BBC Celebrates 75 Years of Radio Drama!
From the August 27th issue of the Independent:
Johnny Vegas directs and acts in The Toffee Tip, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age comedy. “And they have listening figures that TV at that time of day would kill for,” says Jane Anderson, radio editor at the Radio Times. (The BBC happily confirms this. Drama on Radio 4 attracts almost seven million listeners a week.) “But I think many other people have this view that radio drama is always about the Irish potato famine or middle-class people with dark secrets that come back to haunt them. Once you have that in your mind, it’s hard to listen without thinking, ‘Oh God’, and switching off.”
Listeners who overcome that instinct are rewarded. Anderson cites as one recent triumph Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell, the biographical play in which John Hurt played the titular columnist.
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