It’s Like Licking

Four Ice Creams At Once

Ever since last May when ZCO, the Tonga Broadcasting Commission’s station, began a request session of popular songs called “The South Pacific Hour” on Monday evenings, the station has been bombarded with re quests not only from Tonga, but from the United States, Aus tralia, New Zealand, Samoa, Niue and Fiji.

So many requests have come in, in fact, that the station has appealed to listeners several times to hold their requests until the hundreds already on hand have been played.

Much of the success of the programme, according to a Nukualofa correspondent, is due to the programme’s special announcer, the Hon. Ve’ehala, a young, NZ-educated noble.

“He speaks four languages fluently — English, Samoan, Fijian and fongan,” the correspondent says, ‘‘and he switches from language to language so smoothly while announcing that it is as if he is licking four cones of ice cream at the same time.”

The correspondent adds that the station’s chief announcer, Uliti Palu, whose “romantic voice” is heard on ZCO every day, has had so many marriage proposals locally and from over seas that he is “thinking of establishing a harem”.