PICK OF TODAY’S RADIO

JUST A MINUTE, 6.30PM, RADIO 4

PAUL MERTON is on the front foot and keen to win, or perhaps he just wants to beat Tony Hawks, in the first show of the new series of a comedy panel show that’s still going strong after more than 50 years. Paul gets off to a roaring start as he deploys a rather underhand tactic, delivering a monologue on the subject of A Game Of Darts. Other subjects include Nosey Neighbours, The Isle Of Wight and Tap Dancing. Sue Perkins (pictured) is the perky chairwoman and — be warned — Tony gives a rather strangled rendition of the Beach Boys’ classic Good Vibrations.

THE billionaire Richard Sackler was hellbent on making OxyContin the painkiller of choice for the medical profession. By 1996, the opioid had also become ‘the street drug all the drug addicts are seeking.’ Kyle Soller is the reader for a ten-part adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe’s saga EMPIRE OF PAIN (9.45AM, 12.30AM, RADIO 4), detailing how the Sackler family grew rich on a drug that has killed thousands of Americans and turned millions more into junkies.