Latest news with #radio
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Dyslexia diagnosis at 50 'was a feeling of relief'
Working as a newsreader and a presenter on the radio means I have had to read out loud quite a lot - it's an essential part of the job. But over the years I'd sometimes struggle with some of the basic stuff like reading the scripts word for word - I'd hit a wall and make really silly mistakes - and it was frustrating. When I had the chance to have a test for dyslexia at the age of 50, after being inspired by a feature we did on Radio Berkshire, it established that, yes, I was dyslexic. It was a feeling of relief but also, for anyone struggling like me, a diagnosis can help you better understand yourself. Looking back to my school days in the 1980s and early 90s, I would often have to work hard to properly understand things, especially with maths and English. In the end I did very badly at my A-levels, leaving me frustrated with myself and suddenly not really having a life plan. Back then there wasn't the support or awareness of dyslexia and the impact it could have on a child's education and prospects - things might have turned out differently if there had been. 'Coping strategies' Luckily I got to muck around doing radio - hospital radio and then AA Roadwatch travel news before joining the BBC in Oxford. The BBC was great at teaching you the skills you need for journalism. I developed coping strategies - reading scripts many times over, changing breathing techniques, and using a different font that was easier to read. Like many things, you get along in life and I think I've done alright, even though I was never tested for or diagnosed as dyslexic. When we featured the Adult Dyslexia Centre in Maidenhead, which helps people who have struggled with growing up with the learning difficulty, I was inspired to take the test. Having taken the four-hour test with reading and comprehension and cognitive reasoning and recall, I eventually got the certificate confirming dyslexia. In a way I'm grateful that its shows I'm not stupid - it's a relief to know there is a diagnosable thing that's gone on here. I think the biggest thing I've learned is that facing a dyslexia diagnosis is not the end of the world and that there are a lot of things that can be done. One of the things I often struggle with is keeping my eyes focused on the words in front of me and not drifting around. My assessor suggested going to a behavioural ophthalmologist, who can work out what's going on and even provide specialist glasses that help control the eyes better. And for anyone having trouble - finding things like job interviews especially tough - and who, like me, has just struggled through, it's worth taking a test. The difficulties I've had all now make sense. What is dyslexia? Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that affects about one in 10 people in the UK, including adults as well as children, according to the British Dyslexia Association (BDA) If someone has dyslexia, they may have difficulties with their reading, writing or spelling It does not affect intelligence and it is not a disease or an illness - it is a condition that someone is born with Government statistics show that 6.3m people in the UK have dyslexia, while one in six adults have the reading level of an 11-year-old A dyslexia diagnosis is not available via the NHS. It is recognised as a specific learning difficulty and this means it is an educational assessment A diagnosis can only be made by an educational psychologist who is registered with the Health and Care Professions Council or a specialist teacher with a valid registration Charities such as the BDA can offer advice for people who want to find out whether they may have dyslexia You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram. See also Tool for mass dyslexia screening being developed 'My dyslexia diagnosis was a lightbulb moment' Related Links British Dyslexia Association
BBC News
3 hours ago
- Health
- BBC News
BBC presenter Phil Mercer on being diagnosed with dyslexia at 50
Working as a newsreader and a presenter on the radio means I have had to read out loud quite a lot - it's an essential part of the over the years I'd sometimes struggle with some of the basic stuff like reading the scripts word for word - I'd hit a wall and make really silly mistakes - and it was I had the chance to have a test for dyslexia at the age of 50, after being inspired by a feature we did on Radio Berkshire, it established that, yes, I was was a feeling of relief but also, for anyone struggling like me, a diagnosis can help you better understand back to my school days in the 1980s and early 90s, I would often have to work hard to properly understand things, especially with maths and English. In the end I did very badly at my A-levels, leaving me frustrated with myself and suddenly not really having a life then there wasn't the support or awareness of dyslexia and the impact it could have on a child's education and prospects - things might have turned out differently if there had been. 