TODAY’S RADIO

DERMOT O’LEARY

8AM, RADIO 2 ★★★★

Robbie Williams’s 12th studio album, The Christmas Present, is full of surprises. There are the usual seasonal tracks, including Santa Baby, Winter Wonderland and Let It Snow!, performed with a certain Frank Sinatra swing, but there are also some eccentrically interesting new songs, including Bad Sharon and Happy Birthday Jesus Christ. Here, Robbie gives us a live, pared-down performance of some of the songs from the album.

GRAHAM NORTON

10AM, RADIO 2 ★★★★

Andrew Ridgeley is in the studio to talk about his years with George Michael and his new book, Wham! George & Me. The singer Jodie Prenger will be talking about her role as Helen, the runaway mother,

Andrew Ridgeley (10am, Radio 2) in A Taste Of Honey, while Lady Carnarvon, of the real-life Downton Abbey, shares some upmarket Christmas hostessing tips.

OPERA ON 3 FROM THE MET: THE QUEEN OF SPADES

6.30PM, RADIO 3 ★★★★ Tchaikovsky’s penultimate opera – from a story by Pushkin – was staged early this year by the Royal Opera, but this is a more traditional production of the work. Soprano Lise Davidsen makes her New

York Met debut in the role of Lisa.

THE PROBLEM OF LEISURE

8PM, RADIO 4 ★★★ Mechanisation, since the time of the Luddites, has brought wave after wave of redundancies over the decades. Now, the creation of artificial intelligence threatens the careers of those who may have presumed they were too skilled or too high up the jobs ladder to be replaced by a machine. The documentarymaker Phil Tinline presents archive recordings reflecting our long-running fears that automation will make us all redundant, robbing us of a sense of purpose. SUSAN JEFFREYS