Radio Valerie Grove
‘Before COVID-19,' Nick Hornby wrote this month, ‘the BBC was under attack from politicians. Now, the way it has guided us through the crisis means we should value its calm intelligence more than ever.'
I think ‘calm intelligence' reasonably sums up what Radio 4 delivers: news bulletins laced with scepticism. Grim discussions garnished – tra-la! – with poetry, music and the tweets of real birds.
The pitfalls are the boring repetitiveness of daily briefings – thanks, Evan Davis, for cutting these short on PM – and the mawkish indulgence of inviting the newly bereaved to speak at length. Of course bereavement distresses families, and elicits sympathy. But it is not kind to the listener or to the grieving to air the family's sobbings.
Vox populi is encouraged by Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 or You and Yours on Radio 4, to expose the minutiae of people's lives. ‘Tell us how your lives have changed. Tell us how your finances have been
affected. Tell us how you are getting on with your family at close quarters. Tell us about your hair.' That revealed so much distress, despair, such (stupid) debt and so many damaged young lives, balancing on tightropes. It rather blighted with guilt my lockdown dog walks in sunshine and silence, but was good for the soul; good for pondering on how civilisation might improve post-virus.
One happy woman phoner-in told Vine, ‘You know, Jeremy, I often used to wish that everything could just come to a stop one day. Everyone was always in such a mad rush, with too much to do. And now it's happened!' Naturally, Lionel Shriver, asked on Woman’s Hour how she was dealing with lockdown, replied, ‘All too well.' It's bonus time for crabby, antisocial writers.
Also for pundits – more welcome than politicians. Every day brings forth professors from obscure university departments – of the Public Understanding of Risk, the Future of Humanity, and the Economics of Innovation and Public Purpose. How did those profs fill their days before being rung up every hour by radio stations?, I wonder. And can we please have Sir Max Hastings and Dame Margaret Macmillan doing their doubleact regularly? And Peter Hennessy and the admirable Sir Paul Nurse.
The grandchildren enjoy Greg Jenner's Homeschool History, I'm told, and so do I. Repeats are welcome: Down the Line and Cabin Pressure. Tributes to Tim Brooke-taylor prompted reruns of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. Tom Stoppard introduced a Radio 3 reprise of his clever and funny 1991 play, In the Native State, with Peggy Ashcroft. This was a tribute to the late John Tydeman, who launched Stoppard the radio dramatist, along with Joe Orton and Sue Townsend.
And I was breathlessly riveted by Radio 4's ten-part Book of the Week, Tunnel 29, the true story of students tunnelling their way from East to West Berlin. Its author, Helena Merriman, reads in a lovely conversational way, as if recounting the story to just a single listener.
For an injection of laughter, I prescribe the opening sketch in Michael Frayn's Magic Mobile series on Radio 4, about a pharmaceutical company wondering what to name their new drug. ‘Any combination of syllables you like,' the Pharmaceutical Nomenclature committee is told. ‘The more ridiculous, the better. No thinking necessary.' Everyone shouts ideas: ‘Photospirophyl? Oxitoxipol? Zotohexamine! How about alliteration – Demidoxidrin!' Amusement for pill-popping oldies.
On Broadcasting House, Julian Worricker, self-isolating with psoriatic arthritis and his beloved piano, played for listeners the Bing Crosby song Busy Doing Nothing from a 1947 movie. What a pity he didn't sing the words: ‘We're busy doing nothing, workin' the whole day through, trying to find lots of things not to do…'
A silly song – and the perfect lockdown anthem.