'Coping strategies' Luckily I got to muck around doing radio - hospital radio and then AA Roadwatch travel news before joining the BBC in BBC was great at teaching you the skills you need for journalism. I developed coping strategies - reading scripts many times over, changing breathing techniques, and using a different font that was easier to many things, you get along in life and I think I've done alright, even though I was never tested for or diagnosed as we featured the Adult Dyslexia Centre in Maidenhead, which helps people who have struggled with growing up with the learning difficulty, I was inspired to take the taken the four-hour test with reading and comprehension and cognitive reasoning and recall, I eventually got the certificate confirming a way I'm grateful that its shows I'm not stupid - it's a relief to know there is a diagnosable thing that's gone on here.I think the biggest thing I've learned is that facing a dyslexia diagnosis is not the end of the world and that there are a lot of things that can be of the things I often struggle with is keeping my eyes focused on the words in front of me and not drifting around. My assessor suggested going to a behavioural ophthalmologist, who can work out what's going on and even provide specialist glasses that help control the eyes for anyone having trouble - finding things like job interviews especially tough - and who, like me, has just struggled through, it's worth taking a test. The difficulties I've had all now make sense. What is dyslexia? Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that affects about one in 10 people in the UK, including adults as well as children, according to the British Dyslexia Association (BDA)If someone has dyslexia, they may have difficulties with their reading, writing or spellingIt does not affect intelligence and it is not a disease or an illness - it is a condition that someone is born withGovernment statistics show that 6.3m people in the UK have dyslexia, while one in six adults have the reading level of an 11-year-oldA dyslexia diagnosis is not available via the NHS. It is recognised as a specific learning difficulty and this means it is an educational assessmentA diagnosis can only be made by an educational psychologist who is registered with the Health and Care Professions Council or a specialist teacher with a valid registrationCharities such as the BDA can offer advice for people who want to find out whether they may have dyslexia You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
York Hospital Radio broadcaster to mark 60 years on air with live show
A radio broadcaster in York is set to mark an extraordinary milestone this weekend. York Hospital Radio volunteer Keith Lea will celebrate 60 years with the station this Saturday (July 26). On the Saturday, he will present a six-hour live show, starting at 10am, featuring music from each of the years he has spent on air. He will be joined by family members, friends, and fellow presenters, and also by Clare Grainger, deputy Lord Lieutenant of North Yorkshire. Mr Lea, from York, joined the then-Ebor Tape Recording Club in July 1965 at the age of 16, because he enjoyed making tape recordings. He found he had joined a hospital radio station - based, at the time, in a disused pathology lab at the former Fulford Military Hospital. Mr Lea collected requests and helped to compile and record weekly programmes for ten hospitals across York, broadcast via Post Office landlines. During the 1960s, he continued to present request shows and work on recorded interviews, taking part in the first live broadcasts in 1968 for what became the York Hospital Broadcasting Service. Mr Lea has long been passionate about Outside Broadcasts (OBs) and now leads the station's OB team. His first event of this kind was in 1971, when he covered a three-day gala at Bootham Park Hospital as part of York's 1,900th anniversary celebrations. By the 1970s, the station was based at The Grange on Huntington Road, and required new studios. Mr Lea helped to raise £63,000 for a purpose-built studio complex, which opened in 1983. He later served as chairman from 1985 to 1987, and managed the station's mobile fundraising disco for many years. Mr Lea was instrumental in the station's move to its current studios in 1993. Today, he presents a Saturday morning show from 10am as part of a team including fellow presenters Sharon Chow and Steve Eccles. He also records and broadcasts events and shows from venues such as the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York Minster, and York Barbican. Mr Lea said: "Hospital radio was a treasure trove of opportunities and life experiences, which I embraced as a 'Jack of All Trades' and master of only a few. "It's been a personal journey of challenges, triumphs, teamwork, technology, friendships, and fun! "York Hospital Radio has endured and evolved, and I'm proud to be part of its journey." Ian Clennan, chairman of York Hospital Radio, said: "Huge congratulations to Keith on his amazing 60 years with us. "I am immensely grateful to Keith for his unique contribution to hospital radio in the city for six decades." York Hospital Radio is a registered charity and broadcasts 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Why Paul Temple is the detective we all need right now
