‘The peculiar thing about radio is how much people find it so definitely and absolutely special,” says Gillian Reynolds in Audiophile (Radio 4).
Her very personal love letter to radio spans more than 50 years. It was a turquoise wireless that cemented the romance, keeping her company when she was broke and lonely. Much warmth tingles as she remembers how a sad song made her cry all over her sausage as a child, before she grew up to swoon over Paul Temple, the “possibly – but deliciously – not real” radio detective. Later, the students at her university would gather to listen to The Goon Show, collapsing in “eye-watering laughter”. Reynolds’s love for radio crackles out of the set.
One of the most atmospheric clips she plays is the chilling declaration of war in 1939, backed by sirens. Her family would turn on the radio for reassurance after returning from the air raid shelter. “Bombs fell on Broadcasting House, but the voices and the music never stopped,” she recalls. “It was another world, a safe one, where posh people lived.”
With the advent of TV, this old-fashioned entertainmentwas supposed to fizzle out. “There were many people in the BBC who believed radio would be a dead medium by the year 2000,” says Jenny Abramsky, one of many guest voices whose faith in radio was proved right. Jimmy Gordon, who set up Radio Clyde, illustrates why it is still powerful in the age of playlists and algorithms, which allow you to inhabit “a narrow world”. In this new realm “nobody suddenly exposes you to something you didn’t think you would like but suddenly found you do,” he says, citing a letter from one listener who “didn’t realise opera was so full of dirty stories” as proof.
Sue MacGregor is one of the women who came up through the ranks when any moves towards female voices on air happened at a glacial pace. As a cricket fan, MacGregor was looking forward to interviewing Geoff Boycott, until he refused because she was a woman. There’s outraged laughter at the thought. “He’s had to learn over the years,” she says. Radio may have gone through a whopping great evolution, but the pleasure of listening to it remains the same.
