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Letter to Alistair The BBC World Service pays tribute to the late Alistair Cooke in Letter to Alistair on 15 and 22 May. The veteran broadcaster died at his New York home in March this year, aged 95. For 58 years he presented Letter from America, the world's longest running speech radio programme. First broadcast in 1946 it continued until Cooke's retirement in February 2004 with his 2,869th programme. Cooke described it as "a weekly personal letter to a Briton by a fireside, about American life, people and places in the American news". In 1973 Cooke received an honorary knighthood for his contribution to Anglo-American understanding, and a year later addressed the United States Congress on its 200th anniversary. He also received a Bafta and Sony Radio Award for his services to broadcasting. Producer Tony Grant compiles some of his best moments from the series. Working mainly in London he met Cooke only a few times. He recalls: "I used to joke with him 'okay Alistair let's have the script then!' and he would laugh, and tell me not to talk nonsense. "Then he would disappear into the studio and read through the 2,000 words of his script with hardly a fluff." Broadcast Times Letter to Alistair: 2 x 15 minute programmes Saturday 15 May: 4:30 and 11:30am Saturday 22 May: 4:30 and 11:30am [Times as given in press release. I assume these are local UK times and refer to the European stream. For other regions consult the BBC World Service Web site.] Listen online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/index.shtml # posted by Andy @ 09:14 UTC Comment (0)
(Note from PDB: I can find no reference to this programme in the May Edition of "Braille BBC On Air", which specifically gives information for the European Stream of BBC WS. Nor do I know whether this in fact will be simply a repeat of the original programme broadcast on 30 March, which was 25 minutes on BBC Ws, just split into 2 13-minute chunks. Perhaps someone out there, particularly if they are reading this via the swprograms list, may have the answer).
PAUL DAVID,
Wembley Park, United Kingdom |
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