I was talking to a producer on World Tonight (Radio 4, 10pm) about sound effects. We'd just done a small piece about cycling, which we recorded while cycling. This isn't shameless publicity for me, since it was on last night. But while I'm shamelessly plugging the programme, I may as well add: I do think it's good.
Anyway, I wanted to know what the point was of having us cycling along. I said exactly what I would have said over the phone, with slightly less breath. When all the audience can do is hear us, surely their premium would be on hearing us properly? No, no, she said, it makes such a difference. "Really? Do the listeners notice?" "Not normally. Or if they do, they just write in to ask what all that noise was."
This rueful self-awareness had not diminished in any way her commitment to on-location sounds. She did a piece on inflation, and recorded it in Aldi. "Because it's a shop?" "It's a shop with a policy on inflation." Then she went to Essex to meet a couple who had kept a spreadsheet of their weekly shop for the past six years. "I made him tap away on a keyboard. And then I made her riffle through a drawer for a coupon." Seriously. What is the sound of a person looking for a coupon?
In a segment on Israel, she had stuck her microphone down the hubble-bubble of a man on the Talpiot omnibus, only they couldn't use it because it sounded uncannily like someone being sick. For a piece on the textiles industry, she had recorded a farmer shearing a goat, but they couldn't use that either, because it didn't sound dissimilar to a goat in distress.
I think I've made my point, haven't I? This is the most phenomenal amount of effort, and everyone does it - it's not just swotty Radio 4. Apparently it's like getting some fresh air. You can't say why you need it, but you really notice if you've been cooped up all day, and your ears really notice if they've been in a studio for an hour. Imagine what would happen if you set a management consultant on this. They would rationalise the audio media to hell and back.
