All my regular readers know of my admiration for Merseyside naturalist Eric Hardy ..... and my occasional parodies of him have been, I hope, affectionate ones. He had a (fairly) regular nature column in the Liverpool Echo, and later in life he had a spot on Radio Merseyside which was, to say the least, riveting and entertaining in his own special way. If you've read those parodies, you will know what I mean ! For example .... 181-an-affectionate-parody-of-the-writings-of-eric-hardy.html 481-elric-hardly.html That Mr. G ( man of mystery) sometimes sent me tapes of his "show" and they were certainly good value ! I was just too far away to record them myself, up in remote Lancashire as I was at the time. Anyway .... a while ago I found an interesting article ( presumably written in 2003) about him on a blog, and I ferreted it away ... but now I can't remember what the blog was called. It makes an interesting read .... and further on there is an affectionate and characteristic account of the way his Radio Merseyside talks were recorded as well ....................... Eric Hardy died last year (2002) he was 90 years of age with him went the last link with another great north - western naturalist and perhaps the most famous of them all, non other than T.A. Coward, Hardy actually knew Coward and also Oldham, with whom Coward wrote "The Birds of Cheshire" and "The Verterbrate Fauna of Cheshire and Liverpool Bay" Talking to Hardy I was surprised to hear that he had such a low opinion of the two of them, but then, listening to his Countryside programme on Radio Merseyside it soon became apparent that he thought much the same of most of his contemporaries, especially those who at some stage in their career had actually shot birds! He came along to the KOS one evening in the 1970's and gave us an evening's entertainment that is still remembered by those lucky enough to be there! He brought only a handful of slides, and these were black & white, but managed to enthrall us for two hours, it could have been longer, much longer! but at 10pm with the Civic Hall caretaker stood at the back of the room, keys in hand, we had to ask Eric to finish - just as he was launching a verbal attack on the Royal Family, his favourite target! He often reviewed publications sent to him and gave his verdict during the Countryside programme - I sent him a copy of our own Knutsford Ornithological Society Bird Report for 1976, and he was quite complimentary about it. This tended to be the case, he was scathing about any professional publications that weren't up to scratch, but with amateur efforts he was much more relaxed and I never recall him causing embarrassment to any local bird report editors. At the time Radio Merseyside was broadcast only on the medium wave band so, here in Knutsford we were just at the edge of its coverage, and in the evening when the programme went out there was lots of fading on the signal, with occasional interference from Continental stations that made reception difficult. I remember recording the programme when our report was reviewed and recently tried to find it amongst a collection of old audio tapes rescued from the cellar when we moved house. It wasn't to be found but I did find one tape containing a couple of Hardy's programmes from 1977. I've selected from this tape a 5' section when Eric talks of a day on the Lancashire Mosses, alone for most of the time, surrounded by Pink-footed Geese, but with a gentle dig at the end about the newly opened Martin Mere Reserve. This is part of a typical Eric Hardy Countryside programme..... (it works .... I've listened to it ... ) Click here to download. Additionally I've appended below an account by Paul Freeman of his dealings with Hardy when he (Paul) was a technician at Radio Merseyside - Hello, I've just come across in your archives, your obituary piece concerning the naturalist, Eric Hardy, with its references to his broadcasts on BBC Radio Merseyside. You refer obliquely (well, perhaps not so obliquely!) to his sometime scathing reviews of people and publications. I was working for Radio Merseyside during those years (1969 - 1980) and well remember the recording sessions. Apart from the Journalists responsible for the news output, the station was staffed by a very few Producers, 2 engineers, and a handful (5 or 6) of Station Assistants who did everything else. I was one of the latter contingent. It always fell to the poor SA who had done the early shift (06.00 - 14.00) to record and edit Eric as the final task of the shift - usually on a Monday or Tuesday I seem to recall. I know many of my colleagues dreaded it (when you've been up since 04.30, sitting in front of a studio desk, recording one man talking, can be surprisingly soporific) but I quite enjoyed it. He was a fluent and accomplished broadcaster, and his was a programme I was happy to produce, once I'd got him to double-space his scripts in order to allow me to mark repeats for editing out mistakes. There were precious few of those, too. For a 14 minute broadcast there were seldom more than 3 or 4 errors in the whole recording. If you think he was sometimes scathing on the broadcasts, you should have seen some of the original scripts! We would frequently argue (very gently, of course) about how far he could eviscerate someone. I usually lost the arguments, but eventually I realised that it was easier to record it all, then edit out the libels ! He hardly ever noticed - I'm not sure he ever made a point of religiously listening to the broadcast programmes, but if he ever queried a cut or a change I would just say "Oh it was a bit tight for time, so I had to do a few nip and tucks." I don't believe he was fooled for a minute, but he realised I was the one with the razor-blade, so therefore had the final say. He was definitely one of a kind. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well ... for all us " Northern Naturalists" he was a great man. Much missed I'm sure. But now, an uplifting song ....
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7/13/2021 09:54:51 pm
Just discovered your rather splendid blog whilst searching for any sound recordings of my all-time hero Thomas Alfred Coward. A bigger hero than Eric Hardy or even Fred Dibnah. The "blog" you'd forgotten the name of is actually a website www.10X50.com which has been up and running since 1995 and pre-dates the term "blog" by many years. In fact this website is, we believe, the earliest bird watching website still extant! ........... Tony Usher....... Mobberley. (The tags on your blog - About and Contact are not working properly and only part of the pages they point to are displayed (one of the problems when using a blog!!))
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