Ray's days

Quite a life, veteran broadcaster and writer Ray Gosling, whose specialty was reporting on the quirks and oddities of British life.



I knew him mostly as a radio voice - remembering in particular a short program for Radio 4 he did about Julie Burchill. Which featured a first-time-hearing for most everybody of her voice - unexpectedly soft, high, fluting and West Country accented, more like Sophie from Detectorists than the formidable and intimidating print persona as NME 's resident punk ideologue.




Quite an acute analysis There of a shift from the old class-struggle based system (ruling class, bourgeois, organised proud and stubborn working class) to have-a-lots, haves, and have-nothings (underclass that is plural, fractured, lacking solidarity or a positive self-identity)

The Ray Gosling Archive - and judging by the shots of him in his office, nearly buried in papers, clippings, folders, books, newspapers, and what not, he was quite an archivist in his own right.

Did not know that he was a gay rights activist, an anarchist (I don't know if literally, in the CRASS sense - by temperament most likely).

The alcohol intake seems par for the course for writers of that era and type.

Somehow I bracket him in my head with J.B. Priestley - both Northern, left-wing, insanely prolific (a book or more a year in Priestley's case, plus innumerable essays and articles) and with wide-ranging interests.