For three decades from the 1940s, Paul Temple ruled the airwaves. This urbane amateur detective was a mainstay of the BBC Home Service, solving all manner of dastardly deeds with aplomb. Listeners relished the world of metropolitan sophistication which Temple offered, a world of cravats, sports cars and post-prandial cocktails. In fact, Temple's habitual exclamation 'By Timothy!' and the programme's inimitable, frenetic theme music (Coronation Scot by Vivian Ellis), not to mention the frightfully posh RP accents, feel like significant cultural markers in the post-war British landscape. The suave crime novelist and spare time sleuth had first appeared on the radio before the Second World War (in Send for Paul Temple – an eight-part serial broadcast in 1938), but it was austerity Britain that lapped him up, with 20 more serials being made. And despite the impeccably English credentials of Temple (Rugby and Oxford) and his (oddly named) wife Steve (a journalist who used her Fleet Street pseudonym), the serials were also exceedingly popular on the Continent, especially in Germany, the Netherlands and Italy. Paul Temple was created by Francis Durbridge, a prolific writer of thrillers and one of the most successful authors of the mid-20th century. Born in Hull in 1912 into a middle-class family, Durbridge enjoyed a career of astonishing longevity, one spanning six decades and many mediums. A Birmingham University graduate, he began writing for radio in 1933 with children's stories and romantic sketches, but his breakthrough came the following year with Promotion, a play about life in a large department store. In addition to his voluminous output for radio, Durbridge was also an accomplished writer of TV thriller serials. One of the most popular was Melissa (1964) in which the uxorious Guy Foster finds himself the prime suspect when his eponymous wife is murdered. He also wrote for the stage, with Suddenly at Home (1971) running in London's West End for nearly two years. Durbridge's work offered fans of detective fiction high-octane plots which kept the mind guessing and the pulse racing, together with flamboyant, memorable protagonists, elusive villains, nail-biting climaxes and big, set-piece reveals. This combination set him apart from contemporaries such as Desmond Bagley and Helen MacInnes, and enabled him to tap into Britain's insatiable desire for crime thrillers, be they on radio, TV, stage or in print. But it was Temple, one of his earliest creations, that was also his most successful. In some ways the stories, written for radio, represent the best and worst aspects of genre fiction. They can be formulaic (Durbridge had a predilection for recycling his plots, as well as for the inclusion of copious red herrings). Yet this formula was also part of the series' success and leant itself perfectly to the radio which established thrilling cliffhangers(such as in Paul Temple and the Madison Mystery where, with Steve kidnapped, Temple is involved in a high-speed boat chase on the Thames). As with the majority of Agatha Christie's fiction, the identity of the murderer is concealed until the denouement. So does Paul Temple deserve to be seen as more than mere genre fiction? The prose is often muscular, and the characters are surprisingly well-rounded (Temple is, by turn, cerebral, doughty, jocular, imperious and supercilious), while the depictions of skulduggery against an ostensibly genteel background offer an offbeat social commentary on upper-class mores. The Paul Temple Mysteries also offer a fascinating social and racial snapshot of post-war Britain. The working classes – as portrayed most favourably in the character of Temple's manservant Charlie, know their place in the rigid social order and when to deferentially doff their caps. Likewise, corresponding with our post-war mindset of paranoia, Durbridge's villains are often swarthy Europeans or international foreign criminal masterminds, and, as epitomised by Temple and his wife, the quintessentially English traits of decorum and fair play reign supreme in both social intercourse and crime fighting. The lost world evoked by Durbridge – in which men dressed for dinner and were chivalrous to their spouses, depict a halcyon England. But Durbridge's England could be ugly, too – an unapologetic and un-PC throwback to a xenophobic, monocultural vision of parochial Englishness in which 'the w—s begin at Calais', to employ that most heinous of period phrases. And this, ironically, was at a time when the British Empire was disintegrating, soon to be dismantled by the independence movements and the 'Winds of Change' sweeping through Africa and the Caribbean. While the books are worth revisiting, it is the radio adaptations, many currently available on YouTube and BBC Sounds, which remain Paul Temple's strongest showcase. Although several actors played Temple in the early days, it was helped by the consistent presence of Peter Coke and Marjorie Westbury as Paul and Steve from 1954 until the end of the series' run in 1968. In addition, the same BBC radio producer – Martyn C Webster – was responsible for every single Paul Temple Mystery, even coming out of retirement to produce the final serial, thereby ensuring a much sought-after continuity of tone and register. Webster is credited with introducing the practice of prohibiting the actors from reading the scripts of the last episode before rehearsal and broadcast, to ensure that the murderer would not be disclosed by any errant inflection in an actor's voice. Meanwhile, Francis Durbridge went from strength to strength. Quick to realise the power of television, he