Monday, August 01, 2011

Oxbridge not good enough for all

Danny Baker did Desert Island Discs yesterday; he chose only records which he had heard before the age of six, from that era when popular music was popular with (& could be sung along to by) people of all ages, before it became just pop for teenagers.

Two of these records , so he informed us, were produced by George Martin(PB); one was I’m So Ashamed by Peter Sellers, which just reminds us that there is nothing at all new in the perils & pressures of (very young) pop celebrity. I was surprised that I can’t remember ever hearing it before. I was not a great fan of Sellers, so have I just forgotten this one?

I cheered as Danny Baker refused to accept that he had in anyway fought a battle with cancer – he was, like the Normandy Beaches, just the battleground.

Kirsty did not have to work very hard to get her interview – if anything the problem was to remind him to pause for a record. I don’t know if she was just playing up to him or whether she genuinely believes that it could be ‘poverty of ambition’ which prevented him from taking up his scholarship to grammar school which, Kirsty was sure, would have made him a shoo in for a Cambridge Double First.

We really do need to get rid of this idea that Oxbridge should be the (only) dream for everyone who has any intellectual spark at all about them.

I may have misheard Sheila McClennon later on Pick of the Week, but she seemed to continue this nice middle class Radio 4 theme when she said that it was a pity that it had taken his recent illness to make ‘us’ aware of just what a great broadcaster he is.


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