2MCE FM COME ALL YE – 5 February 2023
Bruce Cameron February 5, 2023
The programs in January and February feature the eight Radio Ballads produced for the BBC in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger and Charles Parker. Each Radio Ballad of approximately 60 minutes makes up most of the second half of each program.
The Body Blow was the fifth in the series, broadcast in March 1962 and made with a considerably smaller budget and on a much shorter timescale than the previous radio ballads. It was originally conceived as an exploration of the psychology of pain, but the project eventually focused on the subject of poliomyelitis, a disease prevalent at the time. Inspired partly by the montage sequences in Alain Resnais’ film, Last Year in Marienbad, the programme is a journey into the minds of five polio sufferers, two partially disabled and three totally disabled.
