On My Wavelength

Paul Gambaccini is on holiday this week, meaning that Noel Gallagher is the guest presenter of Pick of the Pops (Saturday, Radio 2, 1pm). Gallagher focuses on two chart years of particular importance to him:

1967, the year of his birth, and 1979.

Also on Radio 2, the great quiz PopMaster of Ken Bruce’s weekday morning show is celebrated in

One Year Out: The PopMaster Story (Sunday, Radio 2, 9pm), a documentary presented by Rob Brydon, keen Ken Bruce fan and sometime impersonator. There are also some clips from the archives and tricky quiz questions for Bruce, as well as contributors

Pat Cash, Dawn French, Tim Vine, Jennifer Saunders, Steve Cram, Daley Thompson and Clare Grogan recalling their own memories of the fiendish pop music quiz.

BBC special correspondent Alan Little, a journalist with decades of experience reporting for the BBC from high-conflict zones such as Bosnia and Sierra Leone, once believed in “the power of witness” when terrible events were happening. But after everything he himself has witnessed, he’s now not so sure. In Sunday Feature: Regarding the Pain of Others (Sunday, Radio 3, 6.45pm), Little reflects on his friendship with Susan Sontag, who wrote Regarding the Pain of Others, which also considered this very question. How should war reporters approach their task, and what should they hope to achieve?

Back on the PopMaster theme, Ken Bruce holds a special All Day PopMaster (Monday, Radio 2, 7.30am) for the Bank Holiday. The game will be played every hour, on the half hour from 7.30am on Radio 2, building towards a grand final during Sara Cox’s show at 5.30pm. Listeners compete against famous quizmasters including Richard Osman, Les Dennis, Jeremy Vine, and The Chase’s

Vixen (Jenny Ryan) and The Dark Destroyer (Shaun Wallace).

In A Sense of Music (Tuesday, Radio 4, 11am), Geoff Marsh explores how animals experience music, and whether they’re emotionally affected by it in the same way that humans are. Marsh speaks to a scientist who makes music designed to appeal to tamarin monkeys, and meets a dancing cockatoo called Snowball.

Comedian Twayna Mayne returns to Radio 4 for Twayna Mayne: Black Woman (Wednesday, Radio 4, 11pm), a four-part series exploring her own identity as a black woman, born to Jamaican parents but raised by a white parent. This week, the topic is food, and Mayne is joined for roundtable commentary by chef and broadcaster Andi Oliver and academic Chantelle Lewis.

Liza Ward became a mother at 13, spent time in the care system, was in a relationship with a gun dealer, and was embroiled in gang culture until, through education, she managed to escape a chaotic cycle of poverty. In Ladder to Somewhere (Monday to Friday, Radio 4, 1.45pm), a remarkable and thought-provoking follow-up to her 2019 series Ladder to Nowhere, Ward revisits this time in her life and examines the turning points that helped her towards change.

And all this week on The Essay: In Albania (Monday to Friday, Radio 3, 10.45pm), journalist Joanna Robertson recalls her experience living in Albania in the turbulent 1990s, as the country emerged from decades of communism. In Friday’s episode, Robertson meets King Leka Zogu and joins him on the campaign trail in the run-up to a national referendum, but finds herself the target of criminal groups and a gunpoint ambush.

j Susan Sontag was one of the most influential thinkers of her generation Sunday, Radio 3, 6.45pm

i Do animals respond emotionally to music? Tuesday, Radio 4, 11am