by Brian Stephenson

Created on: March 22, 2007   Last Updated: May 04, 2007

Radio, as opposed to Television, is not a category included by Helium under Entertainment. Sadly, this seems merely to reflect the situation in the real world. It is unfortunate; Radio Drama in particular is one of Entertainment's best-kept secrets. I do see a small number of television dramas, but I listen to a great deal of radio drama. With my retirement and the introduction of the digital radio station BBC7, the amount I have listened to has increased greatly in recent years.

There are many actors who work nearly exclusively in radio and, as such, their names will be unfamiliar to the majority of the population. I hope to write about these voice-actors' in the future, but today I want to write about an actor whose performance on BBC7 yesterday gave me the idea to write about radio drama in the first place. To my mind, his is one of the great radio voices.

Most will have heard of Welshman Philip Madoc. You may remember him on television as Magua in The Last of the Mohicans', or in the title role in The Life and Times of David Lloyd George'. In was in this latter production that I first saw him and I have hardly seen him on the screen since, but his great talent was immediately clear to me. Lovers of comedy will remember the episode of the classic "Dad's Army" where Madoc played a captured U-Boat captain; surely, the "Don't tell him, Pike" scene is one of the funniest and most well known in all of television comedy.

If you look him up on Wikipedia you will find that, apart from one Doctor Who audio story by Big Finish Productions, Philip Madoc would appear to have done no radio work at all. Such omissions are typical of articles (and obituaries) of actors. It is as if Radio Drama doesn't exist or is thought to be beneath the regard of either proper actors or their biographers.

Throughout his career Philip Madoc has done much radio work, being a regular on BBC Radio. The productions have included serious classical pieces as well as more popular areas of the repertoire. Currently he is doing a reading on BBC7. It is of Ancient Sorceries' by Algernon Blackwood, a classic spooky story. I have heard listeners wax lyrical about Madoc's rich, mellifluous voice, and I can understand why. Listening to him is a pleasure and when he is doing a reading, that pleasure is undiluted. He has recorded a lot of audio books in the last few years, many of them classics for Naxos. Listen to one of them to understand how really wonderful it is to be read to. When I was a child, nobody

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