Pete Price on City............... just to hear him go off on something. Car crash radio at it's best.
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Great Radio Programmes
- Thread starter The Esk
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summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
A programme about one of my favourite actresses, Margaret Rutherford, on R4 Extra later today, narrated by Stephen Fry.
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
Play of Orson Welles' unproduced screenplay of The Heart Of Darkness - R4 14.30
Beautiful article from yesterday's Washington Post. For those who enjoy classic radio, you may want to listen Sunday night for the last airing of the "Big Broadcast"
Ed Walker spent 65 years on the radio. His last program was unlike any other.
Ed Walker didn’t really want to do it. He was tired and sick, he said, and not really up to it. Besides, his voice — the instrument of his preposterously long radio career — was no longer what it had been.
Just once more, pleaded Lettie Holman, Walker’s boss. For the audience, she said. For posterity. His daughter, Susan Walker Scola, agreed, urging her father on.
Walker reconsidered. Okay, he said. One more.
So they assembled last week to record one more, the last of the untold thousands of radio programs Walker has done since he broke into radio as a college student 65 years ago, when Harry Truman was president. Holman was there for the final show, as were audio engineer Tobey Schreiner and a couple of Walker’s radio associates, Rob Bamberger and Bob Bybee. The vehicle was “The Big Broadcast,” the weekly radio-nostalgia program that Walker has hosted for the past 25 years on Washington public station WAMU (88.5 FM).
The setting was Room 623 at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington. Walker, 83 and battling cancer, had been there a week. He did the show in a hospital gown, connected to a bank of hospital monitors. He insisted on getting out of bed to sit upright. An old pro knows you sound better that way.
“Good evening, everybody, and welcome to another edition of ‘The Big Broadcast,’ ” he began one last time. “My name is Ed Walker.”
Outside the room, a hospital worker fired up a floor-polishing machine. They waited until the man moved down the corridor. Schreiner, holding a mike close to Walker’s lips, asked for another take.
Walker restarted and continued: “All these years I’ve been trying to play the music and the shows that I think you all enjoyed. Well, tonight I want to turn things around a little bit and I’m going to do my favorite shows because this will be my last ‘Big Broadcast.’ Things come and things go, and right now it’s time for me to go. So we’re going to play some of the shows that I think have special merit, shows that are my personal favorites.”
And then Walker riffed and reminisced about the radio programs he has loved since childhood, most of it from memory but some — dates, actors, trivia — from notes produced on a Braille typewriter. (Walker has been blind since birth.) His favorites included “Dragnet” and “Gunsmoke” episodes from 1952; a 1945 Jack Benny show; “Fibber McGee and Molly”; the 1949 Lux Radio Theater production of “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” with Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston re-creating their movie roles.
(
Walker’s health issues forced him to skip his Oct. 11 program. (Bamberger filled in for him.) It happened to be the start of WAMU’s pledge drive, and Walker’s name inevitably came up from time to time over the course of his usual four-hour time slot. The phones rang and rang; the station raised $60,000, twice the usual amount for the period.
All told, the hospital session took about 3 1/2 hours. At the end of it, Walker said, “Well, that’s 25 years of my memories of hosting ‘The Big Broadcast’ here on WAMU. Goodbyes are very hard to do, especially when this has been a labor of love more than anything else.” He thanked his station colleagues and his listeners.
His last recorded words were: “So for one more time, let’s end the show the way we always do. Remember, it wouldn’t be Sunday evening if we didn’t have Eddie Cantor to sing.” Cantor’s voice came up, crooning the program’s traditional farewell song: “I Love to Spend Each Sunday with You”:
Lets make a date for next Sunday night
I’m here to say it will be my delight
To sing again, bring again the things you want me to
I love to spend each Sunday with you
“Good night, everybody,” Walker said.
And then Ed Walker did something he may have never done in half a million minutes in front of a microphone. He started to cry.
Everyone in Room 623 cried, too
Ed Walker spent 65 years on the radio. His last program was unlike any other.
Ed Walker didn’t really want to do it. He was tired and sick, he said, and not really up to it. Besides, his voice — the instrument of his preposterously long radio career — was no longer what it had been.
Just once more, pleaded Lettie Holman, Walker’s boss. For the audience, she said. For posterity. His daughter, Susan Walker Scola, agreed, urging her father on.
Walker reconsidered. Okay, he said. One more.
