THE ‘NUTTERS ON WEDNESDAY’

THE three Radio 4 shows punctuating the week got their nicknames in the late Eighties.

Richard Branson had been on Start The Week and, as it happened, his auntie Clare Hoare, who kept rare black sheep in Norfolk, was on Midweek two days later. Branson reportedly said to her: ‘Yeah, I was on Pluggers, on Monday, and you were on Nutters on Wednesday.’ So the shows became ‘Pluggers’, ‘Nutters’ and (for Robert Robinson’s argumentatively eloquent Stop The Week) ‘W*****s’.