RADIO CHOICE

SIAN PHILLIPS (pictured) gives a terrific performance in THE MACEFIELD PLOT (RADIO 4, 2.15PM), playing Edith Macefield, an elderly woman with a racy past, who now lives alone in a crumbling old house that looks like a cuckoo clock. A five-storey shopping mall is being built around her, blocking light to her windows and bringing noise, disturbance and a lot of mud into her life. The developers are trying to get her out, but Edith forms an unlikely bond with the site manager in this sparky drama.

ADDICTION to opioids, a scourge of small towns across the US, has hit the UK. These super-strength painkillers hijack the brain, switching on a chronic need to take increasing amounts of the drugs. Among the complications are mood swings and poor co

ordination; severe addiction can be lethal, and opioid addiction can be passed on by pregnant mothers to their unborn children. Much blame has been put on doctors for overprescribing these drugs, but opioids are all easily available online. In FILE ON 4 (RADIO 4, 8PM), Anna Cavell investigates the roots of this crisis.

n LEE FIELDS — nicknamed Little J.B. because he looks and sounds like the late James Brown — joins Jamie Cullum on THE JAZZ SHOW (RADIO 2, 9PM) on tonight’s show to perform tracks from his new album, It Rains Love.