I am a great fan of the late John Drummond, and have quoted him, here, many times . But, I blame Drummond for the present decline in presentation standards on BBC Radio 3. In 1987, when he became controller of the network, Drummond changed the role of the presentation team from 'neutral' announcers to presenters who, in his own words, could "communicate enthusiasm and knowledge". Drummond's change was well intentioned, but terribly misguided. It has been responsible for a disastrous sequence of presenters from Paul 'music for lovers' Gambaccini in the 1990s to Petroc Trelawny and his colleagues today, whose idea of communicating enthusiasm and knowledge is to regurgitate half-digested chunks from a children's encyclopedia of music. The disease isn't just confined to the radio. BBC TV's Classical Star , which is fronted by Radio 3 presenters Charles Hazlewood and Chi-chi Nwanoku, has been described by an eminent musician as 'an obscene pa...
Comments
Can't resist, though, mentioning Churchill's comment on learning Gandhi was back in town (London)..."oh no, not that bloody fakir again!"
:-))
Salams,
b.
http://www.overgrownpath.com/2014/09/this-digital-fixation-is-damaging-live.html
I must say that the words attributed to Churchill by billoo sound a lot more characteristic of Eric Idle. But that apart, the words of WSC that gave rise to the "half-naked fakir" image, surely one of the best-known of the plethora of things Churchill never said, were:
"...a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace..."
When historians of my age and (even older) Peter Brown's speak of the 'historical imagination', we don't mean just making stuff up. (See Collingwood, Oakeshott, Barfield, White, et al.) That we really do leave to Monty Python, Hollywood filmmakers, and the historical novelists averse from research. Oh, and also to the younger generations of historians who adhere to post-modernist thought, giving primacy to subjective opinion and bringing the historical discipline to an undignified end.
So, yes, your point is well taken...it was a flippant comment and I can see how it must be quite infuriating as a scholar to read that. I would be interested to know in what sense Churchill used the word 'fakir' but am extremely weary of using Pli's space here for this digression)
Perhaps we can at least agree that it was quite funny?