BBC | Autumn Watch

The sartorial challenges of radio

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 09:09:55 +0000

It started with a "tsk."

Having stayed at my mum's in Bath - before heading off to record a feature for You and Yours at the Roman Baths - she looked me up and down and - as is customary, provided full subtitles to her raised eyebrow: (my mother hates to be misinterpreted when criticising. Crystal clear comprehension is her sole aim.) "Is that what you are wearing?" she asked. "To go and do an interview?

I looked down too. (Up is harder when you are both the subject to be appraised, and the appraiser. Try it if you don't believe me.) Shoes? Check. Tights? Check. Skirt, top, cardie? Check, check, check. Massive rucksack with recorder, notebook and three months worth of detritus? All present and correct. Still finding the looking up trick, well, tricky, I patted my head in case my hair was missing. Nope. All there. I looked back at her and raised my own brow. "It's just not very smart." she said. Then she softened a little, like an iceberg which had been attacked with a hair-dryer (i.e. not much.) and added "for a top-level reporter, (pause) Darling." Leaving aside the top-level thing, it did start me wondering about the dress code at work. Were we all hideous scruff-bags, in need of a brisk shake down and an iron from my mother, or not?

To be clear: there are no rules that I am aware of, which dictate what we should wear for work at Radio 4. I personally avoid denim, as my first ever boss at Radio Cambridgeshire told me to. I still stick to that rule because she was so frightening, that if she ever caught me wearing jeans now, I would still have to escape to the loos for a little cry. It also makes me feel a bit more professional when I'm out and about meeting people. In the office, however, there is a sliding scale from lycra cycling gear (which gets changed after a cool down) to chinos and jeans, to jackets and sharp little skirt suits. Nothing crazy. Just clothes.

Apparently it was very different forty plus years ago. Thena Heshel devised the original 'You and Yours' programme. As part of her contribution to our anniversary celebrations, she wrote to tell us about the sartorial advice she received when starting out in radio production in 1964: "I was expected to arrive very formally dressed. " she typed "it was even suggested that it might be appropriate on some occasions to wear a hat!" Evening dress for evening recordings was recommended, and Thena recalls wearing "a suit skirt jacket and gloves to produce a weekly live programme called 'Week's Good Cause'. She did point out though, that by the time she joined the BBC, the young ones had started to ignore such advice, which came from "the older generation of producers who were then retiring".

Now it has completely changed. Obviously. In fact, the dressed down approach took on a whole new meaning a few years ago when a new reporter jogged to work and kept on his extra brief running shorts for the morning news meeting. He would then sit in a typically bloke-ish fashion with his legs up on the table requiring everyone else to look primly away, or face a very human exposé. What would my mother have said to that?

Back to her then, and to me in the hallway in Bath. I defended my outfit, reverted to being a teenager, got a bit grumpy and stalked off for my interview. When I arrived, the beautifully dressed woman from Bath and North East Somerset Council looked me up and down and uttered a soft "Oh.." I am still not sure why, and whether it had anything to do with what I had on. I hope not. After all, surely the whole beauty of radio is that no one knows what most of us look like, and no one should really care. That's part of the reason I love the medium, and as my mother has often remarked - probably part of the reason they still let me work in it.

Catherine Carr is a reporter on You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

The sartorial challenges of radio

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:04:32 +0000

It started with a "tsk."

Catherine Carr is a reporter on You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

BBC ID Badge

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:41:26 +0000

It's a funny thing the BBC ID badge. By glancing at another's - swinging round their neck, or left strewn on a desk (more on that later) you can carbon date their career at the BBC. Grey hair once black? Maybe fifteen years in the business? A once carefree expression now worry-worn etc.

In our building, (Broadcasting House, in London), the same piece of plastic will let me into the revolving doors but it will not let me through the swing-ey doors (which I have to use when I carry my folding bike). The reason? "Terrorism risk", they said. "Something to do with hinges...?" I asked. I am still not sure. And, as with all work ID passes, a bad photo can provide a great canteen-lunch tease-a-thon. If you and your colleagues are at a conversational loose end, that is.

