June Spencer is retiring from The Archers. Now this means absolutely nothing to me as I haven't listened to The Archers for decades. Last time I listened Walter Gabriel was still mangling his vowels. I can't even remember any of the plots.
But I know people who still tune in and enjoy the radio soap. If and when you listen to the programme, you do of course have mental pictures of the action that is going on. This makes it more like reading a book than watching television where the action unfolds in front of your very eyes. With a radio play/soap you have to use your imagination as you would when reading a book or newspaper/magazine.
So what is special about June Spencer? Well for a start she is 103 which makes her already pretty special. But what makes her really special is the fact that she has played the part of Peggy Woolley for 65 years. She played the character from 1950 to 1954 and then again from 1961 until the present day.
And you thought that William Roach as Ken Barlow in Coronation Street was doing well. But he's just a chicken with coming up to 62 years of service in December.
Second round of applause is to the memory of Seekers' singer Judith Durham who has died. She had a truly pure voice and the Seekers were certainly part of my musical journey - talking of which I will have part two of my musical reminiscences tomorrow.
Judith has been described by the Australian Prime Minister with the unpronounceable name that nobody can remember as "a national treasure."
I remember The Seekers (not to be confused with the New Seekers). For some reason I can also remember the original line-up of Durham, Athol Guy, Keith Potger and Bruce Woodley. These are the kind of irrelevant facts that build up in my mind. I was very partial to the Seekers music and loved their hits "I'll Never Find Another You," "A World of Our Own," "Morningtown Ride" "The Carnival Is Over" and "Georgy Girl. These were pure pop classics and Durham sang them with her pure and unmistakable voice.
I believe that Potger was the link between the Seekers and the New Seekers. I like the New Seekers as well, but not quite as much as the Old Seekers despite the fact that they are one of the few artists that have recorded a song written by my hero Harry Chapin. That was "Circles". So here's one for the real anoraks. Harry Chapin called the song "Circle" but the New Seekers added an s.
The other song like that is MacArthur Park which I'm happy to trap on about for days. Jimmy Webb wrote MacArthur Park and Richard Harris changed it to MacArthur's Park. Jimmy Webb tells the story during his one man shows and says "I never told Richard that he was singing it wrong. It's not the kind of thing you told Richard, so I let him sing it how he wanted.
Applause number three is for Olivia Newton-John or Olivia Neutron-Bomb as people often called her.
I do remember queuing up to see Grease. I believe it would have been in Long Eaton in Derbyshire where we were living at the time. It wasn't my kind of film but I did enjoy it in a kind of masochistic way.
More importantly the lyrics of one of ONJ's songs got me through a bad patch when I had a job that I loathed. Problem is all these years later I can't remember exactly what that song was although I did write the lyrics down somewhere and I will try to look them up.
At least there's a little bit of Judith Durham and Olivia Newton John in my house. I have the piano sheet music for both "I'll Never Find Another You" and "Sam."
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But back to radio. Who remembers Peter Brough? He was a radio ventriloquist. Yes I got that right - a radio ventriloquist. He had a dummy by the name of Archie Andrews. But of course as it was on the radio and nobody really knew whether Archie was a dummy or just didn't exist.
It's one thing reading a script into a microphone. At least there's a modicum of acting skill in that. Doing a ventriloquist act on the radio is a whole different ball game.
But Archie Andrews did exist. Whether Brough took him into the radio studio of course might be a mute point. Somehow the Educating Archie Show on the radio brought in regular audiences of 15 million.
It propelled Brough into the world of television and ITV took up the Educating Archie show after two years of the BBC having a show entitled Here's Archie and guess what? It exposed Brough's limitations as a ventriloquist with his lips regularly being seen to move.
So while we are on radio stuff how about the Clitheroe Kid and Billy Bunter. More about them in a future blog.