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Just listened to him on R4's Front Row, talking about music in cars. Very much the James May of old, articulate, intelligent and erudite, at last he escapes the caricature of himself as shown on Top Gear. Worth a listen to on BBC's "Listen Again" site.
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Yes. He even gets extra Beest Points for picking Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op.111, although I think you'd need a very quiet car to appreciate that to the full.
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It was good to hear him 'out of TG character'. A very enjoyable piece
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James May is a trained classical musician. His girlfriend is the ballet critic for the Evening Standard. I see him regularly at the ROH, and various places that stage challenging modern dance pieces.
The whole 'geezer' thing is a fake and not a very good one at that.
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I once took James May to lunch when he was a young journalist - a good few years ago now!. He'd come to interview me for an article he was writing about automotive electronics and engine management. Told me all about his piano playing etc etc, didn't seem to know very much at all about cars and struck me as a very unlikely motoring journalist. He was a very quiet and pleasant chap though..
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Seems like it - he just needs a damn good haircut :)
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he just needs a damn good haircut :)
What could you mean Mazda person? That's what yobbos used to bawl in the street c. 1958.
Welcome to the twenty-first century. Or rather, not.
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"he escapes the caricature of himself"
What is it about TV that dumbs otherwise erudite people down? Even Clive James, who has a brain the size of a planet, loses about 40 IQ points when he's in front of a camera. I guess the money helps to compensate...
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Imagine what Stephen Fry is like in person.... scary.
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That godawful wine thing with Oz Clarke plumbed new depths of TV vacuity. He's got a lot of ground to make up for inflicting that on us.
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That godawful wine thing with Oz Clarke plumbed new depths of TV vacuity. He's got a lot of ground to make up for inflicting that on us.
oh give him a brake he nearlly blinded the wino with a tent pole
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What is it about TV that dumbs otherwise erudite people down?
If you close your eyes while listening to a factual TV programme, you might be amazed at how little information is conveyed. All too often the voice over is a few opinions stated as fact, accompanied by suitable images to convey the appropriate mood. A programme on global warming might have the presented waffling on about how "global warming will have effects on the climate" and the images will be of hurricanes, drought ridden Africa, volcanoes spewing lava and so on. So the main message is sunconsciously conveyed by the pictures and I suspect we are much more likely to absorb the message without question. After all, images are real, aren't they.
The worst culprit for this nonsense is Horizon, a so-called science programme.
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Radio is the future. Encouraging to hear that R4's listening stats are up. The theatre of the mind against the Theatre of the mindless......Just listened to a lovely little local history programme on local radio. The advantage being you can listen in the dark, in the bath or whilst doing anything else. Don't need pictures.
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Radio is the future. The advantage being you can listen in the dark in the bath or whilst doing anything else.
I find the best place to listen to the radio is the ... CAR!
I can actually watch DVDs from the driving seat in my car too, when its driving. But it's not recommended!
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Absolutely agree about Horizon - a shadow, a travesty, of what it used to be.
However, if you are quick (ie before the BBC get it pulled) there is an old Horizon floating about in the usual places on the interweb (google video etc) from 1987. It's the one with Richard Dawkins' enjoyable Blind Watchmaker programme, which I recall as being interesting the first time around too.
Good stuff on two counts - it's a "proper old Horizon" with people talking to camera straight on and real information being conveyed, and also there's a section on "evolutionary engineering" as it was 20 years ago which mentions Audi (motoring link at last).
As an aside the same source will throw up a couple of editions of the first series of James Burke's Connections, which was also good fun in its day for those interested in technology.
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james burkes connections , remember that , he was a bit forward thinking but when you see it now its a bit like watching krypton factor on one of those free view channels now
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>>watching krypton factor on one of those free view channels now>>
Gordon Burns has been the anchor man for BBC1's Look North from Manchester for several years now.
Still looks almost the same as he did on the KF; excellent presenter on Look North.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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Just listened to it again.....having read the comments above, I like the bit where he's saying that listening to Bach (correctly pronounced which makes a change) is difficult because you need to "see" then corrects himself to "hear" the detail. I think he's correct the first time, listening to certain bits of Mozart and Bach one can almost see the music such is it's purity, It's almost as if it the composers manage to reach a lost 6th sense which is combination of sight and sound.......I'm going to buy his book I think.
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A lot of interesting feedback on here, I think. I hadn't realised radio was having a renaissance. It has been having one with me, certainly.
I am finding having the radio on my PC is good whilst I am on the internet or whatever, am a big fan of Stuart Maconie and Mark Radcliffe's new show on Radio 2, and I find Radio 4 less dry than it used to be (age or changing style? Jury is out..).
And yes, as the product of an ex-classical musician and her husband, a classical music buff, it's nice to see the other side of a "laddish" type. I bet he has decent taste in rock and pop as well.... : )
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The recent Sony awards recognised the less dry Radio 4 - Eddie Mair's PM (and it's not the same when he isn't presenting) won an award, as did Today which is developing a broader spectrum of content than totally dry party politics. I listen to these programmes in the car on the way to and from work (motoring link there).
