Newscaster Angela Rippon Making the News in 1976 on Morecambe & Wise Show

Hi There, Short post today

If you’re a certain age you might remember BBC 9 Oclock News favourite Angela Rippon surprising everyone on The Morecambe and Wise Show with her dancing – as I remember it she even presented the BBC 9 o’clock news straight afterwards still in dancing clobber.

Well yesterday I saw Angela Rippon, now aged 71 , this time on a BBC documentary called the truth about Dementia.. something that sadly took her Mum, and she also believes it is something that her father now has.

But It was when she went into the chinese class and started learning about Chinese Horse and Chinese Mum that got my attention … and here’s why …..

The experts had just mentioned that one of the things that reduces risk is being bilingual – and so the scene cuts to Angela in a Chinese class – and the lady is explaining the intricacies of chinese and how a lot of the pronounciation is down to pitch (errr melody… musicality maybe??) No – it can’t be ? or can it?

The lady explained that a certain word, spoken one way would mean Mum in chinese, and yet the exact same word spoken with a different pitch would actually mean Horse.

So… if You don;t get the musicality of your words right in chinese.. you could accidently end up calling your mum a horse.

And ofcourse the thing that was missed again was any notion or idea that perhaps Meaningfull Music Making could perhaps play a part in prevention.

Though with the chinese reference – perhaps the importance of Music, is once again hidden in plain view.

Here’s the link if you missed the program, and You can decide for yourself : http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07c6n5b/the-truth-about-7-dementia

Andre