But the really marvellous thing about the BBC ID badge is the access it grants into other people's lives, into subjects you were once ignorant of, and areas you have never visited. That is how over the last week or so I have found myself sitting at a kitchen table behind a post-office in rural Suffolk discussing the extraordinary theft of the village's water and on the top floor of Harrods in Knightsbridge, drinking leaf tea on satin cushions with a 'superstar' perfumer. We were discussing the regulation of oak moss, amongst other things. (Watch this space...it affects you more than you think!)

Wearing the BBC badge suits a nosey parker like me, who likes the sound of her own voice (a lot) but who also quite likes to listen to other people talk about things I had never even thought of. Who knew - for instance - that there were courses for would-be-hoteliers on how to overbook their hotels? Not me. Maybe I am naïve, but then I seem to be in good company. Listen next week for the case studies I have found who have been left fed up in hotel receptions this summer. In that instance the ID badge and the privileges it affords may help to inform us all a little.

As for the leaving of ID's 'strewn on desks' (see above).. It taught me an invaluable life lesson... for on top of learning about the potential health risks of basil in men's perfume, this week I also realised that a discarded plastic badge is not only a ripe opportunity for ribbing (yes, I do look like a grumpy convict in mine). But it can also get lost easily. This means both revolving and swing-ey doors are suddenly slammed in my face. Not to mention tete a tetes with fragranced gentlemen and another cup of Lapsang Souchong.

Catherine Carr is a reporter on You & Yours

Petrolhead Grandma

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:37:14 +0000

On her ninetieth birthday - enroute to her celebration lunch - Grandma famously patted our new car, glanced at the engine size, and crowed: "mine is faster than this." I like to think her utter glee was my birthday gift to her... In the past she has also sniffily declared Bentleys to be 'draughty' and to have boasted that she can drive 'damn near anything'.

As a child she was my hero for reducing travel sickness by perfecting a driving style which, (in her words) 'smoothed out the corners' of the Devon lanes. As an adult I realised that this driving style could also be called 'brushing with death, driving a car at 40-50 mph in the middle of narrow lanes with many blind turns.' It has been a while since I have agreed to be her passenger.*

With a driving career spanning eight decades, and including stints in sports cars, driving ambulances in the blackout and managing a three tonne tea wagon in North Africa, she has been driving for longer than the driving test, which turned 75 this year. So, in honour of her grit, and because I knew she'd make a darned fine interviewee... I took my recorder to Devon, crossed myself, kissed the children goodbye and buckled up.

She bought her first car at 15, a Morris and hasn't been without wheels since - taking the official test as a sixteen year old in 1935. Her preference is for fast, sporty and big. Her favourite was a two seater Armstrong Sidley Hurricane which she bought in 1948 after her stint with the NAAFI. Along the way she has had trusty Fords, station wagons and Peugeots (one which used to make regular trips into Amboseli Game Park in Kenya to have breakfast and see the rhino..) She was once even given a car - (and a dog and a gun, but that is a different story) - by a surrendering German soldier. She bought the dog back home. Not the car.

Since I can remember she has driven Lancias and Hondas. Wide and comfortable, tarmac- hugging and FAST. And, you would think (if you have had a hip replacement), pretty tricky to climb in and out of. But she copes. For the sake of style, I think.

So how was the journey? Admittedly we only went to the village to drop off the empties at the bottle-bank, but that involved a 5 point turn, a 1:4 hill and some pretty twisty roads. Was I scared? No. Did I think she was safe? Yes. Do I think she should still be driving? Absolutely.

She's just written off for her eighth three-year licence. She drives with glasses, in the daytime, and often to pursue her other passion: golf. Without her wheels, her life would be unrecogniseable. When I asked her when she will give up, she simply said: "When I have to." I really hope that's not for a while yet.

