RADIO CHOICE

KEN BRUCE (RADIO 2, 9.30AM) continues Radio 2’s noble endeavour to keep music live with a new strand on his show. There’ll be a Live Room session each week, which will have performers clustering round the mighty fine piano that Elton John donated to the BBC. Elkie Brooks gets the ball rolling with a couple of blues numbers.

STARLINGS (pictured) might get their name from the star-like white spots that appear on their feathers in winter. The collective noun for starlings — a murmuration — might come from the sound their wings make when a vast cloud of them sweeps through the skies. Brett Westwood, in an atmospheric instalment of his NATURAL HISTORIES (RADIO 4 (FM), 11AM), transports us to a reed bed in Somerset as a murmuration comes to roost.

TWO drily funny Scottish writers with a liking for strange characters are on the list for this week’s A GOOD READ (RADIO 4, (FM), 4.30PM). Ed Byrne picks

Christopher Brookmyre’s crime novel Quite Ugly One Morning — a book that hits the ground sprinting, but is not for the squeamish. Hardeep Singh Kohli goes for Muriel Spark’s The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie — which he finds ‘astonishingly brilliant’. The show’s presenter, Harriett Gilbert, chooses a collection of essays by Etgar Keret, but Ed and Hardeep fail to be amused by Etgar’s idea of comedy.