Rip of 1973 double album collecting recordings made for the BBC by the artist, musician and broadcaster Gerard Hoffnung. Seems to be titled "Hoffnung: A Last Encore" on some versions. TRACKLIST: SIDE 1 The Charles Richardson/Gerard Hoffnung Interviews, originally broadcast in BBC's External Services and repeated on domestic radio in "Saturday Night on the Light": 0:00:00 - Childhood 0:03:36 - Hobbies 0:08:49 - Pets 0:13:33 - The Housekeeper 0:18:47 - Sport 0:23:22 - The Moon SIDE 2 The Richardson/Hoffnung Interviews [Cont.]: 0:26:44 - Travel 0:31:24 - Broadcasting 0:35:32 - Working Day 0:39:33 - Dieting 0:43:37 - The Cinema 0:47:38 - At Home SIDE 3 0:53:34 - Speech at Oxford Union, December, 1958 - "Life Begins At 38" SIDE 4 Fragments: 1:19:07 - My Life ("Woman's Hour", December, 1953) 1:27:15 - The Film Fan ("Talking About Films", December, 1955) 1:30:33 - Talking About Music ("Music Club", November, 1954) Track titles for Sides 1 and 2 taken from https://www.discogs.com/Gerard-Hoffnung-The-Importance-Of-Being-Hoffnung/release/4497719. Entertaining spoken word album I found at a Cats Protection shop in Edinburgh. I think some of it's online in bits and pieces but I can't find the whole thing. The back cover, which I've typed up below, explains it better than I can: ________________________ HOFFNUNG - A Last Encore This album brings together all of the BBC Archive material in existence, much less, alas, than one would have wished due to Gerard Hoffnung's untimely death at the age of 34 in 1959. The album is made up of two previously issued BBC Records, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING HOFFNUNG (REB 21M) and TIMELESS HOFFNUNG (REB 87M) plus a recently discovered windfall in the shape of a 14 minute broadcast by Hoffnung about his musical background and his love of the tuba which he plays with great glee at the end of the piece. Record One consists of the Charles Richardson/Hoffnung interviews previously available on THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING HOFFNUNG which I commissioned many years ago for BBC's North American Service and which were broadcast by American and later Australian and New Zealand stations. When SATURDAY NIGHT ON THE LIGHT made its radio debut at home, the interviews were featured regularly. In 1966 I found myself in charge of the BBC's New York headquarters. BBC Records had recently come into existence and I suggested that the Richardson/Hoffnung interviews would make a delightful LP. It was then discovered that the tapes had been wiped shortly before the death of Gerard Hoffnung and the idea was regretfully dropped until one day I discovered by chance that one of the New York staff had kept a number of copies of the interviews for his own personal amusement and it was from those that the LP was made. Later, a thorough check of BBC Archives and Gerard Hoffnung's private collection of tapes produced enough material for the second record, TIMELESS HOFFNUNG, and during the search, an excellent "safety" copy of the Oxford Union speech was also unearthed. But there was no trace at all of one talk we were particularly anxious to find, the MUSIC CLUB broadcast about his musical background recorded in 1954. Anetta Hoffnung unexpectedly found a tape of it and brought it to us. Gerard Hoffnung had obviously recorded it himself off the air by holding a microphone in front of a radio as he had some of the Richardson interviews, but BBC engineers worked on it and it has been included, despite its understandably sub-standard quality, in Record 2 of this double Album. Its technical flaws will, I know, be accepted by Hoffnung enthusiasts on the "Half a loaf" principle. It is a somewhat damaged treasure but a treasure nevertheless. Jack Aistrop Head of Record Production BBC Enterprises _________________________ Maybe a bit whimsical for the tastes of some but I've found that it sneaks up on you, I had to listen to parts of it like three times in a row trying not to fuck up the recording and I was laughing more each time. If you're beginning to flag then skip straight to the Bricklayer Story at 1:01:43 - the timing on that's killer, I haven't seen nor heard such good slapstick since I watched like 15 minutes of Home Alone 2 a couple of weeks ago in Morrisons staff canteen. One thing I didn't catch until I was ripping it is that the Oxford Union Speech is sampled at the beginning of this very good album: https://fractalmeat.bandcamp.com/album/stackes. I still can't get my head around the fact that he was in his 20s when most of this was recorded.

• published: 16 Oct 2019
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