TELEVISION PREVIEW
IMEMHWMIIIII Rock on, Johnny!
‘. . . that was Thor‘s Anvil recorded live at this year’s Bonington; now on to something new from Septic Boar’s Spleen, with a track called ‘(I Just Wanna Be) Carotted (With Your Phallic Meat Cleaver)’. . .’ And does this accurately reflect the spectrum of musical endeavour we call ‘rock’?
Well of course it doesn’t, but fret not for the Radio 1PM Rock Show, traditionally the perpetrator of such meathead metal atrocities, is shortly to be rescued from the clutches of [Us with booming voices feigning excitement at the latest Thunder EP (yes you, Vance!) by the Radio Scotland team who produce Beat
0
Patrol, Original Masters and Jump The
Claire Sturgess began the
§ regeneration of the rock show with the l occasional alternative choice; now
-; the good work is continued by Original : Masters presenter John Cavanagh - a
man who can invest a common or
, garden radio link with a sense of
occasion - as part of BBC Radio’s
. devolutionary policy of letting its
‘ j regional centres produce network -; programmes.
‘We’re going to blow the music agenda wide and play everything from Headswim across the board to Neil Young and Ed Kuepper,’ says Cavanagh, managing not to mention dullards like Little Angels. ‘look at the metal press - if you picked up a copy
of Kerrang! in 1981 it was all
HWOBHM, Samson, Saxon, drummers in leather masks and all that.’ (Historical note: younger readers may wish to note that the HWOBHM was the unwieldy acronym for the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal which became a byword for the most constipated guitar sounds ever produced.)
‘If you pick up a copy now it’s Jennifer Finch from L7 and AC Acoustics get in there as well. It’s much wider than it used to be,’ says Cavanagh. And like Kerrangl, the all- new, musically-enlightened Rock Show will be a similarly broad crypt. (Fiona Shepherd)
John Cavanagh hosts his first edition of the Rock Show from Bristol Sound City on Sunday 23 April at 8pm on Radio 1.
RADIO HIGHLIGHTS
I The Entertainment Superhighway (Radio 5 Live) Fri 21 Apr. 10.05pm. Fast. furious run-around radio for the MTV generation and in case you were wondering. nothing whatsoever to do with the ‘information superhighway". Katie Putrick (formerly of The Him!) is the woman at the helm. dispatching a kamikaze crew of reporters round the world of UK entertainments while she sits back in the studio awaiting such tantalising titbits as a review from the front row of an opera. film reviews from a video shop owner in Bradford and an interview with a singer while he's live on stage.
I The Essential Mix (Radio 1). Sat 22 Apr. midnight. The Bristol sound hits the decks as Portishead wind subtle llip-liOp beats. imaginary 60s soundtracks and the scorching blues vocals of Beth Gibbons into this week‘s mix.
I Holocaust Without Hindsight (Radio 4) Sun 23 Apr. 8.30pm. Could the events of the Holocaust have been predicted? Noted historian John Klier puts forward the case. For the first programme in this two-part documentary. he is joined by Germans who witnessed the era. and who openly and candidly ask what was known at the time and who really wished to know‘.’
I Chris Evans (Radio 1) Mon 24 Apr. 6.30am. Motormouth presenter Chris Evans. the man who made The Big Breakfast big. gets out of bed for Radio 1 as it attempts to boost flagging ratings with the appointment of talk radio‘s most wanted as new breakfast show host.
I Dear Diary (Radio 4) Mon 24. 10.02am. In case you didn‘t know already it‘s the centenary ofcinema. Film critic Philip French celebrates by dipping into the diaries of filmmakers and actors to get the inside story of life in the movies. Diary extracts include Sally Potter on the making of Orlando. Alan Bennett on The Mariners (r/iKinle George and Charlton
84 The List 2| Apr-4 May 1995
lleston on the endless chariot takes in Ben Hm.
I Radio Tip Top (Radio 1) Wed 26 Apr. 9pm. Tongue in cheek take on the pink and fluffy nature of pop radio with Kid Tempo and The Ginger Prince as your clean-living hosts for the series. ()ther members of the Tip Top gang include The Bowling Queens. Postman Patois. Boy Racer Triton and many more brought to you via the magic of Lunewyre Technology and Spectrasound.
I Song of the Ukrainian Earth (Radio 3) Fri 28 Apr. 4.30pm. Adrian Cleasby makes a musical pilgrimage to the heartlands of the Ukraine in search of the dying songs of the Poltava region. Here he finds traces of songs that have survived nearly 1000 years of occupation and oppression under the 'l‘artars. Turks. Tsars and Stalinists. Songs that now look set to die with the elderly women of the villages.
I Tim Page in Vietnam (Radio ll Sun 30 Apr. 7pm. In 1969. press photographer 'l‘im Page stepped on a landmine in Vietnam and was given twenty minutes to live. Twenty~five years later. alive but still
partially paralysed. he returns to the scene
of one of the most brutal conflicts 20th century's to photograph the country left behind.
