“As per” I hear you cry. But when was Helen ever a good listener (except when being told how brave, fragile, brilliant, and generally wonderful she is)?
7 Likes
Never. Ever.
7 Likes
Mind you, that probably makes her the ideal confidante; how could she repeat what she never heard in the first place?
8 Likes
As to “history”, looking at the state of The World, I am constantly reminded of the wise words of George Santayana, and as to TA, it really is quite easy to re-write history when the card-index, just like the “doom musak” has been discarded as an unimportant relic of a bygone age! 
4 Likes
Presumably the new-fangled computerised archive Keri Davies was so enthusiastic about still exists–and, more importantly, continues to be updated with the daily synopses? So why the feck does no one bother to look at it?
6 Likes
The last line of that blog:
Archers listeners care about these things. And quite right, too.
You couldn’t make it up…
5 Likes
BBC internal market, so that they have to pay each time they check?
Horrible web interface so that it takes half an hour to get signed in even on the days when it works?
5 Likes
As far as I know that only applies to resources used across the whole BBC–translation services and th pronunciation unit, for example; even then, I think it’s more a concern for independent producers rather than in-house. Hard to see how anyone outside the TA office would need (or want) access to a database concerned with just one programme.
Reading the comments on that article, do they really expect us to believe that the archive isn’t amenable to a straightforward text search?
Just done a bit of digging. The internal market was introduced by John Birt in the 90s and was widely regarded as a disaster. It’s been pretty well abandoned:
Music that was previously provided free by the BBC Gramaphone Library now came with a charge and it wasn’t cheap. Which is why all the music shops in Oxford Street were busy with BBC researchers exercising their programme producer’s choice buying far cheaper commercial CDs.
At the prestigious Radio 4 daytime current affairs programmes The World at One and PM, staff were barred from using any material from the BBC’s gramophone library because the cost was too high. “The greatest sound archive in the world is effectively closed to us,” said a World at One reporter.
https://www.netribution.co.uk/stories/30-BBC/309-bbc-axes-birts-qproducer-choiceq-internal-market
5 Likes
Just to be on the safe side, I would recommend the Lavinia treatment
5 Likes
Don’t see Helen as the “flame-haired beauty” type…
5 Likes
Before or after the inflammable Christmas jumper incident?
5 Likes
After, surely? We wouldn’t want her to run short of fuel, would we?
5 Likes
I notice that Louiza Patikas, giving her thoughts on Helen in the BBC character pages, says she is “not a people-pleaser”.
She can say that again.
7 Likes
She expects people to be Helen-pleasers, too.
7 Likes