Radio Times past

[shewhomust]

durham_rambler has been leafing through back copies of the Radio Times - copies further back than seems possible, even in this household. The BBC has put online its complete programme listings 1923 - 2009, and this includes the edition of Woman's Hour broadcast on 14th April 1960.

I remember listening to the broadcast, probably (because this was my place for listening) right next to the wireless, behind the armchair. My father, Tom Rogers, had travelled to the studio to read a story he had written, based on his experiences as a teacher. I would have told you it was called "Fourpence", but the RT says "Threepenny", and who am I to argue with the RT? It was about a small boy who couldn't pay all of his dinner money because, he said, he had swallowed part of it - presumably the three pennies of the title. The teacher narrator comments that he doesn't doubt the boy's claim to have swallowed the monry, but wonders whether he had first converted it into sweets. This is an unjust suspicion, but that's all I can tell you - it was a long time ago.

Comments

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

I love stories like this and like that (though I am certain of never having heard it, having chosen a moment two years later for landing on this planet). I had had no idea, your father was a writer or a teacher. But does one really say "threepenny"? I've heard and come across (mainly at reading) the expression "fourpence" but never "threepenny".

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Both my parents were teachers, though my father escaped and went into the antiques business - but that's many other stories. He wasn't "a writer" - this, as far as I know, was his only peice of fiction. But he loved words, and later wrote some articles for antiques magazines, and was good at telling stories...

And no, this one at least does not say "threepenny", except to talk about the coin, a threepenny bit - and I'd probably spell it 'thruppeny', the way it's pronounced (by those of us who are old enough to have spoken of such things)... But I have no evidence for thinking the title is wrong.

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

I refer you to the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Patience, where WS Gilbert wrote

A very delectable, highly respectable
Three-penny-bus young man!

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. So I should have said that 'threepenny', however you spell it, is an adjective, and feels lame without the support of a noun...

[anef.livejournal.com]

I imagine that three pence would have been a lot easier to swallow than four pence, unless the groat was still in currency at the time.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

That's a good point - and no, it wasn't quite that long ago! But the image in my mind is of separate pennies, and they weren't small coins in those days...