Today’s radio

THE NOW SHOW

6.30PM, RADIO 4 HHHH Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis return with a new series of much-needed topical satire. Joining the hosts for this first episode of seven are comedians Ivo Graham and Sophie Duker, with actress Karen Bartke.

FRIDAY NIGHT IS MUSIC NIGHT

8PM, RADIO 2 HHHH

Clang, clang, clang goes the trolley, while Lady Luck keeps the party polite. Louise Dearman and Graham Bickley sing some of Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra’s greatest hits.

The show comes from the Chichester Festival Theatre, with Richard Balcombe conducting the legendary BBC Concert Orchestra, and the song list includes On Leonard Bernstein (8pm, Classic) The Atcheson, Topeka And The Santa Fe, A Couple Of Swells,

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and My Heart Stood Still.

THE FULL WORKS CONCERT

8PM, CLASSIC FM HHHH For the first Christmas after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Leonard Bernstein gathered a choir from East and West Germany, plus musicians from across the world, for a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Crowds lined the streets in the pouring rain to hear the concert, then joined together to sing Ode To Joy. Classic FM marks this uplifting moment with a recording of that very concert, given in 1989, a year before Bernstein’s death.

APOCALYPSE NIGH

9PM, RADIO 4 HHH

Each generation has thought that the end of the world was nigh – and fire, flood, the Four Horsemen or other horrors would be unleashed. Robin Ince plays archive recordings by the physicist Richard Feynman, philosopher Noam Chomsky and other Doomsday Clock-watchers, and looks for practical advice in the event of a global catastrophe. SJ