Allow me to present these edited highlights of a tribute to the – apparently – thousands of sound effects artists required to bring a single episode of radio to life, according to this startlingly untrustworthy and increasingly Lynchian "Jam Handy Picture" from 1938 called, for some reason, Back of the Mike. Here are four men recreating the sound of a telephone:
And here, over a decade before The Archers was first broadcast, is someone testily soothing a cow:
I was inspired to do some research into this subject by Margaret Cabourn-Smith's shining turn as The Goon Show's solo foley artist "Janet" in Spike, which I saw at the Richmond Theatre on Thursday with her husband Dan Tetsell who had just finished his own run on EastEnders, completing the BleakEnders trifecta...
To save the kerfuffle of taking down bank details, I had given Dan two sleek tenners for the ticket – tenners aren't "crisp" any more, but is "sleek" the word? – which he then passed on to Mervyn Millar whom we met in the pub afterwards for tickets to My Neighbour Totoro at the Barbican. Mervyn in turn handed these on to Barry Cryer's son Bob who was the fourth at our table – I don't know for what, but it didn't matter, I'd really enjoyed the show and some pints and was now in the mood to find transactions like these immensely pleasing.* Here's the sound of a horse chase:
I talked to Mervyn about how much I'd been considering recently the increasing popularity of puppets in theatre, because I figured he must have played a part in that, and I asked how he got started: Apparently his first puppet had been a judge, built because there simply hadn't been enough time for the actor he was directing to do the full quick change. Here's a rain storm:
Bob Cryer was lovely too, and talked about the passing of his father, and the slight oddness of
grieving alongside a parasocial fan community (Ray Galton's son had
suggested they team up with Rory Kinnear and Lucy Briers to form the "Sons
Or Daughters Of Famous Fathers", or SODOFF.) I had a great time.
Naturally Margaret ended the show doing the splits. More surprisingly, she opened it accidently knocking her enormous gramophone off a trolley. I was very happy to be sitting next to Dan for that – that's the joy of live theatre – and I was also very happy the show ended with a performance of 1985. The tour ends soon, and the final Richmond show is going up within an hour of me posting this so sorry for that, but go if you can.
What else did I enjoy about that night? The pub was giving out free dog biscuits. Eating those took me back.
Here's more research:
* UPDATE: Margaret has just informed me it was for a ticket to Spike. Perfect.
Actually,
I'll get to those later. Sorry. I'm determined to keep this blog going
daily, but I'm very tired. I fell asleep in the Tate after work. I queued
to see some parrots – in the Tate – (not for long, that's fine, all the
fun of the fair, no this isn't Mike Timeout's wry-and-sideways gutless
whinge, I'm just tired) – and then queued again to get into a "one person
at a time" shed among some banana trees. The piece was an example of
"Tropicalia", a seventies Brazilian art movement. "It's not all just
parrots and banana trees" yelped the signage. There was also some
gravel. And once I finally got into the shed (again, didn't have to wait
long, all the fun of the fair etc.) and – spoiler warning – turned
right four times in the dark and through some beads, I arrived at a
badly-tuned telly showing one of the live action Scooby Doo films (I
haven't seen either, so couldn't say which one... Velma was threatening
to quit). I tried to see if you could change the channels. You couldn't.
I didn't stay long, there was a queue. However, it struck me
that that hadn't stopped others before me. Some of them must have been
in there three or four minutes. Watching Scooby Doo. Possibly going
Hmmm. And, to be fair, I was going Hmmm. I was going Hmmm, I wonder what
all these people are doing loitering in a shed in the Tate watching
Scooby Doo. Maybe that's what everyone was wondering in there. Then
again, I had just missed the bit where they unmask the ghost, so probably
not.
On leaving the shed and seeing the queue, I thought "Shall I
tell them?"... I didn't of course, all the fun of the fair. But then
again, it's far less easy to calculate the most public-spirited option
when you're dealing with installation art, or indeed any art. (All of
which, I suppose, goes back to a quarrel I had with a friend last week
which I have to say she forfeited by branding my wrist with a cheese
fork – "Ow! I win!": that old story.)
So anyway, yes, that was
Tropicalia – I'd forgotten, by the way, how terrifying a macaw is once you
get beyond the feathers: basically, raptor talons jammed into the face
of a drowned tiger – and then I fell asleep. And then I went to the Oval
House to catch the last night of Steve King's play "Yellow Lines", a
play I had sort of helped midwive into being, over the course of four
years, by continually attending readthroughs of drafts in the central
role of Colin and then OFFERING! SUGGESTIONS! So it was great to finally
see it happen, despite the small, deceived, unhelpful voice that would
sound in my head whenever the lead actor was onstage giving his
interpetration of an ill-fitted, dyspraxic control freak, "You're
playing me. You're playing me. Well, you've got the walk right anyway."
And then, knackered, I got the tube home, demanding an explanation for something.
So here is what I demand an explanation for: Those stars.
Does anyone have any ideas? Please contact me if so. Thank you and good night.
