When pressed, Kate Turkington, the sensitive host of Radio 702’s Believe It Or Not, admits she does have some beliefs of her own, writes KAREN DAVIS
SUBTITLED The Way You Choose to Live Your Life, Kate Turkington’s radio show, Believe It Or Not, turned three last Sunday night. Its territory is a potential minefield of subjective intolerance, dealing, as it does, with everything from differing religious beliefs to social and ethical problems, the way we do or don’t deal with death and, as was the case last Sunday, to People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad). As a result, Turkington feels that “for the purposes of the programme, it’s important that I don’t have a particular faith”.
“If anything, I’d be a pantheist,” she says, “finding divinity in mountains, streams, skies and stars.
“One of the most spiritual experiences of my life was climbing Ayers Rock in Australia. I was with two fellows, one who had the DTs and the other with bronchitis, so I was so busy looking after them and I didn’t have the time to get scared of the height. We stood on a rock nearly a mile high in the Australian desert and I had this very spiritual experience, feeling the warmth of the rock, its rootedness in the earth. I didn’t expect that. I’m not saying I believe in spirits in trees, but there is a divinity in everything.”
Later, she admits to a fascination for Eastern religions and that she wants to find out more about Buddhism. She tells of the couple who went to the Bronkhorstspruit temple for a weekend after listening to her show and came back transformed.
“There’re wonderful, humbling things about this show. Sometimes you can make a difference even though you’re just a dot in everything.” Of the birthday broadcast she says: “It was so super. People phoned in and said the programme had changed their lives. I’ve learned so much as well. What I know about Islam could’ve been printed on a postage stamp before the programme. Now I know so much more. I’ve been very humbled by it.”
Now 61, Turkington retired from her position as director of Wits TV a year or two ago and has found herself busier than ever since then. She also edits Flamingo and Ilanga for Air Namibia and Sunair respectively, does TV training for M-Net and Foreign Affairs diplomats on the dos and don’ts of TV and is books editor for five magazines.
When the programme started “it was the first of its kind in South Africa; we think the world”. It was born when 702 MD Mike Mills called Turkington in and told her the idea. “I said: `You’re going to have somebody very special to run that.’ He said: `Actually, we’re thinking of you’ and I burst out laughing, saying: `You’ve got to be joking.’ But he said he wanted an open, non-committed person to run it.
“And I must say, in a very long broadcasting career of some 30 years I have never enjoyed a programme as much … Nobody thought the programme would grow and it’s just grown and grown. I like to think it’s different and goes deeper than most. We’ve got quality callers, because the people who phone must have thought deeply about their ideas. And I can’t trample on anyone’s ideas, I must listen and respect what they have to say.”
She has been called a child of the devil, she says, by a right-wing born-again Christian, but in the next breath adds she has never had any abuse on the programme. “People are very fair with me. If I give them respect, then I get respect back.”
Turkington first started in broadcasting on the BBC in the UK. Having spent some years in Nigeria as chief examiner for O Levels English, she was asked on to a show to discuss a coup there — and she had some film footage of the country. They liked her so much she was invited back, both in radio world service and on TV magazine programmes.
“In those days there were hardly any autocues and you really weren’t regarded as professional if you relied on them. I remember I had to go six minutes live straight to camera, so I wrote out all my book reviews and memorised them. Needless to say, halfway through my mind went totally blank, and I did what I later learned is the correct thing. I admitted I’d forgotten and looked down at my notes. I teach that now — don’t cover up, confess and correct yourself and the world will forgive you.”
We don’t, she says, get enough live television here. “Chat shows are edited out of sight and I object to editorial decisions being made on my behalf. I asked a producer why she had made 247 cuts once and she said it was because the people were boring. But people must then be seen to be boring. We need more honesty, more live work.”
She had her own BBC show Late With Kate, “So late it was after the epilogue, but it taught me a lot, and then I got Kate At Eight, also a live chat show, although this time I had a script — four lines for 50 minutes!”
Speaking with her, you’d swear she was born with the ability to think on her feet — after all, at 18 she was already chairing a meeting of over 1 000 furious students ready to pass a vote of no- confidence in their SRC president.
Clearly it’s that ability, combined with sensitivity and respect, that makes for a fascinating show — whether you believe or not.