RADIO CHOICE

SCREENING for a disease can help doctors to deal with an illness before too much damage is done, but there are many instances when it has produced little more than alarm and overtreatment, underlining the fact that the more doctors look for disease in the healthy, the higher their chances of finding it. Margaret McCartney presents TOO MUCH MEDICINE? THE PROBLEM OF OVERTREATMENT (11AM, RADIO 4), considering a worldwide concern that overscreening is doing more harm than good.

FREDERICK DELIUS wrote On Hearing The First Cuckoo In Spring in 1912. He incorporated the Norwegian folk tune In Ola Valley in the piece and let the sound of a cuckoo’s call move through the orchestra like a bird through a valley. For this

week’s TALES FROM THE STAVE (11.30AM, RADIO

4), Frances Fyfield looks at Delius’s score and sees how the composer worked towards this lovely effect.

AMONG tonight’s selection of BARRY’S FORGOTTEN MUSICAL MASTERPIECES

(10PM, RADIO 2) is the original version — kept under wraps for many years — of Noel Coward’s (pictured) Mad About The Boy. Barry Humphries tells the story behind this song of hopeless love. There’s also a track celebrating Amy Johnson’s 1930 flight to Australia and a send-up of the BBC from 1935, called We’re Frightfully BBC.