Souvenirs on BBC Radio 4

Huge news! House band Martin Austwick and I made a radio version of our live piece Souvenirs, and it’s being broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 22 July at 16:00 UK time, and rerun at 00:15 BST Monday 28 July - here’s the link for listening live. It’ll also be available online via the BBC website and BBC Sounds, for a bit of time after.
UPDATE: it’s currently not available outside of the UK, so for now, people anywhere can hear it via Falling Tree’s archive. Ignore Soundcloud’s request to sign in, you can listen without doing so.

Souvenirs is a sort of essay/musical/tragicomedy about the Doves Press and its founders’ friendship collapsing and all manner of bitterness ensuing over their in-house typeface. Later in the year I’ll put something on the podfeed with more information about it. For now, I’d love for you to listen to Souvenirs, which I think is one of the most emotional pieces I’ve written. Some of those emotions are ones I recognise in myself and wish I could banish.

Look mum, I’m in the Radio Times! [Falls back down to Earth] With my name spelled wrong:

several bits of news! (nothing bad)

Hello! It's me, your real imaginary friend, Helen Zaltzman.

Someone wrote to me recently saying, “I haven't seen a new episode, are you OK?” I'm OK, thank you! I took a break for some work things such as the return of my other podcast Answer Me This, and also to have a vacation. Hadn't had one of those for a bit. It was very nice. Strongly recommend vacation.

But the show will be back on the 9th May with a season about… four letter words! That's right: some of your favourite category A swears - and some not swears. If you have some favourite four letter words you want me to investigate, let me know.

There will be some behind the scenes podfeed shenanigans happening before then.So if you don't see more Allusionist appearing in your pod feed by 10th of May, then you're going to have to search for it in your podcast app and resubscribe because your subscription will have been kicked off by the behind the scenes shenanigans. And always the show is up to date at theallusionist.org.

Other news: live Allusionist shows are coming to Toronto on the 1st of June and Montréal on the 9th of June. We will be performing our very entertaining live show Souvenirs, which features some ancient swearing history that messes up our technology nearly a thousand years later, as well as the incredible story of a friendship torn asunder by a typeface. Plus, I'll be selling my hand-drawn tea towels, and anyone who comes along gets a free bookmark illustrated by me also.

Get your tickets now at theallusionist.org/events and I'll be back in your ears on May the 9th. Farewell! - HZ