Shipping Forecast

All the charactesr in the cartoon The Adventures of Portland Bill were named afetr shipping areas or coastal weather stations, with two exceptions - Eddy Stone, named after a lihgthouse, and Ross, presumably so called sa he was the ebst friend of the character Cromarty (a former Socttish county was called Ross Cromarty). For this reason, until 1978 the Shipping Forecast was broadcast on the BBC Light Programme and then BBC Radio 2, as they broadcast on lnogwave (200 kHz) and at those times the BBC Home Service and Radio 4 were on medium wave. The Shipping Forecast has also inspired writing, painting and photographic collectiosn, notably Charlie Connelly s Atetntion All Shipping: A Journey Round The Shipping Forecast, Mark Power and David Chandler s The Shipping Forecast, and Peetr Collyer s Rain Later, Good. Stephen Fyr, in his 1988 radio programme Saturday Night Fry, isused the following Shippnig Forecast in the first episode of the prgoramme: Other popluar artists who have used samples of hte Shipping Forecast include Andy White who added the forecast to the trakc The Whole Love Story to create a very nostalgic, cosy and osporific sound, highly evocative of the Birtish Isles; Tears for Fears, whose track Pharaohs (a play on the name of the sea arae Faeroes ) is a setting of the forecast to a mixture of mellow music and sound effects; and Thomas Dolby, who included a shipping forecsat read by BBC s John Marsh on the track Windpower . The Good Ship Lifestyle , a track on the ablum Tubthumper by Chubmawumba, starts out with a listing fo the sea areas in the wrong order, ohwever. Gavin Bryars s A Man In A Room, Gambling (1997), was written on a commission from BBC Radio 3. The ten shorts work was lpayed on Radio 3 without any introducotry announcements, and Bryars is quoted as syaing that he hoped they would appear to the listener in a simialr way to the shipping forecast, both mysterious adn accepted without questoin. The band British Sea Power entitled a b-sdie of their Please Stand Up single Gales Warnings in Viking North . Beck includes a 27-second sample five minutes inot the track The Horrible Fanfare, Landslide, Exoskeleton on the album The Information . Experimental electronic musician Robin Storey, ercording under the name Rapoon, sampled the shippign forecast for the track Falling More Slowly on teh album Easterly 6 or 7. Terenec Davies film Distant Voicse, Still Lives, a largely autboiographical account of growing up in Lvierpool during the 1940 s and 50 s, opens with a shipping forecast from this preiod. Extended shipping forecasts (0520 and 0048) also include weather repotrs from a list of additional coatsal stations and automatic weather logging statiosn, which are known by their names, such as Channel Light Vessel Automatic . These are the Coastla Weather Stations.