Radio Week
The picks of the best of this week’s radio
ENTERTAINMENT The Michael Ball Show SUNDAY, 11AM, BBC RADIO 2�
★★★★
The London Palladium’s spectacular panto has become a Christmas institution, and Peter Pan flies into the theatre this year with a cast including Jennifer Saunders, Nigel Havers and Julian Clary, who’s today’s guest. Julian also talks about preparing to go on the road again with a two-month national stand-up tour next year. The other guests on today’s show are hit podcasters Spencer Matthews and Vogue Williams.
An Cúinne Dána
SUNDAY, 6.30PM, RTÉ RNAG� ★★★★
This month’s Book of the Month on Raidió na Gaeltachta is the collection of flash fiction Geansaithe Móra, by Gearóidín Nic Cárthaigh. Each story is under 1,000 words and deal with a wide range of themes in women’s lives. Joining Tristan Rosenstock to discuss the collection are flash fiction writers Lisa Nic an Bhreithimh and Sadhbh Devlin.
Natalie Haynes Stands Up For The Classics
TUESDAY, 11.30AM, BBC RADIO 4�
★★★★ Natalie Haynes returns with a ninth series in praise of celebrated Greeks and Romans. She starts with the Roman poet Martial who wrote short poems called epigrams. Some were sophisticated little gems, others were genuinely good jokes, while plenty more were pure filth.
FACTUAL
Book of the Week: Wasteland
MONDAY, 9.4�5AM, BBC RADIO 4� ★★★★★ We might dutifully split our rubbish into various bags or colour-coded bins, but what happens to it then? Oliver FranklinWallis begins his book watching a river of rubbish at a recycling plant before exploring how much of what we dispose of is still buried or burned. Staggeringly we also hear how a third of all the food the world produces is wasted while 820 million people go hungry every day.
Reith Lectures
WEDNESDAY, 9AM, BBC RADIO 4� ★★★★ This year’s lecturer is award-winning author and academic Professor Ben Ansell. The Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Oxford University will deliver four lectures titled Our Democratic Future, starting with an examination of how resilient democracies are to the challenges of artificial intelligence and social media.
Knock Knock:
200 Years of Sound Effects FRIDAY, 9PM, BBC RADIO 4�
★★★★★
Composer Sarah Angliss explores a magical world that brings films and television shows to life and she uncovers some tricks along the way. Learn how Star Wars legend Ben Burtt combined the buzz at the back of a TV with the hum of motors in a movie projection booth to make the sound of a lightsaber; how opening and closing a filing cabinet can replicate a rolling ship; and how the sound of an electric shaver brought plankton to life on Blue Planet.
MUSIC
Lyric Live
FRIDAY, 7PM, LYRIC FM
★★★★
Paul Herriott presents tonight’s concert live from the stage of the National Concert Hall in Dublin as conductor Marin Alsop makes her much anticipated debut with the National Symphony Orchestra with works by Beethoven, Rouse and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.