To wake up on a Sunday morning and not have to go to church is a rare treat for me. Is it naughty to use the word treat? I did think about going, honestly! But after an exceptionally busy few months waking up in Farnborough West Premier Inn about nine then discovering checkout wasn’t until midday, I rolled over and went back to sleep.
For the majority in this country a good lie in on a Sunday is a gift. The part of the country I’ve been in this weekend, Surrey and Hampshire, part of the Greater London commuter belt is full of large houses crammed in wherever there is space and I have to say I noticed a lot of soulless housing estates and also a lot of aggression on the roads especially when they want your parking space! Hard work in the week deserves a good lie in on a Sunday morning doesn’t it?
At lunchtime today we found a bistro in Fleet as we hadn’t had breakfast. There was a huge queue to get in the place. Perhaps a breakfast or brunch out is the norm on a Sunday morning in Hampshire and a leisurely read of the Sunday papers over a coffee. All the Sunday papers today discussed “stop the boats” - either good on you, get tougher, put them on more barges and blame the French for any deaths, or this is a scandal. When I do ever read a Sunday paper?! I went into the Waitrose. (Which shows what sort of area we were in!) The Waitrose was heaving! Perhaps shopping on a Sunday is the norm now. Perhaps it’s the only day people can do it. Is shopping the Sunday God now? We had to collect an order in Argos in Luton on the way back north. That was heaving too! As were all the shops on the retail park.
How else do people use Sunday? Maybe to catch up with family. Commuters who live in big houses in Surrey and Hampshire find Sunday is the only day they have time to be a father or a mother. We’ve been to my cousin’s wedding this weekend in Guildford which was lovely and today we were invited to Graham and Pippa’s garden in Sandhurst along with my Aunt and Uncle just to sit in their garden! It was really good just to sit and be with family. We’ve not many family left so we both treasure our cousins! It was precious just to be together. A lovely use of a Sunday afternoon.
What else do people relax with at the weekend? Sport of course. Myfamily team Luton Town FC are in the Premier League for the first time. They got a 4 - 1 drubbing at Brighton yesterday but they will remain optimistic they can stay up all season. Then there’s the box sets bingers and the radio addicts. A lot of people listen to Liza Tarbuck on a Saturday night. I love this article in yesterday’s Telegraph:
The funniest show on British radio right now isn’t some hip young affair on Radio 1 or 6 Music. It’s not full of pre-scripted banter, nor is it hosted by a pun-slinging stand-up. Instead, it’s a riotous weekly gossip session, helmed by a self-effacing 58-year-old woman, tucked away on dear old Radio 2.
We were recently regaled with a listener’s story about a friend proudly boasting that her son was holidaying in France, “staying in a quiche on the edge of town” (she meant a gîte). This prompted another caller to gently tease his mother for calling the Wimbledon crowd “a bit parmesan” (she meant partisan). Such faux pas recalled the listener who confessed to forgetting Rasputin’s name while on a sightseeing trip to St Petersburg and asking the tour guide: “Is this where they murdered Rumpelstiltskin?” Welcome to Liza Tarbuck on Saturday evenings – reliably the most uplifting show on air.
“It’s my favourite Radio 2 show of the week,” says breakfast host Zoe Ball. “Liza plays the finest music and nobody makes me belly laugh like that woman. She actually got a shout-out at my friends’ wedding this summer. In the years that [they] Damian and Kim, the new Mr and Mrs Harris, have been together, they always make a roast listening to Liza’s show. It’s just the thing they do. Liza is a broadcasting legend and there is no one finer.”
Tarbuck’s show is a weekly fixture in Claudia Winkleman’s house, too. “We never miss it,” says Winkleman. “One story that sticks in my mind is the male listener who was accosted by a glamorous stranger outside the supermarket. He couldn’t work out if it was aftershave or the fact that he’d just bought a jar of sauerkraut that made him so irresistible. Liza’s verdict? ‘Quite plainly, you’re looking after your gut health and that excites me.’ My entire family was howling.”
For the past decade, Tarbuck’s joyous blend of eclectic songs and freewheeling chat has sound-tracked two million listeners’ Saturday sundowners, supper-making or domestic pottering. The BBC blurb calls it “a mishmash of tunes, a hearty portion of hilarity, a side of whimsy and a dollop of dinner chat”. That doesn’t do justice to this exuberant cult phenomenon that has built a devoted following.
