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.
I’ll let you draw your own allusions to today and FM versus DAB spectrum allocation…
John Arlott – Cricket’s Radical Voice
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