PODCASTS — LISTEN AT YOUR LEISURE

The Vanity Fair Diaries www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09h7mn7 First she wrote it, now she reads it: Tina Brown’s account of her time as editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair magazine, from 1983 to 1992, was named one of the best books of the year by Time and

People magazines, and is just as good to listen to here, as read. The glitz, glamour and politicking of magazine editing are all captured, complete with all the froth, charm, effrontery, name-dropping and sheer gleeful fun you would expect.

Tina Brown was barely out of her 20s when she arrived in New York City to save Conde Nast’s troubled flagship Vanity Fair. Somehow, she survived the intriguing, the back-stabbing, the rank

schadenfreude by the simplest means possible — success. This has all the inside stories you could wish for: the Reagan kiss, the disintegration of Princess Diana’s marriage from someone with a pretty-close-to-ringside seat, alongside other, more personal reminisces of Brown’s marriage, the premature birth of her son, and how she found her feet in such a notoriously demanding city. Crimetown www.gimletmedia.com/crimetown This is a very worthy accompaniment to the many true-crime podcasts, such as Serial and S-Town, that have gripped us over the last couple of years. Created by film producer, screenwriter and cinematographer Marc Smerling — nominated for an Oscar for the excellent, if creepy, Capturing the Friedmans in 2003 — each season of Crimetown will focus on the culture of crime in a different American city.

Season One brings us to Providence, Rhode Island, where “organised crime and corruption infected every aspect of public life.”

So gripping, it really should be a drama. But it’s not.