That loyal listenership is key. Tarbuck calls her audience “the hivemind”. All she has to do is mention a loose theme – say, summer fêtes, horticultural accidents or “who’s the most famous person to have petted your dog?” – and amusing anecdotes arrive in reams. She receives the most listener messages of any programme on the station – more than 50 texts and emails per minute – and plunders the best for material. Most missives end with a cheery “love to everyone”. It genuinely feels like a club where like-minded folk meet every week for a catch-up and a cackle.
She always asks what we’re having for dinner, which she reads aloud with peckish envy. She canvasses calls from “mohos and caras” (mini-breakers and mucking-about-on-a-boat-ers), asking what they can currently see and cooing at their lyrical descriptions. Listeners offer their ornithological sightings (“top bird trumpingtons”, Tarbuck terms this) and wildlife news. Squirrels are known as “Ben Fogles”, presumably because he looks a bit like one. Indeed, the show has developed its own language. The Wirral is always “the leisure peninsula”. Contributors are known as “fots” (friends of the show). Listeners’ husbands (“hello, men!”) are invariably “gorgeous” or “filthy”, depending on what’s funnier.
Tarbuck’s infectious dirty laugh only fuels the mirth. Stories involving rogue pets, mischievous children or naughty nanas always get her chortling away. A fertile recent theme was sneaky teenagers throwing house parties while their parents were away – and the telltale signs that got them busted. Cue unsavoury finds behind the sideboard or in the fishpond. Body parts resembling famous people were another rich seam. The man with a toenail that looked like Angela Lansbury is seared in my memory.
As a woman of a certain age, Tarbuck revels in tales of “menopausal madness”, celebrating scattiness in a way that’s subtly empowering. A running thread is an enigmatic figure nicknamed “Beryl the Brick”, an elderly lady who surreptitiously helps herself to two house bricks per night when there’s building work in her neighbourhood. What does she do with them? Nobody knows, but speculation is rife.
The way that Tarbuck mixes music with crowdsourced input and her own riffing may sound effortless, but it’s deceptively skilful. The seat-of-the-pants pandemonium is thrillingly unpredictable, but never quite careers out of control. It’s testament to her restless, roaming mind. When Ken Bruce left Radio 2 this year, many championed Tarbuck to inherit his morning show. For now, she remains a weekly treat, rather than a daily one.
Crucially, she keeps a firm grip on her playlist. Most Radio 2 shows pick from the same roster of songs. Tarbuck goes pleasingly off-piste. She spends all week carefully compiling a mixtape. An average show might take in Motown classics, Swinging Sixties gems, gritty 1970s funk, disco anthems and vintage jazz. She might lob in a marching band, some country or calypso, perhaps a rousing show tune or cheesy crooner. David Rose’s The Stripper pops up weekly, as does Percy Faith’s Theme From ‘A Summer Place’. When she played Champion, the Wonder Horse recently, social media went wild. Most songs are followed by a nugget of trivia about the recording. Tarbuck does her research, but wears her knowledge lightly.
Her trademark sound effect of a squeaky dog toy began as a prank. A friend’s mother was driving a vanload of mutts up the motorway and Tarbuck thought it’d be amusing to send them all mad. Now, it’s a high-pitched fixture. Come Saturday, listeners send in photos of their pet pooches sitting by the radio, ears cocked, head tilted. “Where is it?” asks Tarbuck in her dog-owner’s voice. “Find it!”
Tarbuck treats us as friends and fellow fun-seekers, rather than a passive audience. Each episode, she describes an imaginary ice rink. Listeners send in descriptions of their fantasy skating outfits, before a dreamy interlude where everyone visualises taking to the ice together. “I love having that skating moment with all her lovely listeners,” says Ball. Jane Garvey said on Radio 4 last year: “It’s rarer and rarer for people who really understand radio to get on air. But Liza just knows radio and she makes it special.”
“Liza is just a brilliant listen,” says Channel 5’s Dan Walker. “She even somehow makes handing to the news an event.” Those anarchic segues into the 7pm news bulletin recently went viral. She can’t resist putting on silly voices and taking the mickey. It’s invariably “all over your smart trousers”, as opposed to “on your smart speaker”. “Smell that fromage!” she might declare. “We interrupt this fun to bring you some miserable news.”
