Dan Dare flies again

This lovely rocket-plane has sent me into several orbits of nostalgia. It’s ultra-modern, but doesn’t it look like everyone’s childhood notion of a space rocket…certainly mine, based on the 1950s comic-strip adventures of space hero Dan Dare.

I’ve always liked science fiction, and Colonel Dan Dare is to blame. I couldn’t get enough of his exploits in the 1950s, every week in the Eagle comic, and also dramatised on radio as ”Dan Dare, pilot of the Future”. He wasn’t on the BBC, but on the commercial station Radio Luxembourg, which broadcast every evening in English. It eventually became a purely pop station, beloved by all teenagers who found the BBC in the 1960s too staid; but in the 1950s it had radio quizzes and plays in among the records.

Dan Dare himself was played by British actor Noel Johnson, and every 15-minute episode ended with him, or his sidekicks Digby and Jocelyn, caught in some dreadful scrape, which they magically got out of the following night. Ah, more nostalgia…Radio Luxembourg, Station of the Stars, 208 meters on the medium wave. Anyone else remember?

Oh well, back to the present. This lovely 21st-century rocket-plane is Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, which Branson plans will go into space this year, with him in it. It had its first powered test flight this week over the Mojave desert. A jet-plane carried it almost ten miles aloft, then released it so it could use its own rocket to fly even higher; it climbed several thousand feet under its own power, broke the sound barrier, and finally glided back to safety on the ground. AOK…did Dan Dare say that? Probably not, he’d prefer “Jolly good show.” Everyone involved with the test said the new ship had passed an important milestone on its route into space.

Hundreds of would-be space tourists have already signed up to travel on Branson’s new craft when it’s in service. They’ll go high enough above the earth to see its curvature, and to feel the amazing sensation of being weightless. I’m green with envy – at two hundred thousand dollars a trip, it’s way too expensive for me. But I can dream, can’t I? One day, if I sell a million books, or a bunch of film rights, maybe I can scrape together the fare, and I’ll join that queue. Till then, I’ll watch with admiration as Richard Branson and his team turn science fiction into fact.

I wonder if any of them ever read Dan Dare stories when they were young?

Long live the BBC

It’s just 90 years to the day since the BBC sent out its first broadcast. That’s something well worth celebrating.

Oh yes, in spite of its present troubles, the BBC is still the best broadcasting organisation in the world. I know. I’m not only an enthusiastic listener and viewer, but I’ve worked for it as a freelance radio reporter and programme maker over more than 40 years – and I still do very occasional pieces on air now. I’m proud of that.

Of course I’m angered and saddened by recent revelations: deplorable not-very-investigative journalism that any cub reporter would be ashamed of, and horrifying stories of admired stars abusing their position in order to abuse youngsters. These are disappointing and sickening and just plain wrong. They must be investigated, the faults found and corrected, those responsible named and punished.

But while this is being done, let’s not forget the good things about the BBC. Most of us who contribute to it work hard and with integrity. We do our very best and we achieve good results. We give information and advice, we try to sort truth from lies and to see justice done…and on the lighter side, we stimulate all the arts, we amuse and entertain.

I’ve broadcast mostly for Radio 4 current affairs and magazine programmes, like “Woman’s Hour”, “You and Yours”, and one of my favourites, “In Touch”, the weekly magazine aimed at blind and partially sighted listeners…I say aimed at, but it has a widely varied audience, and it’s been going for 50 years, a respectable age even for a veteran corporation like the Beeb.

I’ve covered every topic from aviation to zoo-keeping, I’ve collected and distilled expert advice on everything from designing a new garden to using computers when you can’t see to read the screen.
I’ve done my share of digging out secrets that large organisations would sooner have kept hidden, and helping individuals get redress when treated by the authorities with neglect or stupidity or callousness. I’ve interviewed explorers and folk singers and inventors and a lion tamer and a bomb disposal expert and many other extraordinary people. I’ve enjoyed every minute.

AND I haven’t accused anyone of wrongdoing without checking my facts fully, or bribed or corrupted anyone, or been bribed or corrupted myself. I hope that I was a broadcaster that listeners didn’t rush to switch off, and that my radio colleagues thought of as honest and reliable.
I’ve turned my energies to mystery writing these days. But the BBC’s multitude of programmes are still full of reporters and investigators who work to high standards and believe in them…you can hear and see them every day. While that’s so, despite occasional rotten apples that have to be thrown out of the barrel, the BBC will be safe.

Many happy returns, BBC. May you still be here in another 90 years, and still able to show the rest of the world how broadcasting should be done.

The delight of being read to

I’ve a treat in store this week. I’m taking part in a BBC radio programme where three confirmed bookworms discuss audiobooks.

In fact the treat has already begun, because each of us was asked to review something we regard as a “comfort read”, and each of us was expected to read the others’ choices too. So I’ve  experienced the delight of having three good novels read to me, while assuring myself and everyone else that I’m working.

My choice is set in West Germany just after World War 2, a Bernie Gunther novel by Philip Kerr. The other two bookworms chose respectively an Albert Campion golden oldie by Margery Allingham, and a Finn McLeod Hebridean mystery by Peter May. All cracking good stories, superbly read by top-class actors.

I think most people enjoy audiobooks. There’s nothing better for whiling away a long journey or for entertainment during a sleepless night…or just for sitting comfortably by the fire after a busy day, being whisked away to another world.

And for me, there’s a special nostalgia attached to hearing a book read aloud. It takes me back to my childhood when my mother used to read to me, something we both enjoyed long after I could, and did, read for myself. She was good at it, and made the books come alive for me. I recall a bout of chicken-pox which kept me off school when I was about nine, when she read me Kipling’s Jungle Book. Magic…I’ve been a fan of Kipling ever since. And later, when I was at University studying history, she was interested in the set texts I had to get through in the vacations, and read me some of those too – I remember her almost declaiming the rolling cadences of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France.

