Recording Pause for Thought for BBC

Thursday 03/24/05 12:53 PM

I’ve just returned from recording my Spring ‘Pause for Thought’ scripts for BBC Radio 2. My producer (Lucy Dichmont) at Unique is excellent. She really knows how to get the best out of someone reading a script, how to get the natural voice that sounds like it’s just chatting, telling a story as it comes to mind, rather than giving a lecture.

When I first did this kind of thing many years ago (on the World Service) I sounded like a Church of England vicar - or at least how the stereotypical vicar of so many comedy sketches is supposed to sound, the voice swooping up and down and up again at the end of sentences. My producer then was David Craig and he gave me my firs lessons in reading for radio. I’ve been doing Radio 2 for some time now, but it’s not really my natural habitat (as far as writing goes); I listen mostly to Radio 4 and hardly ever to Radio 2 - well, truth to tell, never to Radio 2. So I rely on the producer to help me by editing my scripts into a more Radio 2 friendly style and by prompting me to read in the right voice.

It went well today. Hot cross buns for Macmillan the cancer charity in reception (yes, I made my contribution) and then into studio. My scripts were much more story-based this time round than in the past. I mined my Shetland experiences for a couple of them. And much to my surprise I had written them in quite a dramatic way, so they read well as stories.

Note to self: next time I do PFT scripts for Radio 2 I will start with the stories and think what the moral of the stories might be afterwards. And I must collect stories or dig into my own history for stories.