Malcolm Gooding’s name has been synonymous with radio since the ‘Seventies, and he has a most beautiful face for radio!  At the Franschhoek Literary Festival, Gooding performed his autobiographical play ‘Going Gooding: A Play on Radio‘ last night,  which was also the name of his show on the English programme of the SABC.  In one hour the audience was transported back to an era of radio personalities and cigarette advertising.  It is a shame that there were so few attendees.

Gooding opened a guest house outside Franschhoek recently, but appears to spend most of his time in Johannesburg, still doing voice-overs and documentaries.   The play tells the story of Gooding’s career in radio, which started close to fifty years ago.  A chance invitation by a friend to attend an audition as radio presenter opened the door which remains open for Gooding.  He described himself as a ‘voice prostitute’, having been called the ‘Golden Voice‘ of radio.  He demonstrated his diversity as a voice artist, doing at least 24 voices in his one-hour play.  He started off with an advertorial skit, of which he does many now, for ‘Blomail’, a play on words for Glomail, which uses Gooding for such infomercials!  He reminisced about his colleagues on radio, who have passed away, including Robin Alexander, Nigel Kane, Bill Flynn, Paddy O’Byrne, Bea Reed, and many more.  He did a hilarious piece on Patricia Kerr doing ‘Forces Favourites’, reading a letter in her very poor Afrikaans.

It was an era of radio dramas on Springbok Radio, the best known being ‘Squad Cars’, which exceeded 800 episodes. Gooding did an episode for us, in which he played every voice, including the narrator, an Indian and an Afrikaans policeman, a Dutch crime victim, and an Irish crime perpetrator.  Gooding described the very popular program as ‘SA police propaganda’.   Other popular radio dramas included ‘Taxi’, and ‘Consider your Verdict‘.  Radio advertisements for Chevrolet (‘Sunny skies and Chevrolet‘), Continue reading →