B.B.C. play wins drama award

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33442, 25 January 1974, Page 14

B.B.C. play wins drama award

Europe’s top broadcasting award in the radio drama category — the coveted Italia Prize — has this year been awarded to a 8.8. C. entry: a radio play by James Cameron entitled “The Pump.” Cameron, a distinguished British journalist and broadcaster, recently suffered the agonising experience of going through a heart attack. And the play — his first — was a dramatic recreation of this personal ordeal and its after effects.

“The Pump” was first broadcast on the 8.8.C.’s domestic radio in 1972 and was later repeated. And the part of James Cameron was played by the well-known British actor, Sir Michael Redgrave. In this example of the dialogue, he addresses a nurse in hospital — a key passage from which the play takes its name:

“In this place they don’t go much on the romantic concept. I’ve observed people do not love each other with all their hearts, their hearts are neither warm nor cold. The thing is no more central to our physiology than the backside or the bladder. I speak from the heart, sister. How can a heart be full of love? The heart is a hollow muscle of 2,000 gallons of blood a day.”