We seem to be getting an unusually large number of North American contributors to BBC radio speech programmes at the moment – no doubt to the irritation of those who cling to the belief that only RP is fit to be heard on national radio.
In one case I was left feeling that they may have a point. Four Thought – a series of 15 minute lectures to an invited audience, usually in London, is collaborating with American PBS radio to bring us a sequence from America. I found it very hard to follow Maria Popova’s fast, flat delivery – the impression she gave was of reading with her head down, an impression reinforced by the number of quotations she gave from other writers. Which was a great pity, because her subject – how, in an internet age, can we find the information we do not know we want to know – is one in which I am very interested, but am left not much wiser.
Perhaps Ms Popova would benefit from something like the Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers initiative, which last week brought us a real star in the Radio 3 Essay slot. Matthew Smith, a Canadian currently at Strathclyde University spoke about the history of allergy, & pondered whether the way in which doctors & medical researchers can sometimes divide into antagonistic camps over issues (he mentioned breast screening as another example) is really the best way of getting to a solution. The Essay is usually just a solo studio broadcast, but last week the speakers were recorded live before an audience at the Gateshead Free Thinking festival. Matthew Smith gave a relaxed, witty performance, but got a serious message across. I confess though that my feeling is that we don’t hear enough Canadian accents on the BBC.
This week, just two hours after Ms Popova, we got a real treat: Michael Cunningham, a wonderful phrase maker with a wry, self-deprecating but friendly delivery, giving the third in a special series of the Radio 3 Essay to mark Thanksgiving, on American comfort food. I don’t think that this is in collaboration with American radio but the contributors all seem to be speaking from New York.
We learned about the surprising history of macaroni cheese, originally a luxury available only to the rich, which came within reach of the less monied classes once store cheese was invented in Philadelphia. At first I thought this must be the familiar cream cheese, upon which Adam Gopnik had treated us to a disquisition when rhapsodising about cheesecake in Monday night’s Essay, but no, store cheese is orange. As a child, Cunningham actually preferred the bland manufactured variety to his mother’s more flavoursome home made version. of macaroni cheese which could be bought in a cardboard box - not as a latterday microwavable chilled ready meal, but to be mixed with water & heated up, like a Vesta curry.
About as authentic as my calling it, ‘macaroni cheese’, as is the English custom (not sure about the Scots). Americans call it macaroni and cheese.
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