wrote a drama, The Broken Horseshoe, in 1952, which was followed by 19 more exceedingly popular serials for the BBC, all featuring the credit Francis Durbridge Presents before the title. Paul Temple moved to the small screen, too, with Francis Matthews in the title role, appearing between 1969 and 1971 in 52 episodes for the BBC. However, unlike the radio serials, each television episode was self-contained and Durbridge did not actually write them himself, with the result that they were devoid of his assiduously crafted cliffhangers. Durbridge died a year after a major Channel 4 adaptation of Melissa in 1997 and The Times obituary read: 'What Agatha Christie was to the novel, Durbridge was to the radio and television play.' Yet Melissa effectively marked the end of Britain's love affair with Durbridge and sadly he now feels like a mere footnote in the annals of British 20th-century culture. I must confess: the Paul Temple Mysteries have been my guilty pleasure – and my essential bath time listening – for many years, affording me a gloriously indulgent aural treat from a bygone era while I soak in the tub. The stark contrast between Temple's monochrome, upper-class milieu (complete with opulent flat in Eaton Square) and my own multicultural, middle-class existence (complete with infinitely more modest south London bohemian garret) – only adds to their charm. In the same way that Terence Rattigan's exquisitely well-made, emotionally trenchant plays from the 1940s are currently enjoying a well-deserved revival in both the nation's theatres and the national consciousness, the British public are long overdue a Durbridge renaissance. The time is surely now ripe for a rediscovery – and a wider reinvention – of Durbridge's art in radio, TV and film, given that he excelled in all three. At a time when the TV and radio thrillers being ingloriously churned out by the streaming behemoths are painfully formulaic, shamelessly pandering to algorithms at the expense of narrative coherence and dramatic quality, could Paul Temple save the thriller genre from sheer tedium? 'By Timothy! Yes, he could!' The six best Paul Temple radio serials Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair (1946) Temple investigates the murder of a young woman whose body is found in the sea and that of another young woman, found in his own garage, both linked with the message 'With the compliments of Mr. Gregory.' From a secluded Yorkshire clifftop to a salubrious Mayfair nightclub and a warehouse on the Thames, Temple and Steve go in pursuit of a sinister and deadly criminal mastermind. Currently available on YouTube and on BBC Sounds Paul Temple and the Sullivan Mystery (1947) About to travel to Egypt, the Temples are asked by an acquaintance, Miss Raymond, to return an ostensibly ordinary pair of glasses to her cousin Richard Sullivan in Cairo. Yet this act of kindness inevitably leads to subterfuge and murder, and a thrilling adventure which leads them from their stop-over in Sicily to the bustling backstreets of Cairo and a houseboat rendez-vous on the Nile. Currently available on YouTube Paul Temple and the Madison Mystery (1949) Returning to England from America by ocean liner, Temple meets Sam Portland, an amnesiac multi-millionaire whose UK agent Hubert Greene has received notification about Portland's shady past from a private detective called Madison. After Portland dies on board, the dead man's watch chain leads Temple in pursuit of a ruthless gang of international counterfeiters whose blackmail and murderous brutality to protect their lucrative clandestine operation culminates in Steve's abduction, a high-speed boat chase on the Thames and a lethal explosion. Currently available on YouTube. Paul Temple and the Vandyke Affair (1950) Temple is called in to investigate the disappearance of Mary Desmond's baby daughter and her babysitter, Miss Millicent – the only clue being a note left at the scene laconically stating 'A Mr Vandyke telephoned. He left no message.' With the identity of the elusive Mr Vandyke inextricably linked to a doll left in a briefcase in a nightclub cloakroom and the murder of a man impersonating a police officer, the Temples are forced to take a trip to Paris to purchase a pair of gloves, in order to unmask the culprit, apprehend the murderer and ascertain the real reason for the baby's disappearance. Currently available on YouTube Paul Temple and the Gilbert Case (1954) Temple is asked by Wilfred Stirling to investigate the murder of his daughter Brenda, for which her boyfriend Howard Gilbert has already been found guilty and sentenced to hang. As Temple races against time to prove Gilbert's innocence before his impending execution, there are more murders, crucially involving a shoe missing from each victim, a fashionable London nightclub and its shady European owner. Currently available on YouTube Paul Temple and the Margo Mystery (1961) Temple, returning home from New York after an American lecture tour, strikes up conversation with Mike Langdon, who has been entrusted with persuading his employer's 21-year-old daughter, Julia Kelburn, to renounce her boyfriend, a nightclub singer called Tony Wyman, because her father disapproves. Meeting her husband at the airport, Temple's wife Steve is drugged and kidnapped, but released unharmed and left in possession of a designer coat with the label 'Margo'. After Julia's subsequent murder and a bomb sent to their home, Temple and Steve are faced with grave danger in pursuit of an international criminal called The Fence who is behind Julia's murder.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Urban cowboys, harmonica wizards and queer trailblazers: 100 years of the Grand Ole Opry, country music's greatest institution
