen's English) which the majority of folk did not speak. Thinking back, the BBC 'Listen With Mother' radio slot in the weekday afternoons was equally as plummy and posh. While children probably accepted there was a bunch of chatterers who did not speak not like them, their families and their friends, the important thing was, the programmes were theirs, they belonged to them. It introduced young minds and ears to listening to stories and mini serialisations. The plum speech didn't matter, anyway, you didn't copy their speech patterns, you just learned to understand it....like learning another language!

Television was a similar story, but I think changes in interaction and speech patterns altered marginally quicker than they did with the children's radio programme slot. As we did not have a television in our house, I only saw children's programmes very occasionally. There was, I remember, the odd stripey-dressed puppet Andy Pandy and The Flowerpot Men in monochrome, jumping around inside a small square bottle-bottomed window. I have no idea what he or they did. 

When I became parent myself, I watched the children's programmes on television with the kids. The daily radio children's slots had vanished long ago.  Rosie and Jim,  who were lively-looking squeaky-voiced puppets, appeared on their brightly painted canal barge houseboat; a programme with Tony Robinson,(now the presenter of the archaeological digs T.V Time Team)  who, in those days, sat at a computer and during the programme he would summon the animation shape of  'Wordeee', to demonstrate the sound, the use and the writing of the magic 'e'.  

I watched the whole series of Sesame Street, it was brilliant for teaching young eyes, ears and minds all sorts of useful things, like sign recognition; snippets of various genres of music; titbits about nature and loads of activities. The little parable style stories, beautifully enacted by colourfully dressed animal characters guided by adults from many ethnic backgrounds, introduced children to the real multi-cultural world.

STUFF IT! I AM NOT INTERESTED......

The new digital TV was set to radio broadcasting this evening.  The 'real' radio in the kitchen was switched on too.  It became very irritating to have an overlap of vocabulary sounding out.  It was as if there was a permanent stutter at the ends of syllables or trailing at the ends of sentences.

 Knowing that it will be 2015 at the earliest till we are switched off from analogue radio broadcasting, I was relatively sanguine about the time lag in the two broadcasts.  If it is not sorted out by compulsory radio switch over dates I won't be so tolerant of it. 

Those of you living in the UK, will have probably become aware that there is a campaign underway to tempt the suckers, that's you and me, to part with analogue radios now.  Manufacturers and retailers are desperate to keep up sales.  We are told that our old analogue radios will go to a great cause, giving people, like those living in Africa, equipment they have not yet had en masse. Participating shops, we are told seductively, will give a £10 credit for a trade-in against a new digital radio. 

Excuse me for not being excited or seduced by this sorry sales pitch.   Stuff it, I am really not interested!  I can obtain at least five more years of use from my old analogue radio, it might even be longer.......  My radio has served me well and will continue to do so.

When digital radio broadcasting timing has been perfected, (if it ever is) someone can let me know.  I will need assuring.  I like Big Ben to be "boinging" on time, not several overlapping seconds late.  I set my watch by the final hourly chime of Big Ben.