Plum Duff, aka figgy-dowdy, is dished up on Sundays in the Royal Navy depicted by Patrick O’Brian. Next month there is lashings of Plum on Sunday afternoons on Radio 4; Uncle Fred in the Springtime and Leave it to Psmith, with excellent casts.Details on the PG Wodehouse Society website.
When Robert and Bertie and I squashed – well R and I squashed, B luxuriated – in September driving to France we listened to some PGW recordings. I know them too well and R’s interest is only luke-warm. What we should have tuned to is BBC Radio 4 Extra. That’s what I did last night. The last Noël Coward play I saw was Flare Path at LAMDA – excellent – only I now remember that it’s by Terence Rattigan.
I saw quite a good film version of Blithe Spirit a long time ago. It was made in 1945 by David Lean; the cast included Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond and Margaret Rutherford as Madame Arcati. Last night’s radio adaptation appeals because it moves fast. On the radio there’s no need to wait for characters to go in and out of doors and French windows. The dialogue was quick-fire and it was all over in ninety minutes. Listening in the kitchen with a drink is so much better than sitting in a theatre. I could hear all the dialogue, my seat was comfortable, people weren’t whispering and rustling sweet papers around me and I didn’t have to buy an expensive, warm glass of white wine at half-time. The running time for Blithe Spirit in a theatre is 2 1/2 hours and then of course there is getting there and back and the cost of a ticket, so kitchen theatre is a more than acceptable lock-down substitute. Blithe Spirit is available on BBC Radio 4 Extra on catch-up and it is being broadcast again at 4.00 pm this afternoon.
I am re-reading ‘Uncle Fred in the Springtime’ at the moment. The same battered copy that accompanied me around South America forty years ago and sustained morale while staying in some pretty insalubrious digs. As Evelyn Waugh said, ‘Mr Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own’.
The 1945 film of BLITHE SPIRIT is showing tomorrow (Monday 27 April) on the Talking Pictures Channel (Freeview 81) at 3 pm.