*For the record, she has never caused a crash. She has been driven into, whilst stationary, twice.

Click here to listen to Catherine's interview with her grandma, broadcast on the You and Yours programme on Friday 25th June.

Catherine Carr is a reporter on You and Yours

You & Yours is on BBC Radio 4 at 1200 weekdays. Listen to today's episode on the Radio 4 web site.

Driving Test

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:57:00 +0000

So the driving test turned 75 years old this week. Happy Birthday to one of the most exciting rites of teenage passage. Ah! freedom....It was a day I rehearsed for in a Renault Espace on Cotswold lanes: a dicey combination, which saw my dad adopting the 'parent of learner driver' brace position. (feet pressed into the foot well, pumping an imaginary brake, and both hands gripping the handle above the passenger window.) Reader I passed first time. Not all are so lucky - I distinctly remember listening to the deputy head of our school crowing about the test giving some of the more boffin-y members of our sixth form "an opportunity to fail" at something. Perhaps for the first and last time. The driving test as leveller, then.

Despite sailing through with narey six minor faults to my name, (does this terminology age me?..) it is not without a deep sense of retrospective relief that I read about the new 'initiative' element of the driving test, set to be introduced later this year. Thank the Lord I wasn't subjected to that. I'd still be lost on a scooter in Hull. And I live in Cambridge...The DSA website says it will "help candidates demonstrate their ability to drive without step-by-step instruction." which they believe "will lead to better and safer drivers." Now I am all for independent thinking...and for independence full-stop. I am frequently ashamed of fellow women (often) who give up their rights to drive the family car along with their surname. I know women who could be driven the same route thirteen times in daylight and who wouldn't have a clue how to do it themselves... and it makes me mad. BUT while I drive often, drive my husband around often, and rarely get lost...when the journey is to somewhere completely new, or I am stressed about it - I switch on the satnav. We bought her (for it is a her), after sitting in a pub car park, late for a friend's wedding in deepest Dorset, as my husband famously hissed at me "Let Me Tell You How. Maps. Work...."

For easy journeys and journeys unconstrained by time and stress, for regular journeys and motorway journeys the sat nav is redundant. She rests wrapped up in a sock in the glove compartment... But stress and driving do not mix: and what car journey could be more stressful than the driving test? Feeling suddenly sorry for today's wannbe-driving stressed-out seventeen year olds, I take a quick look at the Driving Standards Authority to see how else the test has changed over the last three score years and fifteen.

Until the mid seventies, I was amused to read, you were still examined on your use of hand signalling. It was a skill I still practised as a child, lifting the flap of our 2CV's front window to wave a limb when my mother shouted. Sometimes the window stayed flapped up for long enough, sometimes it didn't. I am glad no one has to trap a fore-arm to do this hand-flailing any longer. It could be painful.

In 1996 the theory test was introduced. I am so glad that I was done and dusted by then, although I do sometimes wish I understood a few more of the signs which litter the nations' highways and by-ways. Had the dreaded exam been around when I was that show-off seventeen year old in her father's MPV, I would still be the proud owner of a provisional license, and that scooter.

So in summary: Better understanding of signs, and less need for clockwise circular movements of the arm (or whatever it was) to denote deceleration.... But where does the new initiative test fit into this evolution of the exam? To me it feels like a retrograde step....By all means make the test harder. Test the learners on their technique and their signs.. Make them do more lessons in more conditions over a longer time, maybe... but don't put them through the added misery of getting lost and getting flustered. Keep those instructions coming from the examiner, after all the last seventy five years have brought us indicators and GPS. Let's keep our hands inside the car and our minds on the task at hand: passing the test and tasting freedom.

Catherine will be taking a trip with her grandma who learnt to drive before the test, and is still on the road at the age of 92. We'll hear how they get on in a week or so on You and Yours.

