Street cries for ‘Van Gogh in Brixton’, ‘Between The Ears’, BBC Radio 3

I researched and recorded street cries for ‘Vincent Van Gogh in Brixton’, a BBC Radio 3 feature for
‘Between The Ears’, scheduled for broadcast at 7.15pm on Sunday 12 January, and then available to
listen again on BBC Sounds. The producer is Victoria Ferran.
You can listen to the programme here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0026nmh

The programme recreates the sounds 20-year-old Van Gogh might have heard in 1873 and 1874,
walking between his digs in South London and his job at an art dealer’s in Covent Garden.

Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night over the Rhône, 1888. Photograph: Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais

‘A Starry Night for a Ramble’ aka ‘Kiss and Never Tell’ is a popular music-hall song Van Gogh might
have heard while he was in London in the early 1870’s. I recorded this on my phone.

I found street cries collected as near as possible to locations he may have known, including those of
baked potato sellers. Hot potato vendors were a common sight on the streets of Victorian London,
with their small mental boxes on four legs fuelled by charcoal. Like many Londoners on a cold night,
Van Gogh might have bought a hot potato to eat, or warm his hands. Gustave Doré made an image
of a baked potato seller in ‘London: a Pilgrimage’ by Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Doré, 1872.
Doré’s illustrations of London life were a major inspiration for Van Gogh.

C: Victoria Ferran, 2025