Wednesday, April 19, 2006

More on Friese-Greene

I saw the first part of The Lost World of Friese-Greene last night, and it was every bit as good as I had hoped. They even used George Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad as backing music. If you have broadband you can download the programmes from the BBC website.

There are a couple of points to add to what I wrote about the Friese-Greene family earlier this week.

First, the Goon Show joke about "deep Friese-Greene" which Tim Worstall remembered comes from "Tales of Old Dartmoor". That episode begins like this:
Greenslade: This is the BBC light programme. And here is a photograph of me saying it.
Seagoon: Thank you, Friese-Greene. Or as he came out of an icebox, deep-freeze Greene.
Greenslade: I don't wish to know that.
Seagoon: Stop those carefully rehearsed and written ad-libs and proceed with your task of announcing radio's answer to TV.
Sellers: (older voice) Namely the original lantern-slide type wireless Goon Show.
Second, there is a rock musician and producer called Tim Friese-Green. He used to play with Talk Talk. I don't know if he is related to William and Claude. Maybe he thought the final e was just not rock 'n' roll enough.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jonathan, one of the other backing pieces was Vaughan-Williams' English Folk Songs Suite, a piece I know well from countless rehersals - and still love, especially the haunting second movement.

Miguel said...

The final 'e' was fake to begin with - when he became a professional photographer, William Green (sic) decided to make his name more flowery by not only adding an 'e' but also appending his first wife Helena Friese's maiden name.

Anonymous said...

Yes the Tim friese-green producer is related to william and claude. Amazing man!