John Arlott – Cricket’s Radical Voice

You have just under two days to listen to the most recent Archive Hour on Radio 4 dealing with John Arlott’s political nature.
As well as being famous for having one of those wonderful Test Match Special voices that I’d listen to when I was growing up, he was also a regular on programmes like Any Answers which this programme used quite a lot to source audio.
And with the death last year of Basil D’Oliveira the story of how he came to get D’Oliveira over from South Africa and into a Lancashire league side – something that would eventually lead directly to the sporting boycott of South Africa – I had tears in my eyes at times.
But I was just wanted to highlight a clip of someone else who appeared alongside Arlott in a 1957 edition of Any Questions. Although the question was a light-hearted one on BBC pay, Street – about whom I know nothing – pointed out the lack of commercial competition to the BBC at the time.
It’s interesting to hear him speaking on the BBC about that lack of a rival when of course commercial television had already started.
Arthur Street on Any Questions 1957 (mp3)
I’ll let you draw your own allusions to today and FM versus DAB spectrum allocation…


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