You & Yours is on BBC Radio 4 at 1200 weekdays. Listen to today's episode on the Radio 4 web site.

Catherine Carr is a reporter on
You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

In search of the superhighway

Tue, 18 May 2010 14:45:25 +0000

By Catherine Carr

0530 Wake up in Cambridge.

0550 Peel children from legs.

0645 Train to London.

0830 Meeting in Broadcasting House, at which some bright spark has the idea to send me in search of the new cycle superhighway. Apparently these new bright blue lanes will criss-cross London to allow commuters to get to work without ending up being sandwiched between two buses. Or two taxis. Or two buses and a taxi.

0900ish make calls to Transport for London to get guest for programme. Unfold bike. Call Cycle Touring Club for guest as well. Ask colleague to call BOJO (Boris Johnson's) office in case he wants to talk about the "great oak" of a cycle network which he says must start with an "acorn". Warning bells go off somewhere in tired woolly head, that maybe an acorn in Clapham might be hard to find. However blue.

0930 Get recorder, bike, A to Z and notebook. Entertain hare-brained idea to pedal to find cycle lanes, in a bid to make comparison between super and not so super cycle routes more 'authentic'.

1030 Discover that Clapham is miles from Broadcasting House.

1031 Discover that the fly that had ended up in my eye was in fact three flies.

1032 Look for cycle lanes.

1033 Look a bit more.

1034 Call Transport for London and they tell me that the cycle lanes are at the very early stage (acorn, remember). They suggest Balham or Tooting. I hang up and swear softly.

1040 Field call from office who wonder where on earth I am. Feel a little bit panicked that somehow I have to find cycle lane, assess it, interview someone, get back to BH, put interview and stuff in computer and edit it. All before 1230.

1050 Interview someone in a bike shop. Bit tenuous, but at least she has seen some blue paint in the borough.

1055 Bingo!! Blue superhighway!! Plus six or seven very obliging men en route to Paris in aid of Royal Marsden Cancer Campaign. They are smack-bang on top of (very short) stretch of super-highway. And hadn't even realised. These highways will not be ready until July, so we weren't expecting them to stretch all the way from Morden to the city yet.... But I was expecting more than 50 or so metres of blue paint.

1100 Find some builders building the superhighway. Persuade them to turn on their pneumatic drill for a burst for my piece.. and then ask them if the cycle lanes will be ready for July. A man in a hi-vis jacket says "no". I get that on tape. It's quite funny.

1106 Cycle to Stockwell and tell office I am coming back and hump folding bike to tube. Regret beige skirt. Not for first time this morning, either.

1108 Sit on tube.

1109 Eat apple.

1110 Dream of a latte.

1111 Finish apple.

1112 Listen to stuff I had taped, to get an idea which bits will go where in final piece.

1130 Back to office and load recorded stuff onto PC, start marshalling it into some kind of order.

1135 Establish that my colleague Lucy has sorted interviews and briefed all and sundry. Good-oh.

1150 Try to find a studio engineer to help make the piece sound pretty (iron out all the traffic noises and de-umm it.)

1202 Ask Lucy to help me find an engineer.

1210 Ask Chris to help Lucy to help me to find an engineer.

1220 Run up three flights of stairs, through the radio drama studio to find engineer (find Vicky, who works like lightning on the piece).

1240 Piece finished. Three and a half minutes of me breathless and with a rising and shrill voice somewhere in Clapham/Tooting/Balham with flies in my eyes and a grubby beige skirt on, chatting to bemused men in lycra.

1250 Interview with Transport for London and Cycle Touring Club goes on air after my piece. Peter White sounding bouncy and in control (as usual) despite the activity behind the glass screen. And the late arrival of any script for the interview.

1300 Off air.

Listen to Catherine's report.

Catherine Carr is a reporter for You and Yours.

You & Yours is on BBC Radio 4 at 1200 weekdays. Listen to today's episode on the Radio 4 web site.