each episode of the last paul temple serial on bbc7 was preceded by a few minutes of an interview with the radio actor peter coke, who played paul temple for fifteen years. he talked about working with marjorie westbury (steve temple), and how people would write and insist the two must be married, how else could they sound so extraordinarily like husband and wife? they don't actually quarrel, of course no, but they do disagree beautifully. it's all in the voice you know, intimacy, affection, habitude, slight exasperation, teasing, challenge, marital diplomacy. it's powerful - radio - the way it creates illusion - it does transport one to another world. when i first saw a picture of coke and westbury recording the show i was taken aback. naturally i didn't expect westbury to be the glamorous beauty her radio character was (mikaela of bbc7 said she always thought steve must look like grace kelly) - but i was naive enough to expect her to be - moderately plain - if not reasonably pretty - and it was very difficult for me to reconcile such an attractive voice with the short, plain woman who was, in peter coke's own words, "tubby," and less than plain. peter coke told of a woman who wrote to marjorie westbury saying she had fallen love with her voice and was going to leave her everything she's got. majorie westbury wrote back and said for her not to be absurd. "i'm not what i sound.. the woman insisted, so marjorie motored down to cornwall or wherever it was to meet the woman. it didn't change her mind: two weeks later the woman commited suicide leaving all she had to marjorie westbury. it's a dreadful story, but you half expect the story to go that when she had seen westbury for herself her illusion was shattered and she stayed alive. i suppose she did say, i've fallen in love with your voice. we are a television generation. steve temple is willowy, beautiful, capable, game, so you cast a beautiful woman in her role. if the voice wasn't right, well the voice could be dubbed over. the way early sbc dramas were always dubbed, that it was a shock in the early 90s when they broadcast undubbed serials and zoe tay's voice, for instance, was harsh and disagreeable and unreconciliable with her face. and remember wo hu cang long and the horrible mishmash of accents - and how you wished the damn thing was dubbed over? but people looked the part. singing in the rain, and all that. in radio it is the reverse of that. we all think paul temple and steve look like john bentley and dinah sheridan. and in my unwillingness to accept that the beauty of voice and person need not be united i realised that i had myself been seduced, and was abashed - one ought to know better - i ought to know better - not only not to judge by a voice - but also, not to mind. but i did.