Where politics meets the history LBC
Put the cuff down
Archives of 4: Irish Radio 4/BBC Sounds Without Blacks
Honestly, all of these history podcasts don’t do that for me. I’m also in the Confessions Podcast booth, but not many political booths either. The audio chart is full of both, sorry, but clever friends chatter! – They make me cold.
As you might imagine, I’ve come close to where politics meets history, a new show from LBC’s Ian Dale and historian Tessa Dunlop. Just a little, I have a soft spot for Dale, but I don’t agree with him about many things. He is a warm broadcaster, and his political stance is studied not his knees. He is against grain and is happy to say when he is wrong (but like many people, he cries when he is right). Dunlop is not very well established as an audio host, but you may recognize her from Terry’s coast.
Anyway, Tuesday’s first show was a bit confusing. Dunlop was pretty hesitant at first (there was a nasty moment of silence when Dale asked her to explain who he was), and later, a bit too dominant. A stronger structure may have helped – when I heard Dale explain his recent holiday in Germany, I thought, referring to Kaiser Frederick, the husband of his hotel and Queen Victoria’s eldest son. The weather’s pace and topics are vaned between Dunlop’s intense information dumping and the stupid whims from Dale (another story: when the young woman in the elevator was rude about Americans, he spoke with an American accent to embarrass her).
The public view of the race was terrible, not non-black Irish people, so I can’t even write it down.
To her credit, Dunlop had an interesting comprehensive point. She said there were some similarities between the current standoff/negotiations of Zelensky, Trump and Putin and the current standoff/negotiations between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in 1943. As an experienced podcaster, Dale was more relaxed and as incredibly well-informed as ever. If you can smooth out the dynamics between the two (I’m sure you can do that because they clearly like each other), and the structure of the show has become clearer, and this will develop into an engaging listening for your people who can deal with the concepts we might call active news terrorism and the important past.
When it comes to history, what I like is social history. It’s not the movements of the Bullyboys I work with, but the small and consequential things that unfamiliar people do in their lives. This will bring down Caff, a podcast from E Pellicci’s Cafe in East London, a Besnard Green facility. Every episode makes a straight-hearted fuss with an intro voiced by Ray Winstone (“successful of two world wars and one cereal cafe, real cockney, often used but poorly understood”).
The bananas perfectly show this. There are so many voices that they are not being introduced. Too many unexplained jokes (someone has an Irish wife, it’s been mentioned repeatedly). Celebrity guests often fall off the microphone or seem to know why they are there. Everyone screams at each other. It’s nuts.
That being said, the atmosphere is sensational. Friendly, bright, full of life, and truly fun. And when you hear, everything gradually reveals itself. Our two hosts are, after all, brothers and sisters Nevio and Anna (Nevio is with his Irish wife). They are the third generation owners of the cafe. I don’t think that a full-on character that brings out the sides to the guests will even be able to find someone else. Last week’s guest, designer and former Tawee Tommy Mallett, is someone I’ve never heard of, but I couldn’t stop listening because the interview with him was off the wall. We asked him about his sean, how he can’t stand a gorgeous restaurant, and how his wife lived with rescue teams and “Crispy Nut Bowls”. I loved him. The episode includes Annie McManus, Lewisin Murphy, Kevin Roland and Tom Glennan. tack!
When it comes to social history, let’s look at the archives of 4, which are always packed with great examples. Black people are Irish, hosted by White Belfast Peter Curran, and Tony Phillips, who owns a Caribbean heritage, have been a fascinating and shocking delve into the UK’s recent history of racism. Some of the archives recorded were visible biased. From landlords to sex workers, the public’s views were very awful.
Don Warrington, who played Philip in Rising Damp, gave a particularly lovely interview with what the show has achieved. “It changed racial stereotypes in my head,” he said. “Philip became a white ideal… Rigsby was a man who suffered from all sorts of prisoners. He could never contain himself… Philip was completely locked up… Philip is Toff, he is a prince, and there is a great currency in this country.”
And on March 22nd, Section 28: Right to Be Gay, another great listening. The programme, presented by the actor around activist MP Michael Cashman, carefully detailed the British atmosphere in 1988. In 1988, the grisly section 28 of the Local Government Act banned “promoting homosexuality” in schools. Cashman gets emotional, reminiscent of the protest. His voice suffocates as if reminiscent of unity, chan chanting. I remember those protests myself. I remember how angry, lively and funny they were. But it all happened. The history I am here.
