REVIEW: Everybody's uncle

Allison Oosterman

doi:10.24135/pjr.v18i1.300

REVIEW: Everybody's uncle

Allison Oosterman

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24135/pjr.v18i1.300

Keywords: Biography, Media history, Public broadcasting, Radio, Reviews

Abstract

Review of: Scrim – the man with a mike, by William Renwick. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2011, 308 pp. ISBN 978-0864736956

Biography is currently one of the most popular literary genres but New Zealand writers seem to choose their subjects from quite a narrow range of sportsmen and military figures. Few have chosen to write about historic media individuals. The last one I recall was Facing the Music: Charles Baeyertz and the Triad, by Joanna Woods (2008).

Renwick sets out to put the record straight on some of the myths surrrounding this controversial broadcaster, a methodist minister, whose Friendly Road sessions on provate radio 1ZR in the 1930s made him one of the most popular men in the country.