The News

I have to agree with a writer in yesterday's Times that she experienced great pleasure a few days ago when there was a strike of journalists at the BBC; it meant that many news programmes were cancelled or shortened. She nostalgically looked back to the times (of her youth no doubt) when there only a few news broadcasts compared to today when there are many. Not only many on regular terrestial channels but on others, not to mention the 24 hour news channels. I can look back further to a time when there was no TV at all: we had radio only and my memory informs me that there were even fewer news broadcasts. I recall one fifteen minute item at mid-day and one in the early evening and one at nine o'clock at night. I too am nostalgic about those times for I feel there's just too much news on TV; and not only is it on all, or most, channels but it is virtually the same news. One might, rarely, have a scoop but it's soon picked up by the rest.
The nine o'clock news to me was a time of a great treat: I think it lasted five minutes or so and it was followed by a serial version of "Les Miserables". We, my brother and I, would wait for the beginning after the news had finished with baited breath. It was always the same beginning: a voice - "My name is Jean Valjean...." It was the wonderfully sonorous voice of Henry Ainley. That's all I recall of the serial, Ainley's voice and the first few words, every Sunday evening for weeks on end. I have just read Wickipedia about Henry Ainlee: married three times (or more), five children (or more) two of them by a woman who was not a wife. Also, he seemed to have had a passion for the young Laurence Olivier which was not, according to Olivier's son, reciprocated.
I believe he liked his drink quite a lot and, if memory serves me right, his acting career's end was the subject of a play by Emlyn Williams.