So they assembled last week to record one more, the last of the untold thousands of radio programs Walker has done since he broke into radio as a college student 65 years ago, when Harry Truman was president. Holman was there for the final show, as were audio engineer Tobey Schreiner and a couple of Walker’s radio associates, Rob Bamberger and Bob Bybee. The vehicle was “The Big Broadcast,” the weekly radio-nostalgia program that Walker has hosted for the past 25 years on Washington public station WAMU (88.5 FM).
The setting was Room 623 at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington. Walker, 83 and battling cancer, had been there a week. He did the show in a hospital gown, connected to a bank of hospital monitors. He insisted on getting out of bed to sit upright. An old pro knows you sound better that way.
“Good evening, everybody, and welcome to another edition of ‘The Big Broadcast,’ ” he began one last time. “My name is Ed Walker.”
Outside the room, a hospital worker fired up a floor-polishing machine. They waited until the man moved down the corridor. Schreiner, holding a mike close to Walker’s lips, asked for another take.
Walker restarted and continued: “All these years I’ve been trying to play the music and the shows that I think you all enjoyed. Well, tonight I want to turn things around a little bit and I’m going to do my favorite shows because this will be my last ‘Big Broadcast.’ Things come and things go, and right now it’s time for me to go. So we’re going to play some of the shows that I think have special merit, shows that are my personal favorites.”
And then Walker riffed and reminisced about the radio programs he has loved since childhood, most of it from memory but some — dates, actors, trivia — from notes produced on a Braille typewriter. (Walker has been blind since birth.) His favorites included “Dragnet” and “Gunsmoke” episodes from 1952; a 1945 Jack Benny show; “Fibber McGee and Molly”; the 1949 Lux Radio Theater production of “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” with Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston re-creating their movie roles.
(
Walker’s health issues forced him to skip his Oct. 11 program. (Bamberger filled in for him.) It happened to be the start of WAMU’s pledge drive, and Walker’s name inevitably came up from time to time over the course of his usual four-hour time slot. The phones rang and rang; the station raised $60,000, twice the usual amount for the period.
All told, the hospital session took about 3 1/2 hours. At the end of it, Walker said, “Well, that’s 25 years of my memories of hosting ‘The Big Broadcast’ here on WAMU. Goodbyes are very hard to do, especially when this has been a labor of love more than anything else.” He thanked his station colleagues and his listeners.
His last recorded words were: “So for one more time, let’s end the show the way we always do. Remember, it wouldn’t be Sunday evening if we didn’t have Eddie Cantor to sing.” Cantor’s voice came up, crooning the program’s traditional farewell song: “I Love to Spend Each Sunday with You”:
Lets make a date for next Sunday night
I’m here to say it will be my delight
To sing again, bring again the things you want me to
I love to spend each Sunday with you
“Good night, everybody,” Walker said.
And then Ed Walker did something he may have never done in half a million minutes in front of a microphone. He started to cry.
Everyone in Room 623 cried, too
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
Halloween adaptations on the radio tonight :
Radio 4 - The Stone Tape, cult 70's horror - 22.00
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06g63fh
Radio 4 - The Ring - 23.00
Radio 4 Extra - The Exorcist - 24.00-02.00
Radio 4 - The Stone Tape, cult 70's horror - 22.00
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06g63fh
Radio 4 - The Ring - 23.00
Radio 4 Extra - The Exorcist - 24.00-02.00
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
Very, very funny adaptation of Homer' s Odysseus, with Robert Webb as Odysseus. Takes the mick something rotten. On the I player : The Penny Dreadfuls Present : The Odyssey R4 last night.
Also an M R James story - The House At World's End R4 Extra, also last night.
Also an M R James story - The House At World's End R4 Extra, also last night.
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
The Penny Dreadfuls present More Brother's Faversham. It's silly but funny. Last night's episode included one of the main characters doing a great impression of Alan Bennett. R4 Extra on the IPlayer.
Addicted to LBC am on dab radio
love the old comedy on bbc 4x , round the Horne, steptoe ect some classics
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
R4 tomorrow - 15.00, it'll be on the IPlayer :
Sound of Cinema - The Cold War. Music inspired by films depicting the Cold War.
Sound of Cinema - The Cold War. Music inspired by films depicting the Cold War.
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
Radio4 Extra all this week. Short stories by Saki. Well worth a listen.
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
Sorry boys, you failed the audition. Play on R4 imagining what would have happened if George Martin hadn't signed the Beatles. Quite amusing, on the IPlayer today.
Donald Twain
Vide cor meum
Been listening to Wireless Nights on R4 on Iplayer . Fantastic, never really got Jarvis Cocker but he's brilliant on this and well worth checking out on a restless winters eve, utterly compelling!
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