Charlie was of course well aware that music was my primary interest. It was thanks to his help, for instance, that on one of my visits to London I was received by some of the leading figures of the folk music revival in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. I recorded a long interview with Ewan MacColl and his wife Peggy Seeger (and I heard them perform at a club). I also met A. L. Lloyd and Tom Paley. They all gave me records to take home and, as a natural sequel to the program on the Yankee Whaling Songs, I introduced those singers to Hungarian listeners. Charlie and I even collaborated on the script of a dialogue in Hungarian, a sort of mock interview in which he talked about his favorite Scottish folk songs. It was broadcast in due course: probably the first and last radio program in Hungarian by a Scots journalist.

Charlie also let me meet and interview classical artists who guest-performed in Budapest. The conversations were broadcast in English (and even émigré Hungarians, such as Andor Foldes, István Kertész, or Antal Doráti humored me, only Géza Anda could not be bothered) and soon enough I approached the home service in an effort to sell them my loot.

That is how my “career” on Hungarian Radio took off. Soon enough, I was on the air once a week, on Saturday afternoons, as part of a regular feature that included concert reviews and reports.