Martin Clarke was a controversial choice when he took over as head of RTHK Radio Three in 1995, not least because his qualifications for the job amounted to a moderately successful stint as an actor in Britain (he can be spotted in an early episode of Blackadder ), and a long run presenting on RTHK Radio Three.
To his great credit, Clarke has always been conscious of his lack of journalistic training, and despite the pressures of his new job, looked around for a way to train himself while working. 'I felt if I could do a course, I would be in a better place to do my job.' He succeeded last year and began a distance learning MA in Mass Communication. There is nothing like the fervour of a late convert. His enthusiasm for the subject has resulted in an absorbing, highly original and ambitious new series called Without Fear or Favour (Radio Three, 6.30pm) in which he has put much of his new-found knowledge into practice.
As head of Radio Three, he is more usually employed organising programme makers, rather than making programmes himself, and he had been looking for a subject for a documentary to celebrate RTHK's 70th anniversary.
'When it came to deciding who was the best person to do this series, I looked around, and thought, well, it's me.' Using montage (lots of clips, no presenter) he created what he calls 'an audio tapestry' of comments, critiques, descriptions, prose, poetry and music.
It started last week with the examples of the trials of Socrates and Galileo, used quotes from John Stuart Mill and introduced Diderot's contribution to mass communication. It is a daring approach, in which contributors are only identified in the credits, so each remark stands or falls simply on its merits.
'It wasn't important who people are,' Clarke explains 'but what they were saying.' The contributors are a fairly stellar list of local media industry bigwigs, academics, politicians, cultural commentators, advertising executives, and government spokesmen, including Christine Loh, Emily Lau, Selina Chow, Allen Lee and Carol Lai from the Journalist Association, Professor CC Lee, and Chung King-fai.
