[Pervinca Took]

Hi Phil! I think I did try to download the mp3 version on one of the chapters, but I'm a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to that sort of thing. Either my computer wouldn't do it or I was having too many problems with YouTube (it keeps playing really annoying, loud adverts again and again when I'm trying to listen to or watch something ... and I have to scroll down, find them and turn them off ... and later they start up again ... and I can't always even find them on the page and stop them). I don't know if it's just YouTube or also my computer, because it's not only in YouTube that annoying pop-ups/adverts/you-must-download-this-update-type-things are happening.

Absolutely, my pet peeves are completely subjective. I totally understand your wanting to retain songs from the film (was the film the first dramatisation you saw/heard?) I think my first "The Road Goes Ever On And On" was sung by John Le Mesurier in the BBC radio version, and there was an achingly beautiful bit in I think the next chapter when the same tune was heard on a violin while Ian Holm's Frodo recited the verse aloud as he, Sam and Pippin were walking (on the way to Crickhollow). (Holm's performance of Frodo is incredibly, heart-stoppingly powerful. If you think his Bilbo is good, you *have* to hear it!)

I think there might be clips of just the songs from the BBC radio version somewhere. I'll see if I can find this one. Only for interest, though. I completely understand your liking of the film version.

It was interesting that Holm's Bilbo was slightly rustic in his accent, especially since I was so used to his very RP-accented Frodo. I thought a little of "The Borrowers" when he was doing his Party Speech, because he played Pod Clock in a TV series of that book (I only saw a little of it, though).