CHARLOTTE RUNCIE

2020-08-22 -

RADIO CRITIC

Celebrations and commemorations of the past run through this week’s radio.

In 50 Not Out (Saturday, Radio 2, 9.00pm), Radio 2 celebrates Bob Harris’s contribution to radio over 50 years since his first BBC broadcast on Radio 1. Greg James, who shares his twin passions for radio and cricket, joins Harris to talk about his life and early influences, his famous whispering voice and his dedication to the music of the future.

Much talk about revitalising the economy has centred around reopening restaurants and cinemas and restarting live events, but what has the religious response been? Heart and Soul (Sunday, BBC World Service, 11.30am), presented by Robert Beckford, explores what it means for Christians to ask God to “keep them safe”, and how some ministers, believing God to be protecting them, have continued to meet and contracted the virus.

The Alice B Toklas Cookbook (Monday to Fridy, Radio 4, 10.45am) is a new drama by Sarah Woods. Deborah Findlay plays Alice B Toklas, writer of the bestselling cookbook. Toklas muses on the food grown, purchased, cooked and served for her partner, Gertrude Stein, and their eminent guests as they travel around France and the USA, meeting Picasso and Hemingway along the way. Food comes to embody a cultural philosophy, with Toklas comparing the slow emergence of an onion soup to the evolution of great art.

In The Lenny Henry Show (Tuesday, Radio 4FM, 6.30pm), Sir Lenny Henry brings some of his classic comic characters back for a new sketch series, alongside some new creations too. Expect to hear from the catastropheprone pirate radio DJ Delbert Wilkins and the ageing nostalgic Deakus, as well as Gideon de Witt, a politician who cannot meaningfully answer any question.

During the eerie quiet of the early lockdown, birdsong suddenly seemed louder than ever. Wildlife sound recordist Geoff Sample has spent the last few months looking back at five years of recording the sounds around his Northumbrian home. So all this week during The Essay:

A Birdsong Garden (Monday to Friday, Radio 3, 10.45pm), he gives an audio glimpse of his garden throughout the seasons, including blackbirds, tawny owls and swallows.

One of the biggest debates of the summer has been over cultural monuments and what should be done about the ones that symbolise now unwanted values. The statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol was pulled down in June, and there are plans to display it elsewhere, complete with its new red daubs of protesters’ paint. In The Empty Cases (Thursday, Radio 4, 11.30am), Gary Younge speaks to the curators reviewing what’s on display in British museums and thinking afresh about how we remember Britain’s past.

To mark the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and to acknowledge this summer’s Black Lives Matter movement, on Friday Radio 2 is celebrating black artists’ contributions to music and culture with I Have a Dream Day (Friday, Radio 2, all day), playing 24 hours of music by black musicians from the 1950s onwards. The event begins on Thursday evening with Trevor Nelson and is followed by programmes featuring Martha Reeves, Toni Braxton and Nile Rodgers.

Read The Week in Radio by Charlotte Runcie every Wednesday in

The Daily Telegraph

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