Review Of The Podcast 'The Fine Cotton Affair'

Peter Hoysted 's and Richard Fidler 's radio interview regarding the 'Fine Cotton Affair '

How does the podcast 'The Fine Cotton Affair ' use features of the genre to entertain the audience and inform them of new ideas?

On Monday 4 May 2015, ABC local radio host of Conversations, Richard Fidler, in an interview with horse racing enthusiast, independent journalist and writer for The Australian, Peter Hoysted, unravelled the truth behind the 1984 Fine Cotton fiasco that occurred at Eagle Farm, Brisbane. Conversations is a broadcast on ABC Local Radio and entails a diver range of stories, "Some strange, some sombre, some funny; some mind-bending and many, unforgettable."

Twenty years on from the original event, a forty eight minute

The radio interview is a transactional text that comprised of conversation between two people, Hoysted and Fidler, following a particular theme. The interview aimed to reveal relevant information from Fidler 's perspective regarding his thoughts, feelings and actions through the utilisation of stylistic features. Presented as a radio interview and consistent with the chronological order of events, Hoysted integrated background information before portraying personal perspectives with contrasting language, "likable rogue... handsome devil". This engages the audience and elicits a point of view that emphasises the superficiality of the criminals ' plans, thus educating the audience. The discussion proceeds with the speakers ' connection to the subject, typical of a radio interview. In this case however, the interviewer has a friendship with the interviewee, allowing their familiarity to flourish over the discourse and so, highlighting the humour present in the passage to enlighten its tone, "played on a kazoo". Following the text type, a simile was used to indicate and ridicule the inadequacy of the plans to mimic Fine Cotton when using another horse, Bold Personality, "It looked like a cat to a dog. I mean it was completely dissimilar." The humorous connotation of this statement assisted in conveying the ideas and beliefs of the interviewee to the listener in an interesting and entertaining manner. Another stylistic feature common in radio interviews includes a rhetorical question, "Was it like an equine traffic light, was it?" where Hoysted indicates the absurdity and unorthodox approach to this