Save the Radio4 Theme Tune!
An Urgent Appeal
Please visit this site and support the petition to save a much loved British institution – the Radio 4 theme tune. Insomniacs among you will recognise this jaunty air – others might want to get up early just to listen to it. Life has never really been the same since cinemas stopped playing the national anthem, but this is part of the warp and weft of these islands, and must be saved.
You can learn more about the piece – arranged by Fritz Spiegl – at Wikipedia.
Update: 3 MPs lodge early day motions in support of the theme tune.
That last link has a clip of an introduction to the theme, and interview with the widow of the man who wrote it, and an interview with the station controller who is killing it, cutting it down, stabbing it in the heart, and stomping on it! Drunken Sailor! Danny Boy! Green Sleeves! Early One Morning! Men of Harlech! Rule Britannia! Scotland the Brave! The effrontery of it!
Drunken Sailor, btw, “forms part of a contrapuntal section in the” theme tune. How’s that for cocktail party conversational material?
Seriously though. Wth?
January 25th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Confession: In me yutful ignorance I had determined that the best tattoo tune was Scotland the Brave Black Bear
February 1st, 2006 at 9:48 pm
I object to the controller getting rid of the theme, It has always started my day. I like it that much I would like it played at my funeral as I am English, and it represents everything about these great British Isles and the great British heitage that Tony Blair and his ilk seem so determined to destroy. Change for the sake of change is not an answer.
March 21st, 2006 at 8:12 am
I would suggest you remove the “manager” or is it director and return him to his previous occupation to continue with whatever he was messing up at that time.