Fortunately
Why do they always record Fortunately in the piazza outside New Broadcasting House? I’m no great consumer of podcasts (yet) but I’m determined to include the best ones I come across in Onmyradio, and the ones I have heard all happen indoors. So why risk the noise, moisture and high NOx levels of outdoor Central London?
Well, Jane Garvey and Fi Glover are busy media women so it’s handy, for a start. Jane and Fi both present Radio 4 programmes (Woman’s Hour and The Listening Project respectively). And if it rains, they just duck into the Media Cafe on the ground floor (which, let me tell you, hasn’t got the slightest air of ‘meejah’ about it. I worked in that building for years and there was no-one saying ‘darling’ or air-kissing anyone. It’s more like the sixth-form cafe in a struggling urban comprehensive).
But that’s not good enough: there must be any number of nice, quiet, warm, air-conditioned studios inside. Except, Fortunately isn’t a nice, quiet studio sort of affair. It’s not ruminative or intellectual. Hell, it’s not even intelligent half the time. Or intelligible some of the time, but more on that later. Look who’s coming.
Source: BBC
OK, that’s why they do it in the road.
The BBC, perhaps fondly imagining that its listeners must still be as intrigued by its inner workings as they were in 1932 when Broadcasting House went up (ooh, glowing valves and ‘rippling the ether’), describes Fortunately as ‘a frank look behind the scenes’. It also, inexplicably, uses a photograph in which Jane looks like Stan Laurel scratching his head uncomprehendingly after Ollie’s given him a stiff telling-off.
Fortunately, the show ran obliquely away from that stuffy mission statement as soon as ever it could. Garv and Glov described the contents of their handbags instead and lightly dined upon each other’s foibles throughout Series 1. A basic running gag underlying the podcast is that Jane is famous, bedecked with awards, set for a damehood and will inherit ‘The Hour’ from Dame Jenni Murray in due course, while Fi isn’t and won’t. From Series 2, they began booking fresh meat in the form of a regular weekly guest.
Now in their fifth series, Garv and Glov work together like Cagney and Lacey – that’s pretty much the highest praise possible in my book – and I bet they argue in the loos. Oof, I just had a sudden, atavistic urge to call them ‘the girls’ but that would be both inaccurate and sexist. They’re both buzzing around 50, and it’s safe to say there is no taboo on mentions of the menopause, especially if it makes for a good gag.
The pod starts, as it often does, with a quick catch-up about last week’s guest (it was Anneka Rice and they loved her). Then, 30 seconds in, it’s already – almost imperceptibly – off the rails. Actually, beyond having a guest and being in the pizza (that’s what they call the piazza) I don’t think Fortunately’s got any rails left and that’s why you don’t feel a bump. Fi asks Jane what’s in her lunch. Jane says she’s eaten it already. Which might just be a fib to stop Fi nicking some of it. They talk about their guest Helen Zaltzman’s podcast, Answer Me This, which she co-hosts with Olly Mann, and why people who want to know random stuff (their pod’s raison d’etre) don’t just Google it. Jane dreams up a pointless query: who was that bloke I used to fancy in the 1970s TV series The Onedin Line, and how long were everyone’s sideburns?
There’s no bland sisters-togetherness: G&G are consistently, satisfyingly rude to each other. Jane once accused Fi of wearing a ‘man-pleasing smile’. Fi, when nettled, tends to make faux-flattering remarks about the Garvey bosom. They use surnames quite a lot. Maybe they don’t like the Starbucks-y overfamiliarity of first names. That, plus the mucking about, make me feel like I’m listening to them decompress outside school rather than the BBC (I think that’s where the ‘girls’ thing sprang from. I suddenly want to smoke a forbidden fag).
Their guest arrives, and walks straight past. “Zaltzman, over here!” Despite the surnaming, they both seem on first-name terms with her. Do they know everyone who’s anyone? Jane recalls that Helen once made her a bedjacket, which probably explains the familiarity. I’m genuinely surprised no-one picks up on this. I thought bedjackets went out with the Light Programme and town gas but, on this evidence, they’re unremarkable night attire for Radio 4 presenters and pioneering podcasters.
The end of this long, scatty bit is signalled by a jingle featuring 6 Music’s Shaun Keaveney (an early and much loved guest) and the bit with the guest proper follows. A serious critique of Zaltzman’s oeuvre does not follow: whatever else Fortunately is, it’s time off Radio 4 for both presenters.
But that’s a false dichotomy, as they say on Radio 4. It’s not as if either Jane or Fi have to move any great distance from their normal broadcasting styles to Fortunately’s carefully modulated devil-may-care. They’ve always been off the autocue, as it were, but, whatever else is going down between them, Cagney and Lacey are always damn good cops. Fortunately is mainly a delightful waste of time, but it isn’t a whole different gig for them; they’ve just dialled down the consequential (never to zero) and let in more of the querulous (never entirely absent).
Source: BBC
OK, the intelligibility quibble: I don’t know how this podcast is recorded, but it sounds like there’s just one, stereo mic. Which is fine: multiple mics outdoors can end up giving you a racket of background noise; and Fortunately does sound attractively impromptu. But the mic does, just a bit too often, seem to get moved too far away from whoever’s speaking. Given how everyone’s bouncing off and reacting to one another, that can null out a stretch of the podcast longer than the actual inaudible words. Maybe just stick the mic in the middle, and everyone gather round? Oh shit, was that a mansplain? Am I gonna get busted for that? I’m not an anyone who’s anyone. No-one reads this; I’m back to TL;DR. But I’m avoiding the pizza from now on, just in case.
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