speechification

A blog of Radio 4. Not about Radio 4 but of it. We point to the bits we like, the bits you might have missed, the bits that someone might have sneakily recorded. And other bits of speech radio might find their way here too.

Of course, one day this might turn into something else, maybe a new skin for Radio 4, maybe a new way of curating radio, or maybe it won't.

Your hosts on this not very wild ride are Steve Bowbrick, Russell Davies and Roo Reynolds. Drop us a line with your thoughts, unless you wish to complain about continuity announcers and their accents.

Nov
6th

Tue

I was Peckinpah’s Girl Friday

Sam Peckinpah during filming The Getaway with Steve McQueen

Peckinpah’s butch glamour is persistent. That handful of quite awesome movies from the end of the Sixties and the beginning of the Seventies won’t fade away. They’re in the culture - we use the language (“bring me the head…”) and enjoy the unhinged masculinity of those drifters and killers more than ever.

Anyway, the best bit of this terrific profile of Peckinpahs’ long-suffering girlfriend/fixer/producer/gofer Katy Haber - a woman whose loyalty to the old git was so total as to practically destroy her - is the distinctly odd comic narration from Andrew “Creighton Wheeler” McGibbon (oh, and Ali McGraw on the phone). Don’t ask me how McGibbon got this gig. It’s unusual but it works (MP3, Real).

Thanks to Jem and my wife for the tip. The pic is from the set of the film The Getaway.

Steve