Moira Shearer

Something I never knew:that Moira Shearer was briefly an announcer with Radio 3. According to Humphrey Carpenter's The Envy of the World, a history of Radio 3, she found announcing 'daunting', and was remembered as having an excellent voice, but sounding a little too theatrical.

This all came out in the wash when I was researching a feature on the 60th anniversary of The Third Programme which is at the end of September. Tom Crowe, one of Shearer's colleagues, was one of the station's great announcers. Here's how he opened the network one morning in June 1971: 'Good morning to you. It's seven o'clock I'm afraid.'