The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
CHARLOTTE RUNCIE
RADIO CRITIC
Disappointingly, truly imaginative seasonal radio for the Easter weekend is scant this year, with the exception of Jeremy Irons reading The Psalms (Saturday, Radio 4, 3.30pm; Easter Sunday and Easter Monday, Radio 4, 4.30pm). Easter Sunday Worship (Easter Sunday, Radio 4, 8.10am) comes live from Southwell Minster, plus there are a number of repeats and themed editions of regular programmes, but radio isn’t exactly awash with chicks and chocolate eggs, let alone anything more seriously contemplative.
But there is at least some glorious musical history, with Dusty Springfield in the spotlight in Definitively Dusty (Easter Sunday, Radio 2, 9.00pm). Part two of this fine profile explores how the young woman named Mary O’Brien “became” Dusty Springfield, the parties she threw in the Sixties, how she came out as bisexual in 1970 and then her permanent move to the United States. Archive recordings, interviews with Springfield herself and with those close to her tell the story.
Why does it feel luxurious to blend flavours and scents together? Philosopher Barry Smith has somehow managed to convince the BBC to let him spend a week sampling whisky, tea, Champagne and perfume for The Art and Science of Blending (Easter Monday to Friday, Radio 4, 1.45pm). He begins by enjoying whisky blended in Scotland, and at the end of the week he speaks to three blending experts about what he’s learnt along the way.
The subject of race in the world of fashion has a turbulent past, as is explored sensitively by Kenya Hunt, the deputy editor of Elle Magazine UK, in The Art of Now (Tuesday, Radio 4, 11.30am). Hunt speaks to black fashion designers who have overcome a range of challenges to reach the top, and looks at issues including the scarcity of black designers on runways and racist imagery appearing in editorial pages from big design houses.
In the engaging New Ways of Seeing (Wednesday, Radio 4, 9.00am), the artist and writer James Bridle continues to update John Berger’s influential 1972 book and TV series, Ways of Seeing, for the internet age. In the second episode, Bridle considers how digitisation has created an online world in which images can be manipulated to spread fake news and foster conspiracy theories.
Folk singer and song collector Sam Lee presents The Song Hunters (Thursday,
Radio 4, 11.30am), which is all about how folk songs that have been sung for many generations had to be fiercely protected to ensure their survival into the modern age. He celebrates the early collectors of folk songs who recognised the need to record them before the spread of pop music extinguished them from our cultural memory, and explores the work of composers who collected folk songs to use as inspiration for their own new compositions.
As you know, when it comes to culture journalism I’m firmly biased in favour of radio. But pretty much every journalist has been accused of bias at one time or another, whether they’re writing for a publication known to lean a particular way or whether they’re a broadcaster supposedly bound to present unbiased reporting. In an increasingly polarised political atmosphere, though, even remaining in the middle can look like bias, as Jonathan Coffey discovers in Call Yourself an Impartial Journalist? (Friday, Radio 4, 11.00am). In this programme, he considers the pitfalls of apparent impartiality. FM 97.6-99.8MHz FM 88-90.2MHz FM 90.2-92.4MHz