TODAY’S RADIO

New Year’s Day Concert From Vienna 2020

10.15AM, RADIO 3 ★★★★★ On the first day of each year, this bright and cheering concert comes from the Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna. Today, the Vienna Philharmonic, under the baton of Andris Nelsons, will be giving us a programme of waltzes, polkas and gallops by the Strauss family and other composers of that ilk. The whole thing goes along at a brisk pace, and ends with Josef Strauss’s Dynamiden waltz.

Jeeves – Live!

11.30AM, RADIO 4 ★★★★★ Fat Uncle George, one of the ‘recognised eyesores of London’ – whom tailors measure ‘just for the sake of the exercise’ –

Andrew Ridgeley (12 noon, R2) waddles into Bertie Wooster’s bachelor apartment, and admires himself in the mirror. The ghastly George, Bertie discovers, is in love and plans to marry. Martin Jarvis does all the voices, including that of the terrifying Aunt Agatha, for this lively reading of Indian Summer Of An Uncle, one of P.G. Wodehouse’s comic masterpieces.

Wham! The Music That Made Us

12 NOON, RADIO 2 ★★★★

This Christmas, Andrew Ridgeley returns to Radio 2 to reveal the musical influences of a young Georgios Panayiotou (before he was George Michael) and himself as they made the journey from Watford schoolboys to worldwide superstars in the pop band Wham!.

The Quietest New Year On Earth

4PM, RADIO 4 ★★★★ A profound silence falls on the island of Bali on New Year’s Day. The roads are empty of cars, no children play in the streets, no music is heard. The Balinese do this, as we hear in this report, as they believe that evil spirits, thinking the island deserted, will go away. Eerie. SJ