But no Mowgli or Marie Antoinette on this week’s radio programme. It’ll very definitely be mystery time. It’s odd that all three of us have quite independently chosen our comfort reads from the crime-fiction genre. I for one don’t find it easy to explain; it’s just that, in the time-honoured phrase, “I know what I like.” Maybe we’ll get round to discussing why tales of murder and mayhem should be so satisfying. As a mystery writer and reader, it’s a question I’d like to know the answer to.

The broadcast by the way is this week’s BBC In Touch programme on February 28; In Touch goes out weekly on Radio 4 every Tuesday evening at 8.40 GMT. If you can’t catch it then, the BBC has a “listen again” feature through its special software, iPlayer, and it also provides podcasts. Check out www.bbc.co.uk and follow the links to In Touch.

So you’ve no excuse for missing it…unless, of course, you’re too busy listening to audiobooks to turn on the radio!

Sing an old song

It must be the onset of Christmas that’s making me think of old times and old songs, and I don’t just mean “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” or “While Shepherds Washed their Socks by Night.”

I’ve had a great old music-hall comedy number going round my head all day. Don’t ask me what triggered it, I haven’t heard or sung it for years, but I used to love singing it in the days when I belonged to a concert party and we toured round raising money for charity. It’s a darkly humorous tale of noir crime, and it might make a good horror movie. (Probably already has.) The scene: an old-fashioned fish-and-chip shop. The cast: a chorus of lovable (I think) cockney characters  singing to a waltz-time tune:

Put away the chip-chopper, Charlie,
We’re frying the guv’nor tonight.
There he was standing a-chopping up chips
When he puts his foot out and suddenly slips.
Right into the boiling hot dripping,
He’s tumbled in heels over head…
So put away the chip-chopper, Charlie,
We’re serving the guv’nor instead.

There are several verses – if you google, you’ll find Max Bygraves singing it on YouTube, which makes a nice change from his soppier ditties, like “I’m a blue tooth-brush, you’re a pink tooth-brush” (or is it the other way round?) But I’m sure it goes back way beyond good old Max.

Remembering entertainers called Max, here’s another bit of music-hall nonsense, more of a poem than an aria, from the “cheeky chappie” Max Miller. He was a star comedian, a master of innuendo who sailed very close to the wind of correctness in 1930s and 1940s Britain, and in so doing proved that you don’t have to be aggressively shocking to be funny…something that some present-day so-called entertainers could do to take on board.

One of my favourites is this -  shall we call it an ode to romance?

I like the girls who do,
I like the girls who don’t.
I hate the girl who says she will
And then she says she won’t.
But the girl I like the best –
And I know you’ll say I’m right –
Is the girl who says she never will,
But looks as though she…all right, that’s enough of that!

Quite enough, Max, I agree.

Oh dear, I’ve still got “Chip-chopper Charlie” in my head. Maybe I’ll try a couple of verses of “While Shepherds Washed…”

In Touch strikes gold

In Touch, the BBC’s radio programme for and about blind and partially-sighted people, is 50 years old this week. And I’ll be down in London helping to celebrate.

First, because I was a reporter and presenter on the programme for years, it’s where I started my BBC career, and even now I still do the occasional piece for them. And second, a 50-year continuous run for any radio show is very good news.

To mark the occasion there’ll be two bites at the In Touch cherry this week. An hour-long anniversary programme will be broadcast on Friday 7th October at midday on Radio 4, the spot usually occupied by the You & Yours magazine; actually it’ll be pre-recorded before a live audience (I don’t know why we always say that, as if anybody ever did a recording before a dead audience…) It’ll include all sorts of famous blind and partially-sighted people, including musicians, writers, actors and singers. Quite a party.

The usual In Touch spot, Radio 4, Tuesday evening at 8.40 p.m. will be doing a bit of reminiscing. I’m being interviewed as part of it by long-time presenter Peter White, and we’ll be looking at some of the differences that 50 years have made to life for visually impaired people – VIPS, as we call ourselves. (Well, it’s quicker than a mouthful like “blind and partially-sighted people”, isn’t it?)

One very obvious difference for everyone, but especially for us, is personal computers. They’re brilliant for VIPs. Someone who can’t read print, or (like me) is a slow reader who needs specs that magnify 14 times, can read and write using a computer. You can have software that “talks” what’s on the screen, and, if you like, echoes the keys as you type them in. Or you can whack up the images on the screen to many times their normal size. Or you can hitch the PC to a braille display, and let your fingers read the screen contents.

So not being able to see the screen is no excuse for not producing 100% accurate documents, whether Christmas letters or company reports, all spelt and laid out to perfection, entirely independently. (Well that’s the theory…in fact, we’re only human, and having just finished proof-reading my latest novel, I can vouch for the fact that we get typos and odd spellings just like people with 20-20 vision…no more nor less!) Then of course there’s sending and reading emails; the world wide web…all possible without help from anyone with sight. I used to teach computing to VIPs so I know what I’m talking about.

Another obvious change between 1961 and 2011 concerns people’s attitude to blindness, which has on the whole improved. Not that anyone was ever unkind, but they expected too little of VIPs. We still get discriminated against, but nothing like as much as we used to. (I can remember the days when a university could refuse to accept you merely because you had a sight problem, regardless of whether you measured up academically.)

And then…well, listen on Tuesday. And on Friday too for the midday party. It’s good to have something to celebrate, isn’t it?