ON THE RADIO

“GLASGOW was kind of exploding at that time. Almost everybody was in a band.”

Which early 1980s pop wannabe, speaking on Billy Sloan’s late-night Radio Scotland show last weekend, said this?

Edwyn Collins? Bobby Gillespie? Bobby Bluebell?

Wrong, wrong, wrong. It was Malcolm Tucker. Or rather his alter ego Peter Capaldi.

He may be best known for his roles in Doctor Who and The Thick of It, but at the age of 63 Capaldi has returned to making music, a throwback to his late 1970s/ early 1980s incarnation as a member of Glasgow band The Dreamboys.

Capaldi has just released an album entitled St Christopher, put together with the help of Dr Robert of Blow Monkeys fame.

Last Saturday night Sloan played tracks from this sexagenarian debut album as well as the odd Dreamboys single.

In between, Capaldi and Sloan reminisced about the early 1980s Glasgow scene that they both were part of and Capaldi revealed that winning an Oscar (for his short film Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life) was almost a sexual experience.

The tracks from the Saint Christopher album sound pretty good actually and make you wonder what would have happened if Capaldi had continued in music.

Instead, he met Bill Forsyth while they were both hanging around at Altered Images gigs and Forsyth offered him a job on his film Local Hero.

“It was quite scary,” Capaldi admitted to Sloan. “I don’t know how you acted or what you did.”

Still, his co-star Burt Lancaster believed in him. He told Capaldi, “Kid, your instinct is fabulous. I love your instinct. Your instinct is terrific. I can’t understand a word you say, but your instinct is terrific.”

And so, an acting career was launched. Music’s loss etc, etc.

Listening to the show, it struck me that apart from Tony Blackburn and Paul Gambaccini, I have been listening to Billy Sloan for more years that anyone else on radio. As a student in the early 1980s his Radio Clyde show was a must-listen.

I can’t say I tune in every week to Radio Scotland but when I do it offers a familiar pleasure. And some familiar tunes. Long may Billy namedrop his way across our airwaves.

Earlier on Saturday, Soul Music returned on Radio 4. For those who don’t know it, the idea behind the programme is to explore how an individual song can become part of people’s lives. This week’s tune was Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, which is glorious. I prefer the Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell version over Diana Ross’s but they’re both brilliant.

The programme moved between learned explanations of the musicology behind the song and emotional retellings of how it soundtracked personal experience.

I know everything makes me cry these days, but if you don’t end up with tears in your eyes listening to Lesley Pearl’s tale about her ailing birth mother there’s something wrong with you.

Sing it, Tammi.

Listen Out For: The Listening Service, Radio 3, 5pm, tomorrow.

Tom Service explores the work of French composer Erik Satie, the grandfather of ambient music, with the aid of French pianist Nicolas Horvath and French composer Christine Ott.