1961-11-18 — Page 9

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THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER -18," 196£,'

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Presenting a man whose voice was once known to millions and won him the title of radio's finest raconteur

BRAINS-TRUST CAMPBELL

HE introduced a catch-phrase

into

the English language.

Once the Radio, Times billed him as "the finest raconteur ever brought to the microphone."

Once he earned £5,000 a year and received 600 fan letters a week. Once, in those not so far off-days when people listened rather than goggled, the name of Commander A. B. "Archie" Campbell was one of the most famous in broadcasting.

And now, in his own words, he is broke.

"There's no denying it-broke's the word," he says.

Waited expectantly

It is better to start with the good years. The years when Commander Campbell's bluff, no-nonsense voice was as well known to the listening public as the refrain from Housewives' Choice.

"When I was tr. Patagonia

." he would begin, and his fellow Brains Trusters would convulse with laughter and, in a milion homes, families would for come walt expectantly traveller's tale, each taller than the last.

"True? Of course they were true," he told me. "Mind you. I'm not saying I didn't polish thern up bit to make them more interesting, but the forts were always true.

Institution

for

Those were great days the Brains Trust.

NO OTO watching today's pompous version of the pro- Temene Con imagine the Interest it created in those grew into

"Br

early days.

The programme that strange animai,

tish Institution,"

Questions were asked about

in Parliament. It became the butt of cartoonists and music- hell comedians.

In

The discussions begun by the resident brains continued home and pub long after the programme had gone off the

·by

SAYS

'I'M

BROKE

NOW'

LLEW GARDNER

"I suppose I was looked upon

As the voice of the common man," he says.

No one ever made a fortune out of Brains Trust appearances alone (after one question in Parliament the B.B.C. setualty reduced the fee), but as Com- mander Campbell's fame as a broadcaster spread so the money

rame in from other

quarters It came from personal ap- pearances, from opening fetes, from books. "People wanted to know what I looked like. read what I had to say.

Lavish

1.

w

in

B

• Commander Camp- beti opening afete- In the days when his services were in great demand

furniture has that strange look, pecuitar to furnished flats, of having been chosen for another

room.

asked Commander Campbell me not to reveal his age. But let me say that he is a good bit older than the 60-odd that he looks.

He travels to work on the top

The Campbells Hyed studio

Kensington. house in

He still has to work-selling They were lavish entertament. space for an advertising agency:

to "Our house

second I made a lot of contacts wus a home for every wait and stray the old days and some of them in broadcasting. The house was come in useful now." never empty. They all carne to see us. Tommy Handley of a bus. Few people recognise him although, just once in a the lot

is while, his voice strikes a mem- And now? Today there

11 done little entertaining in the country:

ory chord Campbell Professor Cyril Joad and Jultan the

home. The Huxley,

from sherry botlie

which he offered me a drink was all but empty There was no replace, ment in the sideboard.

With Campbell in the regular team of those early wartime Brains Trusts were two of the best brains

Together this team sremed of radio enter- new form tainment.

Sometimes Joad and Huxley would try to goad Campbell with intellectual tamis. But he took all they could hand out and more than held his own,

забой

The studio house has been sold. Commander Campbell and his wife live in a two-roomed filet in London's Maida Vale. The carpets are lading,

the

find anyone who had stock," he told me.

it

Very occasionally, he does a short broadcast. Mostly, il seems, the B.B.C. is able to do **finest without broadcasting's raconteur.

What went wrong? Commander Campbell

in spell. Since then he has done very little work with the B.B.C. "But that's all a long time ago," he said, "I can't imagine that the B.B.C. still counts it against me.

-1 imagine that the real reason I don't do any broad- casting is that today the angry young men who run the show t Broadcasting House know nol Juseph--they haven't the slightest idea who old Camp bell is."

dates

his break with the B.B.C. from the time he upset Huxley in a Brains Trunt discussion on the atom bomb.

Lip-licking

Blunt as ever, Campbell suggested that it might have been better to have used scien- tists rather than animals in the Bikini Island bomb tests.

Grudge against the An angry Huxley said: "So

B.B.C.? less than

"Certainly not. I've got some "A blind woman spotted who you rate scientists

good friends in broadcasting. I to rata?" 1 was the minute I spoke

To which Commander Camp can see their point of view. ber the other day," he told me.

To earn

little extra cash he bell replied: "If they kill 4,000 suppose I was too outspoken, for nothing I and I can see why Huxley was But he is writes books.

Lo dumb animals

upset. But then i always was longer among the best sellers.

"One of my books came out Later Commander Campbell outspoken."

Commander Campbell believes only a few weeks ago.

was suspended for six nonths, "But when I tried to gel and a bit later the Brains Trust he can still tell a good story,

came off the air a copy the other day I couldn't

along "Put a microphone in front of

do"

for

NOW THAT I'VE

GAMBLE

INHERITED £7,000,000

GAMBLE BENEDICT TALKING

ZURICH.

SHE looks a slip of a girl, does Gamble Benedict Perombeanu. She dresses, quite plainly, in a black-grey woollen skirt and black jumper-though not with the expensive simplicity of the very rich.