It’s not exactly from the BBC manual. “Liza’s intros to the news are a thing of legend at Wogan House,” says fellow DJ Scott Mills. He admits it took him time to tune into Tarbuck’s comic frequency, but he is now addicted: “When I first heard Liza’s show, I didn’t get it at all. Now, I’m fully invested and it’s a key part of my weekend.”
Former 6 Music favourite Shaun Keaveny now plies his trade on Community Garden Radio. “The best broadcasters feel like instant friends,” he says. “That’s Liza. You don’t actually know her, of course, but somehow she gives enough of her inner self that you can put a mosaic picture together of this potty, brilliant, hilarious, music-loving woman with a rich inner-life that she wants to share with you. Better than that, she wants to hear about your daft nonsense as well. It’s a reciprocal merry-go-round of idiocy. Daft and profound sit cheek by jowl. There aren’t many people funnier on UK radio right now.”
She might be a garrulous host, but off-air, Tarbuck keeps a resolutely low profile. She’d rather go on a dog walk than sashay up a red carpet and rarely grants interviews. In contrast to carefully stage-managed showbiz careers, her CV is refreshingly random. She’s the daughter of the comedian Jimmy Tarbuck (he and wife Pauline listen live every week, always getting fondly mocked). She has hosted The Big Breakfast and various game shows, including Blockbusters. She’s Rada-trained, and has alternated presenting jobs with acting roles in Linda Green, Watching, Upstart Crow and, most recently, feminist comedy The Change. Add voice-over work and a gardening podcast and it all makes for a charmingly idiosyncratic résumé.
Tarbuck dances to her own beat, which is why her show is so unique. She’s influenced by Kenny Everett and was once part of Steve Wright’s “posse”, but smelted her own glittering brand. The only drawback is that the giddy mood can lead listeners astray. “Like most people, I make the tea as I listen,” says Keaveny. “The trouble is, it’s too much fun. If I’m trying not to drink that day, I have a problem. Usually by the second hour, I’m halfway down a bottle of something.” Liza Tarbuck: so funny, she should come with a health warning.
So why am I troubled by my lie in, lunch, time with family, sport, radio and anything else that isn’t church on a Sunday? My Grandad used to go ape if I went out with friends on a Sunday! I used to challenge him he was watching the cricket on the telly on a Sunday afternoon and people were working to bring it to him. Sunday used to be sacred. Now it isn’t.
The thing that bothers me most is that I didn’t miss going to church today at all. I found God in a bed I didn’t want to get out of, in a leisurely breakfast with my wife, in time with family. Even if not in the Torygraph I had time to read today. I found God in kindness and relationships and in the beauty of creation. There is SOME green space in commuter land! And what bothers me more is that the people who lie in in big houses or go out for coffee or brunch or who read the Sunday papers or spend time with family or do a sport or a hobby or follow a celebrity whose radio programme makes them feel included in a family have no intention or desire or interest whatsoever in coming to church. It isn’t even on their radar to consider. The gulf between church and society is wider than it has ever been.
We talk of going out into the community. This is necessary. But we have to understand the community we are trying to engage with. We can’t any more think people will just come to us. We have to be relevant and offer what they want and so we need to know what they want before we offer something totally irrelevant! What mattered today to those people out for coffee or lunch in Fleet today? Do we care? We have to meet people where they are and we have to prove we are normal amongst them!!! I didn’t get asked what I do at the wedding reception yesterday. Normally my profession is a conversation halter at any social gathering like I should be holier than thou and not know all the words to the Abba tracks blasting out as the dancing started last night. You can’t suddenly make people include church in their Sunday. They have their Sabbath. But maybe we being amongst people might attract them to a different kind of rest and being. I don’t know.
Can you be a Christian without going to church? I know so many good people of a similar age to me who left church years ago because it said nothing to them. Some of them read my weekly blog. They hold on to faith - it’s just the church that isn’t necessary.
Will I go to church next Sunday? Maybe. The challenge is how we get alongside people for who it really doesn’t matter. My wife said to me earlier “we’ve not been to church today” - did she think that was a problem? For me today has been liberating. I’ll be back but sometimes isn’t it nice to break free and find God dancing and laughing in the world, in the rest, in the coffee shop, in what makes us laugh like Liza Tarbuck, in creation and in family?
Discuss!
No comments:
Post a Comment