Nic Grundy’s death was a godsend for The Archers
Ihave always loved listening to the radio – or at least, I thought I was listening to the radio. Now, having become a professional radio critic, I realise that I was barely listening at all. I was buttering toast, hunting for children’s shoes, slotting sticky fingers into tiny gloves, pointing angrily at the shoes – The Shoes! Put on the Shoes! – and wrestling scooters out from under the stairs, all the while imagining myself to be paying close attention to Melvyn Bragg’s excogitations on mid-14century Islamic poetry.
This is how most of us listen to the radio, as the background burble to the rest of our lives. Really absorbing it – sitting down with no distractions, concentrating on a programme all the way through – is such an unnatural experience that I have had to take up needle felting, just to create the sensation of activity.
After 10 days of this new regime, I have felted a mouse, a monkey and a brand new superhero called Mr Fatty – and become immeasurably better informed about everything. For instance, I now know what blockchain is. I mean, up to a point.
“It is complicated,” sympathised one of the experts on
(World Service, Sunday). “A lot of people, their eyes cross and they’d rather just not think about it.” Think about it we must though, for blockchain is set to transform everything from how we bank to the way we eat.
Invented for the cryptocurrency bitcoin, blockchain is basically a data storage system. Instead of putting the information into one giant storage unit – the traditional internet model – it creates a continuously growing chain of small units (or blocks), each one able to communicate with the next.
That, as they say, is the science bit. And here’s the foodie bit: blockchain technology may soon make it possible for us, the consumer, to trace exactly what went into our food, and where, and at what cost. Merely wave your smartphone over that late-night garage snack and you will be able to retrace its evolution, block by block, from scotch egg all the way back to piglet.
The Dutch coffee company Moyee is already creating software that will enable the customer to see exactly which Ethiopian farmer grew the beans that made their brew, and how much they got paid for it. You will even be able to tip the farmer directly, to show your appreciation.
Part of the World Service’s excellent Food Chain series, which tells the scientific, economic and cultural stories behind the food we eat, this show made a potentially dry subject into something digestible and delicious. It made me feel – a testament to the producer’s art – that I understood both the technology and its enormous implications.
Global capitalism relies to some extent on consumer blindness. Would you buy that cheap handbag if you could see a photograph of the sad-eyed child who stitched it? Will companies feel able to justify big shareholder profits to a public that knows exactly how much they pay the little guy? Moyee’s founder, Guido van Staveren van Dijk, told the programme he foresees a new model of “social capitalism”, its ethics shaped by transparency. “Of course all this should be done for profit,” he conceded, “but the profits should be shared equally.”
That sounds a lot like plain old socialism to me – and I should know, having become an overnight expert on the matter. Anne Mcelvoy’s ongoing Radio 4 series, British Socialism: the
Grand Tour, is a timely education in the politics of the Left.
Starting with the utopian mill owner Robert Owen, who built the world’s first nursery for his workers’ children, and progressing through the Chartists, the birth of the Labour party and the long tradition of the well-heeled revolutionary, Mcelvoy lays bare the bones of British socialism, the better for us to understand its current shape. Leavened with entertaining anecdotes and blasts of nostalgic brass band music, this is just the sort of radio you should sit down for – both illuminating and hugely enjoyable.
Nic Grundy’s sudden death from sepsis in (Radio 4, Friday) is said to have generated “mass grief ” among the show’s fans. Oh dear. In me, it generated an unwholesome burst of joy. What a relief, I thought, to be shot of that tiresome do-gooder! I never could abide her sugary, sibilant voice. This is not a criticism of the actor, Becky Wright, who played Nic just as she was written: with all the depth and charisma of a damp J-cloth.
Dying young was the only decent storyline she was given, in 11 years on the show. Even then, knowing how essentially boring Nic was, the writers felt the need to pep up her demise by throwing in a mystery: what was the deathbed confession she made to ancient Joe Grundy? I’ll stay tuned on your behalf, while you get on with living.