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| By Nathan Chantrell, on March 27th, 2010  I was pleasantly surprised to see that tonights airing of the Delia Derbyshire documentary “Sculptress of Sound: The Lost Works of Delia Derbyshire” on BBC Radio 4 was listened to by enough people to make her name a trending topic on Twitter in the UK for most of the evening – and not just because it means I wasn’t the only person listening to Radio 4 at 8pm on a Saturday night!
Most people will have been exposed to Delia Derbyshire’s work even if they aren’t aware of her name as she created the original 1963 arrangement of the Doctor Who theme tune. Her interpretation of the original score by composer Ron Grainer left him so stunned that on hearing the finished version he asked “Did I really write this?” to which Delia replied “most of it”. Grainer was so impressed with the result that he even tried to get her credited as co-composer but BBC bureaucracy prevented it. The documentary explains how creating such other worldly sounds in those days was a laborious process involving recording individual notes on magnetic tape which were then spliced together to make up the final tune. The show also includes various interviews and recordings with Delia and other examples of her music that demonstrate how far ahead of her time she was. In particular the 1968 White Noise album “An Electric Storm” made with David Vorhaus and fellow Radiophonic Workshop member Brian Hodgson is one of my favourites and is now considered an important and influential album in the development of electronic music. Sadly Delia died in 2001 at the age of 64 as a result of complications from breast cancer treatment. After her death her private collection of the material she recorded was bequeathed to Mark Ayres, archivist for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop who has worked with Manchester University to create a digitised archive of her work. If you missed the documentary you can hear it on iPlayer here or it is repeated on Monday at 3pm on Radio 4. By Nathan Chantrell, on August 10th, 2004 Ofcom proposes to allow local religious and community organisations to operate within the UK Citizen Band allocation, to begin with, by licensing a number of such organisations to transmit services in a limited number of pilot areas. Can see trouble when mic keyers and worse key over the vicar though! and how about this, they said it wasn’t possible – a GSM mobile phone interceptor – a scanner for GSM phones, a snip at £228,000 Law enforcement agencies only so looks like I’ll have to give it a miss :p By Nathan Chantrell, on July 10th, 2004 The new radio episodes of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy I mentioned in November will air on Radio 4 on Tuesday 21 September 2004 at 6.30pm. Previews and more information here. Also, the long awaited DVD release of Series 2 of “Terry Nation’s Survivors” has been given a provisional release date of 4th October. By Nathan Chantrell, on November 6th, 2003 There will be a new Hitch Hiker’s radio series out in 2004 – yes you read right! According to the BBC, the Tertiary Phase of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will be aired on Radio 4 next year. First off is a 6 parter of Life, the Universe and Everything due in spring 2004 followed by an 8 part adaptation of So Long and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless. Hopefully it comes out OK without the oversight of Douglas Adams or Peter Jones as the voice of The Book, they’ve got a lot to live up to. Douglas himself will be playing the part of Agrajag… thanks to some recorded book readings. By Nathan Chantrell, on August 25th, 2003 The PMR446 DX weekend was a bit quiet, probably due to the scorching weather we have been having here, most people are out enjoying the sun instead of playing with radios. Me, I hate it, give me winter any day! Shame it was so quiet as there was a lot of tropospheric lift aiding long distance contacts, Delboy made a staggering contact a few days later from Northumberland to Amsterdam, a distance of approximately 333 miles!! Read about it here.>In other news I broke my record for longest running server with my webserver (an old HP PA RISC jobbie running Debian Linux) that runs a few services for family & friends going over the 365 day mark (currently at 376 days). Once upon a time I’d have been amazed at something like this but these days it’s usually only ever a hardware failure or relocation that brings one of my servers down. I had word last week that for the month of September my Land Rover is to be featured on the front page of series123.com! Check it out starting 1st September. By Nathan Chantrell, on August 24th, 2003 Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, has announced plans to give the public full access to all the corporation’s programme archives. More at BBC News. Will be very cool if this really happens. By Nathan Chantrell, on July 27th, 2003 Next Saturday and Sunday is the third annual PMR446 DX Weekend where radio enthusiasts from all over the UK (and Europe) march up to the highest point they can find in order to make the best PMR446 contact possible. Have a look at last years report here. So if you’ve got a PMR446 set why not join in, call CQ or just listen in on Channel 8, CTCSS 08, I will be at a local high spot (Hill Cliffe in Appleton, Approx 95 metres ASL) on Sunday morning so listen out for me. By Nathan Chantrell, on July 6th, 2003 I’ve moved the PMR446 Link up into the loft now with the radio mounted on the end of a 4.5′ long plank of wood so it is right up in the apex of the roof. Range should now be vastly improved. I did some testing whilst I was out this afternoon and can confirm it works from the following locations: Mersey Street, Bridge Foot, Victoria Park entrance, Black Bear Bridge, and Wilderspool Causeway as far as Loushers Lane, by the time I got to Morrisons there was no signal. There was no signal outside Microbitz on Gainsborough Road either but there was outside the shops on Loushers Lane. This seems to indicate a range of a little over half a mile to the South but obviously this will vary from place to place due to obstacles and height from ground level. I’ll have to do some more testing across the North side of town later in the week. By Nathan Chantrell, on July 3rd, 2003 Last night I set up a PMR446 internet gateway which will allow anyone within a 1 to 2 mile range of my house to communicate with people around the world using a PMR446 radio. As an example of what this does, someone within range of my gateway link can talk through my link radio, over the internet, and out through another gateway in, say, Belgium or Australia (on UHF CB). Someone within range of that second repeater gateway can then communicate back and thus establish a conversation. The gateway (UK095-L) is running 24/7 on Channel 4, CTCSS code 19 and should be available across the Town Centre/Howley/Manchester Road areas of Warrington at least. By Nathan Chantrell, on January 26th, 2003 There is some sort of Blake’s 7 “25th anniversary extravaganza” on next Sunday on R7 @ 8am and then repeated at 9pm. Can’t find any more info than that really though. ENTERTAINMENT: Zen and the Art of Blake’s Seven
Channel: BBC Radio Seven
Date: Sunday 2nd February 2003
Time: 08:00 to 11:00 (starting in 6 days)
Duration: 3 hours. | |
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