Ramblings is an apt description of this website. It is also Clare Balding’s radio programme.
This afternoon her guest walker is Anneka Rice; two national treasures walking along the towpath between Barnes and Kew; two professional entertainers.
Correction: In a recent post I mentioned Anneka Rice in a helicopter. The TV programme was Treasure Hunt not Challenge Anneka. A taste of the former is appended to the rear of this post. Anneka herself was joint winner, with Michael Barrymore, of Rear of the Year in 1986. I think she could do it again this year.
To keep the programme light, until it became BBC Radio 2 in 1967, they didn’t notice the crematorium at Mortlake. Clare knows how to draw out her interviewees and Anneka obliged. Frankly Clare Balding should present Desert Island Discs and get it back to the chummy chat show invented by Roy Plomley.
One of her best anecdotes is when she is being modelled by a gorgeous, male sculptor for Madam Tussaud’s museum of wax works. I fear she has been melted down ‘cos Robert has never heard of my local heroine. She’s asked for an audition with Cubby Broccoli and thinks this is worth following up. She thinks she is being auditioned to be the first female Bond. When he explains she’s going to be a Bond Girl she expostulates, “I’m not taking my clothes off for James Bond”. I guess she would have given Harvey short-shrift if he got fresh.