Dialogue: A time of death and departures

By DIANA WICHTEL

Death and resurrection, beginnings and endings ... even those of us not of a religious persuasion were forced to consider such heavily freighted matters over the Easter holiday.

Above the noise of random rainstorms, bored children and the odd fusillades of hail could be heard the bittersweet sound of the ending of various eras.

I spent the better part of one morning flicking between the final shows of my two - my only - radio favourites.

It's ironic, not to mention highly inconsiderate, that Kim Hill and Mikey Havoc defected on the same day. Havoc's bFM breakfast show - more like brunch, by the time he showed up - kept me from road rage many a time.

In some ways Havoc, with his manufactured name and regressive fashion sense, is like our own mini Ali G - a pure showbiz construct who gets away with murder because he's too contradictory to be threatening. All mannered flamboyance and lightening verbal affectations, he's like Restoration fop masquerading as a baggy-trousered hipster.

Sadly, you can't say that about Leighton Smith. At least Mikey will still be doing his television show while we wait for him to decide what he wants to be when he grows up.

As for Kim Hill, you get the feeling she was born grown up and a little jaded. She's the only real interviewer we've got, able to go from Lauren Bacall to stun gun in the space of a few ominous syllables.

There's no one like her as she pins another hapless interviewee - Liz Gunn and Jeffrey Archer spring vividly to mind - to her specimen tray and starts dissecting.

If she's a bit of a girly swat who likes to show off how well-read she is, it's all part of her spiky, insecure brilliance. She's being replaced by the bright-eyed, irony-free Linda Clark, who may well drive me to Leighton.

A couple of days later, Saturday Morning with John Campbell went, too. He wasn't there long, but he did make radio a kinder place.

In the last interview I heard, he subjected Lynn Barber, a visiting writer of vicious celebrity profiles, to such a relentless barrage of bonhomie that, in the end, he had the bewildered uberbitch agreeing that she was really a sweet and sympathetic soul. Marvellous. There'll be none of that touchy feely stuff when Kim takes over.

A more permanent departure from all known airwaves was made by the great Dudley Moore. It's sad to think many people only know him from the likes of 10, Arthur and the publicity surrounding the cruel neurological disorder that did him in.

He was at his most brilliant in the 60s, inventing modern television comedy with Peter Cook on Not Only ... But Also.

Without their best work, there might never have been a parrot sketch. Pete as a movie producer and Dud as a one-legged man auditioning unsuccessfully for the part of Tarzan: "I like your right leg. I have nothing whatsoever against your right leg. Unfortunately, neither have you."

Simple but effective. As was the historical and sartorial phenomenon that was the Queen Mother.

Anyone seeing the local coverage of her death at the age of 101 would be forced to conclude that we are still a long way from becoming a republic.

Alison Mau and Simon Dallow appeared in full mourning, Ali swathed in black with a fabric rosette, like an anachronistically perky Victorian dowager. I suppose full face veils would have made it difficult to read the autocue.

Helen Clark came on the news in black, too. She rose to the occasion by displaying great self control and refraining from calling the monarchy absurd even once.

The Australian coverage I came across was less forelock tugging, but then these are the people who can't keep their hands off the Queen.

Their coverage rather gleefully pointed out that, in 1938, the then Queen publicly welcomed Chamberlain back from Munich. Her huge staff of footmen etc, summoned by a Faberge bell, was fondly recalled, as well as her embarrassingly large overdraft.

It did occur to me, as our reporters kept talking about how the Queen Mum kept the monarchy together, that her matchmaking between Charles and Di, and her alleged acceptance of Camilla as royal mistress, probably came closer to bringing the monarchy down than even the abdication of her brother-in-law all those years ago.

She was fortunate in her family.

From her uncertain, stammering husband to her divorce-prone grandchildren and their histrionic spouses, they made her look increasingly good by comparison as her century rolled by.

She was also fortunate that she was not brought up to be a royal and therefore retained a few vestiges of natural charm.

She was always a soothing sight on a pompous occasion - an ever-smiling, ever-waving, mobile floral arrangement.

As the Monarchy became more fractured and the real world increasingly fragmented, she gave many people what they craved most - familiarity.

There's a lot to be said for the consolation of continuity in wildly changing times. I can't help thinking Kim Hill should have thought of that before she quit.