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| "Radio is one of the great blessings of modern life, and all the more so if you are sight-impaired. I am delighted to lend what support I can to the British Wireless for the Blind Fund." |
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| "Radio has always been a particularly exciting medium for me. I’ve found it thrilling to listen to since I was a very little girl. When I found myself with a job as a broadcaster I could hardly believe how lucky I was to have such a wonderful, privileged job. Radio is such an intimate medium. I was taught from the beginning that you are talking just to one person. This is why radio is absolutely essential to blind people, offering that direct, one-to-one contact. A vital channel of information and entertainment. I think the BWBF is absolutely marvellous. I’m thrilled to be involved with it." |
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| "My first memory of the wireless is when, as a four year old, I sat with my Mum each day, hearing ‘Listen with Mother.’ We had a wonderful, old fashioned radiogram, a big piece of furniture that radiated a glorious warmth from the corner of the room…the dials and station window glowing orange, the valves getting hot. I would tune up and down the dial, my Mum would play records. My earliest memories connect the link between radio and music. As I got older I got to hear ‘Dick Barton,’ sometimes ‘Journey into Space’ and the Goons, all the time realising that this new medium encouraged me to let my mind put images to the sounds." "I didn't need to see photographs of the people whose voices I was hearing, or the places they were in. I could build a picture of it all in my mind, and make it as glamorous, frightening or comic as I wanted. Sports commentaries took me onto the pitch. When Bluebottle fell into the water, I was laughing from the shoreline. |
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I found my Rock ‘N’ Roll when I was ten, through Elvis Presley. My search for more took me to ‘Pick of the Pops,’ Radio Luxembourg and the Pirate radio stations, each new experience confirming how much I wanted to be in a studio, behind a microphone, playing records, soaking up the atmosphere and being part of the magic of it all. |
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| "Since an early age, I realised how much blind people relied on the wireless. I had an elderly aunt to record me, on an old reel to reel tape recorder telling stories and reading poems. Her blind friends used to say they liked the sound of a child’s voice. Today the radio is just as much as much a friend as it has always been. I know that from the number of requests I receive written in Braille. I feel very honoured to be asked to become a patron of The British Wireless for the Blind Fund and will help as much as possible." |
