TODAY’S RADIO

MY DREAM DINNER PARTY 10.30AM, RADIO 4

★★★★ David Baddiel cooks a meal for a lively group of ghosts he’s invited to dinner. Using archive recordings and clever editing, he manages to get Morecambe and Wise, Simone de Beauvoir and Joan Rivers around the table, along with George Best and John Updike. The power of enduring friendship and the allure of sex are among the matters under discussion in this larky show.

MUSIC MATTERS 11.45AM, RADIO 3

★★★★

A talented black violinist is about to play at an important event – then, he realises his Stradivarius has been stolen. Tom Service is joined by Brendan Slocumb, a black orchestral violinist, to talk about his debut novel, The Violin

Conspiracy, and about the racism Brendan has faced in his career.

SIR ALEX FERGUSON: MADE IN GOVAN 8PM, RADIO 4 ★★★★

Radio Manchester’s Mike Sweeney has known the legendary former Manchester United manager for decades. The two have much in common; they bonded over the music they love and occasionally played football together. Here, they listen to archive clips and discuss the memories these recordings stir up. Alex recalls his childhood in Govan, and the ups and downs of his long career in management.

COLD AS A MOUNTAIN TOP 11.30PM, RADIO 4 ★★★★

A German soldier who was about to shoot a British prisoner asked if he was cold. The prisoner, who was the climber W.H. Murray, said he was ‘cold as a mountain top’, so the German put his gun away. Both men recognised that they were fellow mountaineers.

Murray spent the rest of the Second World War in a POW camp, where he wrote his great work, Mountaineering In Scotland. The author Robert Macfarlane tells Murray’s story.

Alex Ferguson (8pm, Radio 4)