Great Lives19 Jan 2021

Caroline Catz on Delia Derbyshire

Actor Caroline Catz chooses Delia Derbyshire, the musician and composer best known for her work at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop where she realised the TV theme tune to Doctor Who.

Presented by Matthew Parris.

With Dr David Butler from the University of Manchester who looks after Delia's archive.

Delia was born in Coventry in 1937 and describes her earliest recollections of sound as the sound of the German blitz and the air-raid sirens. She studied music and maths at Cambridge and joined the BBC Radiophonic Workshop where she could create sounds that had never existed in the world before.

Her 'realisation' of Ron Grainer's theme tune to Doctor Who brought both her and the Workshop to greater prominence, but she later left the BBC and London and moved to Cumbria where she worked on a series of projects, as well as being briefly employed as a radio operator at the Gas Board.

She was a pioneer of sound and her work is celebrated each year by Delia Derbyshire Day.

Caroline was terrified by the Doctor Who theme tune as a child but fascinated by the woman, and later discovered tracks like 'Ziwzih Ziwzih OO-OO-OO' and 'Blue Veils and Golden Sands' from Radiophonic Workshop mix tapes.

The discovery of 267 tapes in Delia's attic provided another portal into the extraordinary sonic world of Psyche-Delia and the mystery surrounding both how she created her music and the choices she made in life provided the inspiration for Caroline's film 'Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes' in which she plays the lead.

Delia appears in archive recordings to give Matthew his first taste of a Wobbulator.

Producer: Toby Field

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2021.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(408)

Cartoonist Naji al-Ali

Naji al-Ali was one of the best known cartoonists in the Arab world. His creation, a little boy called Handala, always stands with his back to the viewer, hands behind his back, watching whatever Naji...

2 Juni 27min

Cleopatra picked by Kate Williams

"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety." She's the most famous character in antiquity, made more famous by Shakespeare and Hollywood films. But this Cleopatra is not the one Kat...

1 Juni 27min

Ade Edmondson on singer Sandy Denny

Ade Edmondson - star of The Young Ones, The Comic Strip Presents, Bottom and much more besides - chooses the singer Sandy Denny. "I think a large part of my Englishness comes from Sandy Denny," he say...

19 Maj 27min

Tony Garnett picked by Harry Bradbeer

Tony Garnett was born in Birmingham and, after a brief career as an actor, found a new role behind the scenes of The Wednesday Play. These rapidly gained a reputation in the sixties for social realism...

19 Maj 27min

Peter Cook picked by Jon Harvey aka Count Binface

Peter Cook was at the centre of the satire boom of the early sixties, both on stage with Beyond the Fringe and with his Soho club, The Establishment. Later he became a famous double act with Dudley Mo...

19 Maj 27min

Coco Khan picks Edith Garrud, the jujitsu fighting suffragette

Writer and podcaster Coco Khan nominates the little-known but formidable Edith Garrud, a woman who turned Edwardian expectations on their head. A pioneer of ‘Suffrajitsu’, she taught women Japanese ma...

19 Maj 27min

William Gladstone, four-time PM

"Gladstone became prime minister at 82, and not as a figurehead. That is the Gladstone who has inspired me." Trevor Lyttleton.Born in 1809, William Gladstone's political life straddled the century - h...

19 Maj 27min

Alistair McGowan on HE Bates

HE Bates is probably best known for the Darling Buds of May and Fair Stood the Wind for France, but Alistair McGowan is surprised that he is not known for his short stories, which he believes are the ...

11 Maj 27min