It's the only American radio show that's been on the air for 100 years, an institution that launched the country music industry as we know it and a stage production that made country fans flock to Nashville in the first place – and keeps them coming for a singular experience today. 'I somehow understood the weight of what I was stepping into,' says Marty Stuart of the Grand Ole Opry, specifically the first night he played in 1972 as a mandolin-playing prodigy sitting in with bluegrass star Lester Flatt's band. Stuart went on to become a country star, and Opry member, himself, and has now embraced the role of elder on the show: on 26 September, he along with Luke Combs, Darius Rucker, Ashley McBryde and Carly Pearce will take part in the Opry's first-ever overseas broadcast at the Royal Albert Hall, as part of a year-long 100th birthday celebration. 'A hundred years of anything, especially in show business, it's just unheard of,' he marvels. It has been a centrepiece in Stuart's life for most of his 66 years: as a kid in small town Mississippi in the 1960s, he listened to Opry radio broadcasts from Nashville. By the early 90s, he was scoring hits as 'a rhinestone-wearin' country rock'n'roller', and the Opry's longtime legends – particularly fiddling balladeer Roy Acuff and comic personality Minnie Pearl – were nearing the end of their lives. Stuart sought their approval: 'They had spent their lives building that institution, and I wanted to know that I was on the good side of the line with both of those folks.' Both did give him their blessing, but Pearl made him sweat first. She looked right past the armful of white roses he brought her, critiqued his attire – 'Look at those tight pants!' – and admonished him to maintain the Opry's good image. He kept the pants, but took her wishes to heart, and the basics of a night at the Opry's downhome variety show have remained much the same. 'It is not, on paper, the makings of a successful show,' laughs Dan Rogers, the Opry's executive producer. Recorded and broadcast live in front of an audience, announcers project a mixture of folksy intimacy and professionalism as they welcome everyone, read sponsor ad messages and introduce world-class performers who do a few songs each, prioritising old chestnuts that they know fans want to hear. Any given night, the lineup may include mainstream country stars of the present and the distant past, bluegrass bands, gospel vocal groups, singer-songwriters, hotshot instrumentalists, down-home comedians, square dancers and more. Lineups often span several generations and are often described as one big family: back in March, the Opry's most veteran member, 87-year-old Bill Anderson, appeared the same night that Stuart and his band the Fabulous Superlatives backed his bassist's rockabilly obsessed, 10-year-old son. The Opry has absorbed a century's worth of technological, musical and cultural evolution at a very measured pace. Its leadership has apologised for employing blackface duos in its early days; its traditional barn backdrop is now comprised of video walls and its stage has welcomed artists bringing hip-hop, gen-Z folk and TikTok virality to the genre. 'You have to evolve,' says Rogers. 'It's a must for survival and for creating really interesting shows – but you do it in a way that's really respectful of this institution.' Today, membership of the Opry, awarded to a small cadre of musicians – just 76 living artists – has become one of the industry's greatest honours. The Opry was originally almost incidental programming on a radio station, WSM, launched in 1925 by National Life and Accident, a Nashville insurance company looking to promote its business. Station managers filled the airwaves with a hodgepodge of locally available acts, professional or not, and people soon began showing up to watch the broadcast. 'It was a matter of: let's see who we can get to come in here,' says historian Brenda Colladay, a longtime curator of the Opry's collections who has helped to research a thorough 100th anniversary book. There was no such genre as country music when the show launched, just regionally specific versions of old-time music, dance tunes and folk songs. Over time, the sheer variety of performers featured in Opry lineups helped forge a cohesive identity out of those disparate styles, fundamentally shaping how we understand country. Alongside light classical fare were acts such as Uncle Dave Macon, a banjo-playing vaudevillian, and DeFord Bailey, a young Black harmonica wizard whose family string band had long played area dances. The Opry was essentially a barn dance on the radio, an already popular concept – they poached their master of ceremonies George D Hay from a rival show in Chicago. But the Opry initially faced local opposition from upper-class residents who fancied Nashville 'the Athens of the South', complete with a replica of the Parthenon, then under construction. 