BBC Radio 7, 26 February 2010
Lady Edith (Mary Wimbush) has spent her entire life as a diplomat's wife, trailing after her
husband Sir Wilfred (John Moffatt) on a series of increasingly unimportant postings. She embarked on yet another trip
to the island of St. David's - a bohemian isle of little significance to Britain's political future, but which nonetheless
encouraged unrestrained sexual licence. While on voyage, Lady Edith indulged in a series of Shirley Valentine-esque
fantasies of escape, in which her husband passed away and was stored in the ship's icebox, and she had a series of casual
relationships with the captain and crew, including First Officer Delgado (Keith Drinkel), as well as with another one of the
passengers, the oh-so-British Spofforth (Bernard Hepton). Lady Edith's language became increasingly coarse, with plenty of
references to tits, bums and beds.
Eventually the fantasy had to come to an end, as we understood that Lady Edith had
actually been locked in her own room throughout the trip (perhaps to prevent her from behaving so badly). Sir Wilfred was
waiting for her at the quay, and her life of drudgery resumed.
As with most of Tinniswood's work, The Governor's Consort had its fair share
of grotesque imagery, with deliberately inflated alternating with humorous references to a person's "dingy-dongies." The production's
most entertaining aspect consisted of listening to Wimbush's modulated RP vowels wrapping themselves around words like "breasts"
and "bums." Swearing never sounded so genteel as this.