As for Radcliffe and Maconie (also individual Sony award winners) I too am a rare TV viewer between the hours of 8 and 10pm. I had this terrible feeling that their combined show wouldn't work (which would have disappointed me greatly because as individuals they're my favourite music radio presenters) but I think they're gradually settling into it. I am in danger of turning into a 38 year fanboy which is a bit embarrassing.
--
Soupytwist !
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Been reading May on Motors recently, and he's certainly more erudite than Clarkson, even though he does use the word "coeval" rather too often... Was also quite disappointed to see him spell "Wehrmacht" with a V (and him a former sub-editor too!).
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"erudite than Clarkson"
How very true based on the modern definition of the word and surprisingly the original Middle English
definition is quite appropriate viz:
[Middle English erudit, from Latin ērudītus, past participle of ērudīre, to instruct : ē-, ex-, ex- + rudis, rough, untaught; see rude.]
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The pictures are, famously, better on the wireless than on the goggle box.
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Clarkson's no mug either. The gurning, boorish persona he puts on when operating in a motoring context is just that - a front. Hear him talking about practically anything else and he can be witty, well-informed, amusingly self-deprecating and, yes, erudite.
I'm not sure what it is that makes Top Gear unwatchable by anyone over the age of 14 but I don't think it's the presenters themselves - at least not on their own initiative. The programme seems to have got caught in a vicious, vacuous cycle fuelled by what the producers think it ought to be and what its adolescent viewers want to see - I suspect the word 'cult' is used frequently and without irony around the TG offices, which isn't good. Clarkson, May and Hammond too are all capable of making something the rest of us could watch with brain engaged. I wish they would.
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You're quite right WDB. I cherish his writings in Performance Car in the early nineties before he became celebrity. They were erudite, articulate it's telly what dumbed him down.
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It's just Top Gear which has 'dumbed' him down - did you not see his Documentary on 'The Greatest Raid of All Time'?
Absolutely staggering.
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'The Greatest Raid of All Time'?
Nah, I missed it, unfortunately. You've reminded me though of his excellent programme on Brunell so I withdraw the sweeping statement.
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It's just Top Gear which has 'dumbed' him down - did you not see his Documentary on 'The Greatest Raid of All Time'?
Yes it was good. He managed to wind up the tension, and convey the reality of taking part in the raid (well, as much as is possible given that we were seated in cumfy chairs, in front of a TV and not in a cold wooden boat in a sea covered with burning petrol).
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I'm not sure what it is that makes Top Gear unwatchable by anyone over the age of 14 but I don't think it's the presenters themselves - at least not on their own initiative. The programme seems to have got caught in a vicious vacuous cycle fuelled by what the producers think it ought to be and what its adolescent viewers want to see
Top Gear in its present format attracts 350,000,000 viewers in over 100 countries. No producer in their right mind would change it.
I read selected car magazines and websites for information about cars. I'll do a Sodoku puzzle or the Times crossword if I want to use my brain. I watch Top Gear for sheer, mindless entertainment. It's a bit of fun, with just enough of a car theme to whet my petrolhead appetite. Perfect Sunday night preparation for a week of work-based drudgery. Let's face it, when Top Gear was a serious, informative motoring programme back in the days of William Woollard, Tony Mason and Chris Goffey, nobody watched it.
I agree with the comments on Clarkson as well. Under that well known veneer of laddishness and buffoonery is one of the most intelligent and articulate journalists in recent memory. Again though, while this facade provides him with a lifestyle and financial status that few of us will ever dream of, why would he change? I suspect that 350,000,000 audience figure, and Clarkson's well documented revival of Top Gear's fortunes the first time round is quite a powerful tool when it comes to his contract negotiations.
Cheers
DP
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Top Gear in its present format attracts 350,000,000 viewers in over 100 countries. No producer in their right mind would change it.
A case of 'nobody ever went bust by underestimating the intelligence of the public', then? But three hundred and fifty million viewers? Where? India?
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"Top Gear in its present format attracts 350,000,000 viewers in over 100 countries. No producer in their right mind would change it."
There was a recent discussion of TG on R4. Someone from TG was present - the producer I think - along with a motoring journalist from the Guardian, and someone else from (I think) Brake or some other such organisation (or maybe even the government). I was totally gobsmacked by the last person referring to the car as a 'dangerous weapon' (exact words). He went on to denounce reviews of performance cars, driving performance cars and so on as irresponsible and leading to increased deaths on the roads. Wow. My opinion of him is unprintable here due to forum rules, but he was a complete and total nutter. I suspect many government types are like that.
Though I previously hated the TG performance car reviews where JC speeds round a track while gurning to camera, I might just start to enjoy them just to avoid being in the same camp as such an anti-car nutter.
Ah yes, James May, why am I not surprised that the bloke persona is but a paper thin facade.
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"I hadn't realised radio was having a renaissance."
Yes the current government's policies are helping it along. Think "traffic jam" and "long commute".
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Might almost call him 'the educated mans Jeremy Clarkson'
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"Might almost call him 'the educated man's Jeremy Clarkson"
Sorry couldn't help the correction there :-)
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PUG - thanks for the korrictshun
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So what does that make the Hamster? I can guess given some of the mail he says he receives.
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Apparently he is a sex thimble.
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Apparently he is a sex thimble.
LMFAO!!! :^D
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