Starkey

[Sparafucile]

Hi all,
I have now turned to referring to Breakfast as 3beebies, so infantile has it become.
I really can't be bothered with it anymore, so I peruse my CD and tape shelves before going to bed and pick out what I want to listen to the next morning while getting ready for the working day. I picked numbers are random last night and counted along the shelves and ended up listening to Bartok's Duke Bluebeard this morning. When did anyone last hear that on Breakfast! Corking stuff!

[Nick Armstrong]

3beebies

Perfection, Sparafucile! Love it

Though not sure what it has to do with the good Dr Starkey.... Wrong thread?

I peruse my CD and tape shelves before going to bed and pick out what I want to listen to the next morning while getting ready for the working day.

Ventihorn will have your guts for garters...

[amateur51]

I suspect Stakey would agree with all the adjectives, pejorative and otherwise, except 'posh' to which he would react rather strongly! Being a Grammar School boy from Kendal doesn't make you posh.

Wearing handmade suits in outlandish fabrics and being driven round in an elderly Daimler by a uniformed chauffeur is posh - affected posh if you must - tho' I believe the Daimler has been discarded (now that he's got his Freedom Pass!?)

[Mandryka]

Wearing handmade suits in outlandish fabrics and being driven round in an elderly Daimler by a uniformed chauffeur is posh - affected posh if you must - tho' I believe the Daimler has been discarded (now that he's got his Freedom Pass!?)

Starkey can afford the chauffeur because his media career has made him a multi-millionaire.

I've never read any of his books, but those who have tell me they are surprisingly dull: everything Starkey the personality is not.

I suspect he realised early on that he was an unexceptional historian and that the only thing that would put him ahead of the pack was his sharp tongue and audacity. If you trawl youtube, you may just find his first public appearance on C4's 'Trial Of Richard lll': from the word go, it was obvious that he was a 'star'.

[MickyD]

Starkey can afford the chauffeur because his media career has made him a multi-millionaire.

I've never read any of his books, but those who have tell me they are surprisingly dull: everything Starkey the personality is not.

I suspect he realised early on that he was an unexceptional historian and that the only thing that would put him ahead of the pack was his sharp tongue and audacity. If you trawl youtube, you may just find his first public appearance on C4's 'Trial Of Richard lll': from the word go, it was obvious that he was a 'star'.

Heavens, that brings back memories of my days working at LWT - I had forgotten that programme. Every member of the production team I knew became completely immersed, finding it a fascinating experiment.

[amateur51]

Starkey can afford the chauffeur because his media career has made him a multi-millionaire.

I've never read any of his books, but those who have tell me they are surprisingly dull: everything Starkey the personality is not.

I suspect he realised early on that he was an unexceptional historian and that the only thing that would put him ahead of the pack was his sharp tongue and audacity. If you trawl youtube, you may just find his first public appearance on C4's 'Trial Of Richard lll': from the word go, it was obvious that he was a 'star'.

I hear that he feels he was at a disadvantage being in the same era as Simon Schama so he developed his own unique (thank goodness!) style. I bet he's nicer in real life but he's trying too hard to be the new Gilbert Harding "the rudest man in Britain".

[vinteuil]

I hear that he feels he was at a disadvantage being in the same era as Simon Schama...

I am not a historian; I find it interesting that professional historians I know have serious respect for Starkey as an academic - and considerably less respect for Schama.

Me, I enjoy both of them on the box when they're doing their stuff (and I much liked Schama's Citizens). Starkey can be a bit tiresome when he overdoes the Moral Maze bad guy role.

But (as Mandryka said above, #7) give me Starkey any day rather than Fry

[Mandryka]

Heavens, that brings back memories of my days working at LWT - I had forgotten that programme. Every member of the production team I knew became completely immersed, finding it a fascinating experiment.

The whole thing is an extra on the DVD release of the Olivier Shakespeare film.

It's the kind of thing that would never get within a mile of TV nowadays, though it would probably still be done on radio.

[mercia]

so what was Mr Starkey like today? - I missed it

[Norfolk Born]

Whatever else he was, I bet he was articulate. I often disagree with his views, but love the way he puts them over. He even made one edition of 'BBC Question Time' almost watchable!

[MickyD]

The whole thing is an extra on the DVD release of the Olivier Shakespeare film.

It's the kind of thing that would never get within a mile of TV nowadays, though it would probably still be done on radio.

Interesting Mandryka, thanks for that. Now I think about it, before that programme, LWT also used the same format for The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald.

[John Skelton]

I listened to some of this on the iPlayer. I don't like Starkey, but I would have felt the same if I had felt sympathetic towards the 'guest'. We had an extract (the duet at the end, of course) from Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea which Starkey saw at the ENO & which he said was "the first modern opera." Without explaining (or, in fairness, being asked to explain) what he meant by that. We had the first movement of Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto, because it was the first record he'd bought (apologies if some of these details are scrambled - I'm not going to listen again, again).

Sarah Walker asked him hw he found the time to listen to music, since he was so busy writing, broadcasting, public speaking, blah blah. To which he said he listened during the many car journeys he made & late at night / relaxation. & he couldn't write & listen. To which Sarah Walker replied - 'that's very' [or 'really'] interesting.' Why?

Whatever Starkey's fee for the week is on the basis of Monday it's an absolute waste of money. Money for old string rather than rope. Nice work if you can get it. Hello David, fancy a few more £££s? Before they cut anything else, why don't the BBC cut all this stuff ?(not just Starkey All the 'celebrity' non-content). Is it because "listeners" all rush to tell the BBC they live to hear nothing else? Or is it because it's a nice little earner if you are in on it, & the people who are in on it are close to the people who decide what to spend the BBC budgets on?

[Nick Armstrong]

Hello David, fancy a few more £££s? Before they cut anything else, why don't the BBC cut all this stuff ?(not just Starkey All the 'celebrity' non-content).

I have been making this point to anyone who'll listen for a while now. I'd really like to know how much is paid to these guests. I actually find Starkey quite diverting, but in principle I completely agree with you.

[Ferretfancy]

I heard him this morning. He does appreciate music, and his comments on Napoleon / Starkozy were hilarious, better than the witterings of Sarah Walker any day. That said, the format of the programme is now beyond terrible.

[Nick Armstrong]

You have to love Starkey. His comments about Napoloeon and Sarko were indeed amusing yesterday, likewise his parallel today about "trendy vicars" basing sermons around hit pop songs, and the trendy prelate who in the 16th C based a sermon around Henry VIII's hit "Paſtyme wt good companye"...

Good to sweep through the unexpectedly sunny parks on my bike to the themes from the end of Götterdämmerung too... Somehow typical and so right that as his own coffin is borne towards the flames, DS wants the music for Brunnhilde's immolation