I noticed that BBC Radio 4 Extra (their archive radio station) broadcast
this 2007 episode of Great Lives this morning, which I've just listened to on the Sounds app, in which travel writer and photographer Nick Danziger chooses Tintin as the subject. As the presenter Matthew Parris points out, it's highly unusual for a fictional character rather than their real life author to be the subject in this long running programme format, but (perhaps because he's a Tintin fan himself) he allows it. It's a nice listen, I thought, with Michael Farr joining the discussion as the guest expert (genially disagreeing with Matthew Parris's humorously tongue-in-cheek pet theory that Tintin is gay!) and with a brief extract of Hergé himself being interviewed in English by the BBC. While none of the info or lightly covered controversies will be new to most Tintin fans these days, it's great to hear Nick Danziger's enthusiasm for Tintin's positive influence on his own career, and to hear the clear enjoyment the three of them have had for reading the books since childhood.
