Marxist Moments

BY THE WAY… (Revised)

          BLOGGER'S NOTE:  As the silly season draws to its close I give it a parting shot with this - so appropriately silly as to be vulnerable to hostile response. I am working on something rather major at the moment so what comes below could be called seeking some light relief, also known as playing the fool. You either like this sort of thing or you don't. All the material here has been drawn from my notes. 

          For years, as a music lover, I have had the radio on lowish in the background whilst working. But this gives rise to serious mishearings of front- and back-announcements which create visions in my mind that throw me off my work altogether, and so defeating the object.  I guess we have all misheard from time to time; things like the following:

          ‘Find out more about Dartmoor’s Mutilating Fund.’ (Classic FM ad.)

          These on Radio 3 at various times:

          ‘The BBC Singers, conducted by Susan Sequins.’ And a touch of the Priapic: 

          ‘The whole thing is an excuse for elaborate testicles!’ (Discussion programme.)

          ‘The programme is presented by J. Russell Flapdick.’

          The late Alan Keith was probably, in his nineties, the world’s oldest disc jockey with his long-running Sunday night Radio 2 programme Your Hundred Best Tunes. But dear old Alan was not immune to apparent verbal peculiarities. Like one night when I think I heard him say: ‘And it’s my pleasure to welcome you to another programme for your acquired enjoyment.’ And a favourite Keithism of mine: ‘…by the French composer Derriére…’  And ‘The accompanist was Liz Tomahawk.’ And I am sure we can all guess what I was really supposed to have heard here: ‘London Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Goat.’ And this, about Fauré: It was written when he was twenty, and still stupid.’

          Of course on Radio 2 one could hardly avoid the regular news flashes, informing us for example that: ‘Three hundred sardine company troops landed in Haiti today’, suggesting over-fishing going on in the Caribbean. And this cynical ploy to capture the lower-statured electorate: ‘Both candidates appealed to undersized voters last night…’ Along with some suspicious-sounding reporters: ‘Here is our correspondent, Robert Bigot, with the details…’  Radio 3 also had its news oddities, such as: ‘Heavy rain has caused flooding in Plastic and Northwest Kent’, and so on.

          We had overwrought Radio 3 concert pianists such as Anna Catalepsy and Bob van Aspirin, and other types (or species) of performer like ‘a promising young tortoise from Bath’, ‘…sung by Andrew Cockroach’, as well as utilitarian objects such as: ‘songs by Mahler sung by Diana Corkscrew’, ‘…British soprano Amanda Repro’, ‘Chopin’s Nocturne played by Anton Shoelace’, and vegetables or fruits like (a conductor, in fact): Avocado Skype. There were exotics straight out of WOMAD like ‘Poulenc’s Songs sung by the Bedouin Chamber Choir,’ and other ensembles: ‘”Shenandoah” sung by the Pillock Chamber Choir of Denmark.’  Speaking of singers, the American singer-songwriter Don McLean was once (by me) heard on Radio 2 saying: ‘Tomorrow is the day for Jewish hopes and call-girls.’ Was I going mad? But of course!  Mad with writer's block!

          And so it went on, with orchestras, conductors and composers. Also another from WOMAD, it would seem: ‘…played by the Taliban, sober.’ (I had assumed they always were, being Muslim.) Not to speak of the Kamikaze Orchestra (was it the 1812, with live-ammunition cannon?) And the composers: ‘Next on Radio 3, a new bionic symphony’ (Steve Reich or Philip Glass, no doubt); ‘Symphony on Paganini by Boris Blackout’, ‘Prokofiev’s Chapatti in E Minor’, and my favourite: ‘Shostakovich’s Étude in A Minor, the Suicidal.’  Shostakovich is wonderful but should probably not be relayed while you are waiting for a Samaritan to pick up the phone.

          Radio 3 trails should not be overlooked. My classic is this trail for a performance of Britten’s opera Gloriana: ‘Elizabeth I, a woman torn between her love for a traitor, and her duty to her puppies.’

          Seems more like another – erm -  to me, but – again – I may have mis-heard this. The late Terry Wogan used to mishear (?) pop lyrics like 'Mulligan's Tyres' and 'I wanna be a polar bear', and the country-and-western: 'Four hundred children and a crock in the field'. I believe Sir Terry was later told to shut up. Big money in that game. Half-listening can open up whole new (aural) vistas and images, rather as having one's eyes half-shut can also seem to offer hazy visions of the otherwise impossible
            Your advice? Turn up the  volume or get a hearing aid? I've since done both.