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Mapledurham's avatar

I know very little about GK or his work - my mum was a Radio 2 listener, back when it was all the Swingle Singers, and Ken Bruce’s fawning interviews with Mrs T - but I do want to thank you for the blast from the past: those diamond-shaped stickers we put on the radio. Now recalling my first radio, a bright red dream of an 8th birthday present, to which I remember applying the stickers. IIRC, they had a hard metallic surface which made them impossible to remove without puncturing the skin beneath your fingernails.

Robert Bishop's avatar

I met G K in Los Angeles at a NPR event and almost convinced him that singing while wearing my motorcycle helmet was just as sonorous as singing in the shower.

She said Xi Said's avatar

My family (in rural New Jersey) listened religiously to Prairie Home Companion on weekends. But I have also met people from the suburban Midwest who believed that Garrison Keillor and his audience were laughing at them.

I wonder if what you heard on the BBC actually the monologues from the 2nd half of the show? Or was he actually reading excerpts from the book?

Prairie Home Companion was a repository for a tremendous amount of American (and occasionally Scottish etc) music that has a vanishing platform now.

Whitney McKnight's avatar

I haven’t referred to his Wikipedia entry yet, but I wondered if the flaw you note might be his predilection for touching women who haven’t asked to be touched. That being said, I loved Lake Woebegon, yet eventually came to realize the intellectual superiority it presumed. And look where that helped get us: MAGA

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Apr 11
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Tobias Sturt's avatar

Dammit. I had the real sense that I was missing some crucial theme in this piece - somehow just writing round what I wanted to say - and I think you’ve put your finger in a key part of it. Thank you for that and I think you’re absolutely spot on about that last point.

Brad Mehldau's avatar

I liked the piece though, Tobias Sturt, nice to get your perspective tuning in from the other side of the pond to Prairie Home Companion.

Brad Mehldau's avatar

Meh. Extra-marital affair. Didn’t break my heart. I just read the wiki entry and it was nothing more than the unsubstantiated stuff I remember from back then.

Brad Mehldau's avatar

But quite a lot of dot connecting with no substantive proof, about someone’s supposed “vanity”, which you deduced from a Wikipedia entry? Is this the criticism you learned from Dr. Johnson, @Richard Ashcroft? Sounds more like arbitrary ad hominem.