RADIO CHOICE

FEARNE COTTON (RADIO 2, 9.30AM) is in charge of Ken Bruce’s show all this week. Fearne (pictured) will be joined each morning by Marc Almond; he’s been on a 60th birthday celebration tour, and has brought out a new album. Marc talks about the album and, throughout the week, will be playing his Tracks Of My Years.

MORE than a billion people around the world suffer from migraine. They know the pain and misery of periods of partial blindness, nausea and all the other symptoms of the malady. The writer A.L. KENNEDY’S MIGRAINE (RADIO 4, 11AM) hears from fellow sufferers and leading experts about this debilitating condition and learns of new treatments.

RAGTIME music — socalled because it’s performed in ‘ragged time’ — features

syncopated tunes played across a marching-rhythm bass line. This music emerged in America around the 1890s, and caught on like wildfire. The composer Scott Joplin was one of the greatest exponents of the style, writing 44 piano rags, a ragtime ballet and two ragtime operas. In COMPOSER OF THE WEEK (RADIO 3, 12 NOON, 6.30PM), Donald Macleod tells Joplin’s story.

n DEVON SPROULE is a singer-songwriter whose music sits somewhere between folk and jazz. She joins MARC RILEY (BBC 6 MUSIC, 7PM) this evening.