6 minute read
COLUMNIST – KATHY CLUGSTON
Kathy Clugston
Kathy Clugston is a freelance radio presenter. She chairs the long-running BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’ and presents the weekly entertainment show ‘The Ticket’ on BBC Radio Ulster.
MAGIC POTION
This month, Kathy Clugston discusses the allure to cure and revitalise wth all sorts of concoctions.
One of the perks of my job as a sayerof-things-out-loud on radio is that I am sometimes asked to read things aloud for other people. You never know where this is going to take you. When I lived in London, a Radio 4 listener sent in a poem about the Shipping Forecast and I travelled to a beautiful town in Oxfordshire to read it live in a tiny candlelit theatre. At the other end of the scale, I was one of a group of newsreaders enlisted to shout into megaphones during John Tavener’s symphonic poem The Whale at the Royal Albert Hall. I used to read out texts and emails from listeners on The Scott Mills Show on Radio 1 and when Scott and the team went to the Edinburgh Festival I ended up performing the song Lady Marmalade in a live cabaret. Listeners’ correspondence turned up again when Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time invited me on to a special Christmas edition to read out some of the oddest letters they’d received; it was the start of a beautiful friendship that has resulted in me now hosting the programme.
This month I was asked to do some reading aloud in a not-so-glamorous location: my own back garden. However, the request came from one of my favourite broadcasters, Peter Curran. (Peter and the playwright Patrick Marber host a radio curio called Bunk Bed. The two of them lie under the covers and have sleepy chats. Seriously. It’s brilliant, you’ll find it on BBC Sounds.) Peter lives in England but comes from Belfast and often returns home to make programmes. If there’s a bit of voiceover required and not much money available, he knows exactly who to call. He’s currently making a podcast series about life in Northern Ireland in the 1920s focussing mainly on social history - what we were wearing, what we were buying, how we spent our time. My job was to read out a selection of advertisements from the 1921 Londonderry Sentinel, which, as you can imagine, were fascinating. There were ads for coal: “Brown Ash Coal lengthens leisure and saves toil”; government blankets “as issued to British and colonial troops”; cloth made from the lining of army uniforms, ladies’ tweed suits and services for binding pianoforte sheet music. My favourite ad was for a potion called Clark’s Blood Mixture which claimed to cure everything from eczema, pimples and boils to piles, rheumatism and gout. These ailments, the makers claimed, were caused by “impurities in the blood”, which could be expelled by a few swigs of this wonder potion. In 1909 the British Medical Association had determined that this “cure-all” was mostly water with a bit of sugar, a tiny amount of alcohol and traces of ammonia and chloroform. However it, unlike asthma cigarettes, cocaine toothache drops and arsenic toilet soap, continued to be sold until the late 1960s.
It’s easy to sneer at the naivety and gullibility of our forebears, but are we really any the wiser these days? Modern-day quackery is alive and well, the marketing just got more sophisticated. “Detoxing” is a catch-all term bandied about to sell us juices, teas, supplements and diet plans. It’s not clear what these “toxins” we’re supposed to be accumulating are, or why our liver and kidneys can’t deal with them. The beauty industry lures us with an endless stream of must-have skincare ingredients - vitamins, acids, ceramides, peptides, bakuchiol for goodness’ sake - and while our bathroom shelves creak under the weight of expensive serums and essences, experts shout into the void that most of these things have no discernible effect. Social media influencers promote dangerous weight-loss tablets; a famous Hollywood actress extols the virtues of bee-venom therapy and vagina steaming; a former US President thought injecting disinfectant might be a cure for Covid 19. (It isn’t.) In fact, the world is awash with a frightening array of Coronavirus cure scams, ranging from antiviral misting sprays to cow urine to volcanic ash. All of which makes the Clark’s Blood Mixture claims seem touchingly benign.
The unfortunate truth is that as long as we continue to crave youth and beauty, and - naturally enough - worry about our health, there will be people ready to exploit our vulnerabilities. Working in media doesn’t help. I have a photo shoot next week so if you’ll excuse me I have a some snail mucin cream, a bottle of anti-breast-sweat lotion and a slimming cheek mask* to order.
*all actual real things.
Illustration by Jacky Sheridan
THIS MONTH’S OBSESSIONS:
The Northern Bank Job – An audio series about the infamous Northern Bank Robbery in 2004. Hosted by the Belfast writer Glenn Patterson, it’s a fascinating blow-by-blow account of events as they happened, and the aftermath. Ludovico Einaudi - The Italian composer and pianist’s music features on the soundtrack of the Oscar-winning film Nomadland. I’ve been exploring his calming, lyrical collection of albums called Seven Days Walking. Hummus & Pesto - You are, I’m sure, familiar with these as solo items, but layering them together is magic. I use this combo instead of butter in sandwiches, under cheese on crackers or toast, and to dunk vegetables in.
Inst Musicians ‘Escape From (Covid!) Reality’ Into Glorious Technicolour of Performance
What do you do with 100 choral and 60 instrumental musicians when lockdown prevents them from performing live? You take one of the most iconic and challenging songs of all time and give it a unique choral and orchestral makeover.
Running the gamut from piano ballad to heavy rock, with a bit of opera in between, this piece was recorded, fi lmed and edited exclusively by current pupils, under the leadership of Inst’s Director of Music, Philip Bolton MBE.
Principal Janet Williamson MA OXON NPQH CF congratulated members of the Choir and Orchestra on their outstanding performance calling the
A Level music students and producers of the music video Rhys O’Mahony-Truesdale, Michael Hurst, Nick Thomas, Robbie McCammon and Ethan Gilchrist present Director of Music Mr Philip Bolton MBE and music teacher Mrs Harshaw with a poster and vinyl copy of the track.
standard of singing, orchestration, sound and visuals ‘most impressive’. She added “The talent of the boys was showcased and they did a fantastic job. Grateful thanks to Mr Bolton MBE, Mrs Harshaw, our peripatetic tutors and to colleagues and pupils involved in the fi lming and visual editing, particularly Michael Hurst and Robbie McCammon.”
The piece, featuring 160 individual recordings and fi lmed during lockdown, is best viewed on a large screen with cinematic sound or listened to through high quality headphones. Check it out on our Facebook page, the RBAI Music Channel on YouTube or in the Latest News section of our website.
