NEXT WEEK’S RADIO

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25270, 23 August 1947, Page 7

NEXT WEEK’S RADIO

“HAVE A CAREDANGERS THERE” If the road safety campaign organised by the Junior Chamber of Commerce continues in as lively a fashion as it has begun, it will surely have some life-saving and Limb-saving effect in this land of speeding motor- i ists, book-reading cyclists (you may see them in Christchurch), and jay-1 walking shoppers. Figures can be used to show that New Zealand has a lower, accident rate than Great Britain or Australia; but what of it, if the num-1 ber of persons killed last year was almost 200, if the number hurt was i more than 4000? The organisers of the | campaign are being pretty tough, using examples that must bring a shudder to many a listener; but this is the only way to make listeners take in the warning and pay attention to; the safety roles that have been designed to save their lives rather than their time. Stanley the Safety Pup knows all the red and green and yellow answers; and so should New’.Zealand radio listeners, habitual jaywalkers, crossers on the red light, zigzagging cyclists, and back-seat drivers —I mean the kind who reach for the parcel on the back seat and leave the wheels to the laws of the cambered roadway: a crown in the middle and death and destruction on either side. The answers are being given from every station every day over and over again; they are also being given repeatedly in words and grim photographs in newspapers. On paper and in the air this looks and sounds the ideal collaboration of press and radio for an urgent campaign. Its success will not be proved or disproved, I suppose, till figures begin to tell a new story. In the meantime it was a positive pleasure to watch the traffic in Wellington this week. By traffic I mean everything on shoes or on wheels. HOW TO CLIMB EVEREST

Merely to check the time, I switched my radio to 2YA on Tuesday morning and heard a very precise voice speaking about Byrd at the North Pole, Byrd at the South Pole. I couldn’t imagine that I might be interested, but I glanced at the programme just the same—Lt.-Col. T. Orde Lees: “Admiral Byrd’s Helicopter.” By the time I had read this item I found myself listening with firm interest. Not that I wanted to be told that Admiral Byrd faced dangers as formidable as those met by earlier explorers and that his flight to the Pole took as much courage as did the foot-slogging of the pioneers; I don’t believe these things can be measured or compared. But Lt.-Col. Orde Lees’s fervent interest in his subject, the relish’with which he told of his triumphant flight in a helicopter off the ice-breaker, North Wind, in Wellington harbour, were quite irresistible. He was at the Correspondence School in Aurora Terrace when he saw the helicopter go over, so he apparently leapt down the hills, resolved to have a flight in a helicopter, “even if I had to swim to America for it.” When he at last had his wish he found that the sensation was much like that of rising in a balloon, only much more'noisy; and then he begged the pilot to land on the roof of the Correspondence School. But the pilot had been forbidden to perch on any roof in Wellington. The Colonel expounded his theory that if helicopters were employed, mountaineers would find it quite easy to reach the top of Mount Everest. His suggestion is that the climbers should be deposited by the helicopter on the summit and then climb down, which, he says, would be a comparatively easy matter. It has always been the ascent, not the descent, that has stopped people from climbing Everest successfully. I feel there is something wrong here from the mountaineers’ point of view; but I have never heard such delightful enthusiasm since I heard a small boy describe his first ascent of Avalanche Peak; but that was years ago, in pre-helicopter days. MERRY BEDLAM

I never thought to see the day when I should look forward to a Monday evening to hear the next episode; yet that is just the way I am now about Monday evenings from 2YA, thanks to the BBC. and the elaborate nonsensical sense of “Double Bedlam,’’ in which Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford manage, by some extraordinary tricks of pause and intonation, to make the listener imagine he can actually see the expressions that come and go upon those two faces. As for instance, the following eye and speculative look on the face of one as a pretty girl goes by, while the other hammers vainly at his inattention with an urgent, a startling, a shattering clue to the identity of THE BODY. The following eye murmurs vaguely, “That’s funny, old boy,” meaning clearly that what is funny is merely his feeling that he has seen her somewhere before. The elutes blow away, one after another, as fleeting as the interests of this sportmad pair. This time it is horse-racing that is distracting them; and for all I have heard a horse could be a Shetland pony and they’d back it, if it had the right name. They are very strict about it. The name has to connect, or they don’t bet. Balaclava was no good because only one grandfather was there (“Sixety-to-one, old boy. Are you quite sure your grandfather wasn’t there, too?”). But they collected on Mahmoud because they had seen an elephant in the Strand the day before. What was the connexion, someone asks. “That’s the boy that rides the elephant.’’ “You mean MAHOUT.’’ “Oh, really? That’s a funny thing. Mahmoud wasn’t on the elephant but we were on Mahmoud. . . . ’ A near shave, but they didn’t hear about it too soon; so they had their dividend. I must say I haven’t the faintest idea where this mystery thriller is leading us to, but it’s the greatest fun on the way. At the moment they’re looking for something in a shrubbery . . . and so is someone else . . . and there’s something sinister round that bush. Next Monday night’s episode is called “Round the Bend,” which sounds regrettably close to the finishing post to me. I suppose it will be at least a i fortnight before I can hope to eaten up with it at another station to hear it all over again. BOYD NEEL AND OTHERS TALKING It is good to note that at last the talks Boyd Neel recorded here before he left are to begin a round of the stations. The first, “To 800 or Not to Boo,” will be heard from 2YA on Friday evening, August 29, and two more will be heard on following Friday evenings. The first talk, I am told, will deal with the blunder of applauding between movements of a work, and with other points of etiquette for concert-goers. The many who cannot get his string orchestra out, of their systems will be able to hear recordings from various stations every week; for instance, next week from 3YA on Friday evening and from 4YA on Monday and Sunday evenings, to mention only three occasions. One of the most important talks for anyone interested in the world’s social future is Julian Huxley’s cn UNESCO, to be heard to-morrow afternoon from 4YA. The New Zealand delegates to last year’s Paris conference (Dr. C. E. Beeby. Dr. R. A. Fallq* and Miss Lorrta McPhee) have now presented their report. This has been issued as publication No. 36 by the Department of External Affairs, Wellington. It gives a clear description of the aims and organisation of UNESCO.

The new Winter Course series of talks from 2YA on Monday evening will begin next Monday. August 25. with the first of three on the Feilding Community Centre. This will be the Director the Centre. H. C. D. Somerset, who will be well known to Canterbury listeners as the former headmaster of the Oxford District High School.