So Patricia Hughes has died, aged 90. She was one of the team of fairly eccentric announcers that Cormac Rigby gathered for Radio 3, and who were some of my first colleagues and ‘customers’ when I joined the BBC. Most of them have gone now – Robin Holmes, blind in one eye, who at least twice put Radio 3 off the air as he knocked his coffee cup over into the works, Victor Hallam, Donald Price, Tom Crowe, who although he sounded immaculate on air, used to give a fair impression of a hedgehog as he snuffled his way through our card index when preparing his scripts. All now, sadly, dead, including Cormac, who left the BBC to become a Catholic priest. Of the older generation of that team, only Peter Barker is still with us, although his mellifluous voice hasn’t been heard on air for many years now.
Tempus fugit.
April 21, 2021 at 12:27 pm
You don’t recall those excellent little “fillers” Robin Holmes recorded, do you? Rural Rhymes, they were called. Five minutes of his gently understated reading of country poems during concert intervals. Lovely items, better than some of the programmes they paused.
April 22, 2021 at 8:45 am
Tim – I think that Robin must have recorded the majority of those fillers before my time at the BBC. He retired within two years of my joining, and before that I had been abroad, and not able to listen regularly to Radio 3. Thank you for reminding us of them. I wonder if any of the recordings still exist?