No Conferring
by Jonathan HollowayBBC Radio Four
Christmas Day, 2003
11-11.30pm
In the drama series "A Sting in the Tale""I shall say nothing about the first Sting in the Tale play, Jonathan Holloway’s No Conferring, except to commend it as a gripping late-night listen. At the end, it actually raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Its clever pun of a title refers not just to its University Challenge theme (Jeremy Paxman and Bamber Gascoigne play themselves) but also to its plot, which echoes I Know What You Did Last Summer - though that does not give anything away.
A Sting in the Tale sounds reminiscent of television’s Tales of the Unexpected, celebrated for its denouements. In fact, it owes more to a fondly remembered (and still requested) Radio 4 series, Fear on Four, for which Edward de Souza reprised a sinister narrator, The Man in Black, first heard on Appointment with Fear in 1943.
Then and now, this is the sort of fear we can control, that makes us shiver but not panic, which is why it will always be part of a medium where a whisper, a footstep, a distant cry or a crackling log can so powerfully affect the imagination."
The Sunday Times 21.12.03
by Paul Donovan