The Charming Mister Walker
This afternoon I recorded an interview with Pat Walker, a former Assistant Controlloer at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland and, indded, one of my predecessors as Head of Radio.
The interview will form part of a programme called Leaving Queen Margaret Drive, which will be transmitted on the 2nd of January. It tells the story of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Glasgow H.Q. from its earliest days a a private home for two art-collecting brothers and then its next incarnation as a women-only medical college.
Pat Walker has spent many years researching the history of the building and also had a wealth of stories to share about his own career in broadcasting. I was struck by the similarities of our experiences in charge of the radio output. The complaints and concerns of listeners thirty years ago sounded very familiar. The technology behind programme-making, however, has changed beyond recognition.
I loved the idea of producing a live radio programme using multiple studios and having an entire orchestra on hand for incidental music.
Pat also gave me some comforting news about the ghost that is supposed to haunt my old office in Glasgow. This may, or may not, be the spectre of Miss Janet Galloway, who ran Queen Margaret College during the building's Victorian era. She died at her desk, but that desk was not in my office at all.
It's in the the office now occupied by my television counterpart, Ewan Angus.
I'm waiting for the first night I see him working late before I tell him that.
