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The Worst Programme Ever!
Last evening, while listening to the radio archive quiz 'Wireless Wise', I heard a voice I never expected - or wanted - to ever hear again: that of Ann Driver, the perpetrator of surely the most otiose programme ever to disgrace the airwaves: The School series "Music & Movement". When I was a boy in the '50s this ghastly aberration was inflicted on schoolchildren not once but TWICE a week (Tuesday, as I remember was M&M 1 and Friday, if memory serves was M&M 2). I have one enduring memory of being about six, with raging toothache, being exhorted to ''do our wide dance''.
For those mercifully young enough never to have heard this series, I should explain that Miss Driver, of the jolly hockey sticks school of broadcasting with a permanent plum in her mouth would dream up some absurd scenario, and then a crudely faded in "musical" link would come in. They sounded literally crudely faded-in from pre war 78s, or else a heavy handed pianist would bash out suitable music on a piano that probably hadn't been tuned since Sir Henry J Wood had used it.
The programme ran for well over 30 years from the forties till (unbelievably) the early 70s. It sounded antique in the mid '50s. Goodness knows what the children of the '60s or '70s thought of it.
Normally in my posting's I take into consideration that time has dated some programmes but they were good in their day. This is one case where I cannot make allowance.
I spoke to a former School's Programme producer many years ago about Miss Driver. he told me that she was 'extremely competent'. I have no doubt of that, but, in addition to her extreme competence she managed to produce, in my opinion, the most crass, banal mind-numbingly absurd programme - even for six year olds - a hotch-potch of crackpot scenarios, all delivered in a smug voice.
Extracted from a posting on the Whirligig Message Board by Alan Giles.
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