'It made some people ashamed that [Nashville was] associated with hillbilly music,' Colladay says, including Tennessee governor Prentice Cooper who declined an invitation to attend an Opry celebration: 'He felt like it was really hurting Nashville's reputation.' Cooper was vastly outnumbered by the listeners who heard themselves in the show. As it went nationwide, it developed a massive, devoted following among rural and small-town listeners, as well as southerners who had migrated to industrialised cities. It got so popular that National Life and Accident executives got annoyed with rowdy fans clamouring to watch the live broadcasts at the company offices, and the Opry eventually moved to Nashville's Ryman Auditorium in 1943. By then, it was no longer free to get in, and WSM had established an in-house booking agency that sent performers on the road. Staff and stars saw opportunities to capitalise on the show's dominance in other ways, starting a recording studio, music publishing houses and enough other businesses to entice New York-based record labels to set up local operations. The presence of the Opry ensured that Nashville became home to the emerging, professionalised country music industry. It was where the thrillingly hard-driving new style of bluegrass was fleshed out, and where honky-tonk singers and folk-friendly troubadours alike found a home, but the show was sometimes too cautious to embrace trends. Take Elvis Presley: when he wasn't invited back after his first Opry appearance, he moved on to a rival show in Louisiana. Stuart says the Opry might occasionally overcorrect, and points to its early-80s focus on the slick 'urban cowboy' movement: 'From time to time, I would tune in to the Opry, and when they introduced somebody, I kind of knew what song they were about to sing and what joke they were going to tell. It was a little weary.' Splashy additions like the Opryland theme park and regularly televised broadcasts on the Nashville Network brought in new listeners, as did the 2010s TV drama Nashville, set in the city's country songwriting scene. But because the Opry was home to many generations of performers at once, there were times when some of the dedicated members felt they were denied opportunities to appear – Stonewall Jackson brought an age discrimination lawsuit, which was settled with undisclosed terms. And of more than 230 acts granted membership over the years only two Black country stars, the late Charley Pride and Darius Rucker, have been inducted since Bailey – and Bailey was fired during a copyright-related dispute in 1941, an injustice the Opry recently apologised for. But Rogers reports that for the last few years a double digit percentage of Opry's performers have been artists of colour, making it much more diverse than contemporary country radio; according to leading researcher Dr Jada Watson, radio devoted less than 3% of its spins to artists of colour in 2024, despite Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter coming out that year. Rogers' team began tracking performer demographics internally a few years back, 'because it is right for this community and right for this show'. Equal Access, a DEI programme that helps businesspeople and music-makers of underrepresented identities navigate the country music industry, has forged a friendly relationship with the Opry. Programme manager Chantrel Reynolds says she and her colleagues made sure it was a safe space for discussing the Opry's complex history with race before they began arranging visits with Opry leadership, and she finds that acknowledgment refreshingly 'different from a lot of spaces' in country music. The Opry, she says, is 'actively trying to programme these things, not just in Black History Month, but all year round'. With the help of Equal Access, contemporary country artist Angie K got her first chance to play the Opry last year. 'I was the first person from El Salvador to play that stage,' she says. 'I needed to be not just good – I have to be great, so great that they think, 'We need to do this again with another Latin artist.'' She had scoured Opry history for predecessors who are queer and Hispanic like she is. 'I'm very aware that there's not many. What I love about the Opry is there's still room to grow – they're making a very intentional effort to change.' On the show, she sang originals addressing women as romantic interests, and she was 'very grateful that a lot of people came up and said, 'I'm so happy that you said those pronouns.'' For his part, Stuart marvels at how the Opry always finds its way back to varied vitality after weathering all manner of growing pains: 'The thing that the history books tell me is that every institution goes through that from time to time'. The Opry expects decorum: there's no alcohol backstage, just tea and lemonade, and in keeping with Federal Communications Commission rules, no cursing on stage. But Rogers sometimes dispenses reassurance to first-time performers who assume they should be at their most traditionalist. 'That crowd out there is really full of all kinds of people, all walks of life,' he tells them. 'Bring what you do to this stage. We wouldn't have invited you to be on this stage if we weren't up for what you bring.' Grand Ole Opry: Live in London is at Royal Albert Hall, London, Friday 26 September