You might pass her in the street and dismiss her. And there you would make a mistake. Not because she has inherited the income from $20,000,000 (£7,140,000) from her grandmother who had quarrelled with her, but because she has had the intelligence to see the struggle with her grandmother for what it was,

For Grandmother “Remington" Mr Katherine Goddes Benedict who controlled the 80,000,000-dollar forkme. also controlled her grand-daughter until ap 18-Gamble decided she VEILED TO METry Rumanian T- fugee Andre Perombeanu.

This provoked one of the

by John Cruesemann

"I hadn't a penny when I #She fought all our

big dyreste family feuds of all ran away from grandmother and ringes,

She was possessiva. Im Grandmother lost out in I don't really blame her for the But she was not unkind.”

the end and when he died it way she acted," she said,

was

had endmother I suppose it was almost

her

two-nfths of Inevitable for, you see, she was isfortune the toe her grosida matriarch.

Penshe wanted to control every-

Happy

body, She was against the Gamble amiled, and went on: marriage of my mother, who "I feel wealthier da experience died when I was seven, not be- now than if I had just tamely Now that cause my father was just a done everything my grand- Tonly Gamble role thing, doctor but because she had not auther told and the othamlight 1 Mileed, io dized stu

For course it wonderfu

ANDRE

I am just another poor little, them if they are in a private rich girl. It's not true.

house. Artists don't paint plc-

corner.

"It seems to make people who tres for them to be kept in a have little money happy to read that the rich are miserable. Well

I must disappoint them "As for my own little boy." about that,

she went on, "I want to give him real juner values. What anid "I am happy and I intend to you have in your hand

on being co. I have got d in your heart, nobody can take

from you three days before my grand- mother died she actualy You know I always admired asked my husband over and loved my grandmother. She She the phone. And how is my hed tremendous vitality.

go so,

a

great-grandson getting on looked like 60 although she was "You see, she still took a 78, I had the feeling that my interest in me and my child grandmother would never die. even though we had quarrelled. Poor woman, she never real- 1y found peace, but I think that fn the and in her own peculiar way she knew I had found the

Etchings

"She remained absolutely "Now that I am rich I feel adamant in her attitude about free. But it is very true what our roarriage. But she did once some port once wrote becoming day to a friend, Tt Andre is osp free is much easier than being able of defeating wip, then hu able to accomplish" any- free,

thing he

to, and he in deserves to win, One of tha

The wi

Velas

Barb

her and 135-year-old husband "And he was against my to be very rich; Don't be ben in the Mardom chalet: then rent marrying Andre.momune who hind, entaled by people who say it not fam near

not chosen hiro.

They like to think, pernier, that

•Nothing : CORTINA För will be sets his mind and

Dost Double can fiever

lly, the best advice which

1

me and I'd talk as long as you issed a 1 hở cho

I found it easy to believe. His conversation ranged ovRT his sea "oing adventures 67 times through the Sutz Consl- to the time he held Rebecca West's hand kil through ง Brains TrusŤ.

"It was the only way to stop her havingmieroptions fright. Told her to bel her top ly each time she had to speak. After all i those days no one could see what was going on.”

The conversation came back to the subject of money. "You know, it's furmy, the way sources of incoine just seem to dry up.

**I used to be on Foyle's Lecture Hist. But who wants to go out on a cold night and listen to what old Campbell has to say when they can sit in a nice warm room and welch the polevision?

"So, I've just gone drifting along By rights, of course, should be better off, but I was always a big spender.

SCTIC

"Mind you, I tad money saved. Thres thousand pounds or so all put by for the day when I would need it, but

a crooked accountant did ine out of the lot. That was my financial crash.

Lot of fun

"Mind you, I'm not miser- able. It's just not in my mature to be miserable. If I had my time all over again I think would do pretty much the same things. I've enjoyed myself, had a lot of fun.

"I think I would just ask to have a bit more common sense -I've always been a bit short of that,"

He brightened: "One thing about having less money is that you drink less. I used to be in the Savage Club from eleven in the morning until five the evening.

im

"Well, I can't afford to do that now. A good thing too.

No one ever saw me the worse

for drink, but it's good to cut down."

"Is there anything you regret in life?" I asked,"

"Well,

I suppose it's not having done enough good to my fellow man,"

I

His wife interrupted him: "What are you talking about? You've never done any harm. He continued: "I know. jmow, dear. But I feel I could have done more. Then Done of us does enough fellows.

"It's only when you get older and look back on your time that you feel you could have been a better person.

for

our

"Friends? Oh, I've still got a few really good friends. But not as many as I had, of course.

"When you are doing well there's no shortage

of people When you to call you friend. come down a bit you lose touch with many of them.

"Mind you,

wouldn't be that fair to them to suggest they out you out of their lives. In fact, it's the other about. You have to cut them out of yours.

way

"When you haven't got the cast to return their hospitality you just can't afford to have a lot of friends."

-London Express. Servico),

TARGET

DODH

MEIT

How many

words of four letteri of mate can Jeg maxs from the letters in The goaND in the left?

Th

the word di on on letter Way be pre

Dins only, Rach word mistri copy bin the large later, and there

word in the ilus, ice panenie no foreign words; no proper names. TODAY'S TARGET: 45 words. good 65 words, very good i 18 WOTOE, CIcellent, Bolution on. Monday.

YESTERDAY

SOLUTION

Olut slution GLUTTONOUS gont zust Kusto lotus tent Jang lust HOUE-DURG Dust outge EINE LINDE Hut shout song soul stout stun

·stung stunt sung tolu coNE BALO. London Express Service.