I Sinatra’s Jazz (Radio 3) Mon 1 May. 4.30pm. Not content with the simple answer that he did it his way. Mel Hill delves deep into the Sinatra legend to trace the connections between the old crooner's singing style and big-time jazz greats like Nat King Cole and Duke Ellington.
I Going Back (Radio 4) Thurs 4 May. 7.20pm. Ugandan-Asian woman Yasmin Alibhai narrowly escaped suffering at the hands of ldi Amin when a scholarship to Oxford became her ticket out of Kampala over twenty years ago. In the last programme of the Going 11ml. series she returns to an independant Uganda. eager to find out exactly how much has changed in her absence. (Ellie (fart)
TV REVIEW
‘The whole sex/gender system is policed by the fears that derived frorn Oscar Wilde and the efferninate idea of the gay man.‘ That‘s a pretty heavy burden to heap on the shoulders of a dead playwright who lived for only eleven months of the 20th century. but it was the conclusion Professor Alan Sinfield arrived at in A Fear In Appear Queer: ()S(‘(ll' Dear."
This film kicked of Wilde Night (BBCZ). an evening of programmes on
the importance of ()scar‘s being which .
marked the centenary of the writer‘s trial. A hundred years on. Wilde could still have been prosecuted for the same crime — sex with a seventeen-year-old. Professor Sinfield is one of those swingers who flit between academia and the media. In a lame piece of television polemic. which would have
run from an unspoken past in America.
Channel
country village where the local shop acts as a clearing house for gossip. All she has to look forward to is rtttrning the white elephant stall at the annual church fund-raiser. It‘s a fete worse than death. you might say. until she meets vivacious Clodagh who‘s on the
l Here was the first hint of the kind of village affair we‘re in for. and sure
5 enough it's Alice. not Martin. that Clodagh sedttces.
For a few brief weeks Alice and Clodagh are ecstatically happy: skinny dipping in a secluded country pond.
i floating through fields of corn on a } breeze of Laura Ashley and giggling a
been borderline fail if an undergraduate , Martin hasn‘t quite got it yet. adds: ‘A
had submitted it as a term paper. Sinfield argued that ()scar Wilde was effectively responsible for imprisoning gay men in an image ofeffeminacy.
ln a personal appreciation following Sinfield‘s filtn. English actor and director Simon Callow recounted how he first came across Wilde. at the age of thirteen. ‘He was. in the strangely disgusting parlance of the day. a homo.‘ said Callow. ‘I rather thought I might be too so l thought l better find out what homos were like.‘ And so began (Tallow's life-long love affair with Wilde. To me. Simon Callow may be an old luvvie but he hardly seems to be a man defined by the image of the effernirrate queer. For many gay men. ()scar Wilde remains an inspiration for resisting homophobia atrd the first queer martyr.
The television adaptation of Joanna Trollope's A Village Affair (Scottish) was. for the most part. a story of the love that dare not speak its name. Alice Jordan was one of those willowy woman from the upper-middle classes who never seem to achieve very much. She's married to Martin. has three children but hires a nannie to look after them; used to dabble with paints btrt has given that up recently. Her husband can‘t understand why Alice doesn’t do those charming floral watercolours any more. ‘They sell don't they? They're popular.‘ he says. exasperated. A bi‘. like a Joanna Trollope novel. really.
Alice wants to live a little but instead finds herself stuck in the kind of
lot. Bttt then Martin‘s brother. who's been to llong Kong and can therefore be assumed to know a thing or too about women. spells it out. ‘She‘s a dyke. Martin. a dyke.‘ And in case
lesbian.‘ ()ops. that's torn it. The word is. literally. out.
To cut a long. and very dull story short. Alice loses her husband. the country house with Aga and Clodagh. bttt retains kids and car. which she drives off to a new life as the sun sets over middle England. Trollope's tale
was never really about a lesbian relationship. bttt a schoolgirlish
infatuation which triggers Alice's belated passage into womanhood. Despite New Zealand actress Kerry Fox‘s best attempts to create a character. all along Clodagh was just a
' lens through which Alice could see her
life for the first time.
The lTC. the watchdog which polices independent television companies. ie the ones that show ads between the programmes. has accused The Word of bad taste in showing clips of worm- eating. (I think they were worried abou the viewer. not the participants). It will interesting to see if the same criticism is levelled at LWT for Tarrant’s 10 Years on TV which last week showed extensive clips from a Japanese ‘endurance' garneshow. Without nauseating you with the details. this involved live frogs and dead turtles and was no less disgusting than anything The Ward transmitted. Any odds you like because this was made for Japanese television. the company escape censure. Laughing at foreigners is OK. but leave the dumb animals out of it. (Eddie Gibb)