Iain Duncan Smith was all at sea in his Radio 2 debut
Why do some radio shows last? Desert Island Discs is 75 this year, Test Match Special is 60, the Daily Service is nearly 90, The Archers is 67. They’ve all changed over the years but each still holds a place in the schedules and the hearts of listeners. They even grow new fans. I’m Sorry, I Haven’t a Clue, now 45 years old, has become positively chic.
It returned to Radio 4 on Monday evening. For a show that was invented (so legend has it) by Graeme Garden on the back of a cigarette packet, has seen changes in chairmen and panelists (Tim Brooke-taylor is the last of the originals), runs on a wafer-thin budget but sells enough tickets to fill the London Palladium, it’s a marvel. Especially when you consider its essential ingredients are word play, paradox and nonsense. I went off it for a while (excessive rudery) but I’m back now, laughing immoderately.
Woman’s Hour (born 1946) is having a “takeover” week, with different guest editors (and thus different attitudes and agendas) every day. On Monday it was children’s author and illustrator Shirley Hughes, talking to Jane Garvey about learning to look and write, why libraries matter and what inspires her books. Her memories were vivid, of being at Liverpool School of Art just after the war, learning to make clothes when every fabric (except for billiard table baize and parachute silk) was still rationed. There’s a film of her with her hats on the website. Why bother? The words said more.
Meanwhile, on Radio 2, Iain Duncan Smith is this week’s host of The
Jeremy Vine Show. My tepid reaction to his first day is on the Telegraph website, and he may well improve, but he’s up against several inbuilt disadvantages. He is a more regular public opinionator than Ed Miliband, last week’s visiting presenter.
It’s much harder, therefore, for him to abstain from passing judgment on such matters as Brexit. There’s no shortage of big news to discuss at the moment and, clearly, it’s a challenge for him not to pile in. He’s also all at sea with the music which, given the age difference between him (born 1954) and Ed Miliband (born 1969), is understandable but unfortunate. A better booking would have been Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, born 1978.
Only Artists (Radio 4, Wednesdays) entered its second series last week. I hope it never staggers through to a third. The idea is that two artists talk to each other, no interviewer, just an exchange of ideas, memories, experiences. Last week it was artist and biographer Keggie Carew talking to singer/songwriter Richard Hawley in his studio in Sheffield. Dull? Parodically so. Indulgent? Horrendously. As listeners said on last week’s Feedback, come back Midweek, all is forgiven.
Feedback (Radio 4, Friday, repeated Sunday) also had a sharp and timely conversation with Sue Lawley about chairing the Reith Lectures, something she’s done for 16 years now. These lectures used to be done as studio talks, then, as one of the changes James Boyle made when he was Radio 4’s controller, they became public occasions. Military historian John Keegan was the first, in 1998, to give his lectures from a podium; novelist Hilary Mantel is the latest. Her subject is the life that fiction can breath into history. She delivered her first lecture in Manchester, the second in London, yesterday’s third in Antwerp.
Why Antwerp? Because it was a 16th century powerhouse of commerce. But her subject was a Polish author of the Thirties who drifted across Europe, a woman possessed by a passion to make the world realise the significance of Robespierre’s role in the French Revolution. Mantel’s point was that this woman was consumed by her subject but failed in its advocacy because she didn’t accept art’s necessary disciplines. Why go to Antwerp to say this? I don’t know. I’m still trying to fathom it.
Radio 4’s new Book of the Week is Believe Me, an autobiography written and read by Eddie Izzard. He more than reads it, he speaks it, lives it, animated by vivid memory and twists of cruel fate – it’s an unexpected revelation. I salute his political convictions, his determination, the sharp, sly, obliquity of his comedy. I didn’t expect the bright force of memory he shows here. It’s stunning.
Good old radio, 90 years old, still talking to nine out of 10 of us every day, striking the mind, sparking arguments, only very occasionally impelling us to the off switch.