Partying with the Weinsteins and other time-travelling tales
For many, Desert Island Discs hasn’t been the same since Kirsty Young quit in 2018. Of course, there are those who feel the same about Sue Lawley. Scour the country, and I’m sure you’ll find someone who thinks it’s all been downhill since Roy Plomley died in 1985.
While the current host, Lauren Laverne, is ultimately a muso, genuinely interested in the song choices, Young was at heart a shrink: you sensed the music was, to her, a distraction from the real business of unscrewing the top of her guest’s head and rootling about inside.
She has plenty of scope for rootling in her punningly titled programme
Young Again (Radio 4, Tuesday), back for a second series. Its hour-long, uninterrupted chats are a gift for anyone who misses her Discs days.
Her first guest was Peter Capaldi. “You’re the king of menace,” Young told him. She’s not wrong. The Thick of It star brings a flinty intensity to every role – including that of interviewee. Comments that look luvviesh in print (“I had a native kind of elemental creative thing inside me”) somehow sounded frank and honest in his voice.
The premise is that guests offer advice to their younger selves. What would he tell young Peter? “I wouldn’t give him advice,” Capaldi said, because the hotheaded young actor wouldn’t take it. “That ruins the show,” Young laughed. Well, perhaps. It’s not the most incisive format.
As they ticked off the bullet points of his career – Local Hero, early Oscar, mid-career slump, Doctor Who – his fans (I’m one) would have heard almost all these anecdotes before.
One moment felt surprising. Capaldi told a well-worn story about getting an invite from Bob Weinstein to an Oscars party, and cluelessly turning it down (as a Hollywood newcomer) because he’d already made plans to go out to a burger joint. But the show’s length gave space to go into more detail. “The thing with the burgers is just the chat-show version of the story,” Capaldi admitted. “Really, we ended up at the Weinsteins.”
But it never felt truly revelatory – unlike the staggering World
of Secrets: The Disciples (World Service, Wednesday), which is the fruit of a two-year investigation into TB Joshua, the Nigerian televangelist who died in 2021.
One of the wealthiest and powerful religious figures in Africa’s richest country, he had millions around the world hanging on his words; in 2015, he filled the largest stadium in Latin America with acolytes.
But in The Disciples – based on interviews with over 30 insiders – we heard how behind the 12-foot gates of his Lagos compound Joshua raped, tortured and brainwashed his followers, who were expected to call him “Daddy”.
Several were British; some said they tried going to the authorities here, but no one did anything. Why? “Because it was in Africa and nobody gave a damn.” (Approached for comment by the BBC, Joshua’s church, Scoan, said “None of the allegations were ever substantiated,” without addressing any individual allegation.)
Joshua claimed that he could cure Covid, cancer, Aids and homosexuality, building his fame by distributing VHS tapes of his “miracles”. One showed a man’s “cancerous” scrotum popping like an over-inflated balloon, seemingly through the power of prayer. (Today’s episode – at 11.32am and 11.32pm – explained how he faked those “healings”, piecing together the truth from dozens of accounts.)
Matt, whose Winchester church fell under Joshua’s spell, spoke with quiet fury about the lives cut short by his lies: one woman in his congregation who had cancer cancelled an operation after being “healed” by Joshua, and subsequently died from it.
Did Joshua really believe that he was God’s emissary, that the lies and abuse were all for a greater good? It doesn’t matter. He died with blood on his hands. Half-heartedly raised Catholic, I’ve often wanted to believe in a heaven. Until listening to this, I’d never had reason to hope there was a hell. One more recommendation:
Mediocre White Male (Radio 4, Wednesday) had a title that might have had some listeners switching off before it started. If so, it was their loss. Co-written by its star Will Close – Harry Kane in the National’s Dear England – it’s a monologue from a failed actor who entertains tourists as the ghost of a “tower of terror” attraction.
We’re invited to pity him, perhaps to sympathise, but as we’re drip-fed inconsistent details, we realise how unreliable a narrator he is. Cracking off-colour jokes to hide personal problems, he has an affable exterior that hides a self-deluding monster. After this clever, unsettling play, I’m intrigued to see what Close does next.