The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
On My Wavelength
Battling through crowds of adoring teenage fans is a way of life for newspaper radio critics like me. But where did fan mania originate? In Archive on 4: Fangirls and Teen Hysteria (tonight, Radio 4, 8pm), Josephine McDermott charts the history of the teenage fan experience, from The Beatles and Donny Osmond to Harry Styles and beyond.
Paul Gambaccini recently presented his last ever Pick of the Pops, and will transition to a new Radio 2 slot on Sunday nights from the end of this month. Radio 2 is taking a moment to reflect on what brought him, and his loyal listeners, to this point, so 50 Years of Paul Gambaccini (Sunday, Radio 2, 8pm) is a celebration of the great Gambo’s 50-year career in radio. In conversation with Steve Wright, Gambaccini reflects on a life spent among the stars, including interviews with Elton John, Kate Bush, Marvin Gaye and Paul McCartney, among others.
Investigative journalist Lucy Proctor presents The Cows Are Mad (Monday to Friday, Radio 4, 1.45pm), a 10-part series exploring the paranoia, fear and theories that still surround the British outbreak of BSE and the human equivalent variant, vCJD, in the 1990s. Proctor takes an expansive view of the animals, farmers and human victims of the disease, its impact on the reputation of British beef, the questions that still remain about where it came from and how it was transmitted to humans.
The Perelman Performing Arts Center, also known as PAC NYC, formally opened in New York last month on the World Trade Center complex in Manhattan. Its construction marks the final piece of the new piazza at Ground Zero.
For In the Studio (Tuesday, World Service, 11.30am), Jeff Lunden speaks to PAC NYC’s artistic director Bill Rauch about how the performers and artists have been preparing for their first season. There’s something deeply moving about a project to make a new space for celebrating art, movement and life, on the site that once witnessed such tragedy.
What’s it like to be a young woman working in a high-security men’s prison? Book of the Week: Behind These Doors (Monday to Friday, Radio 4FM, 9.45am) is
Alex South’s account of how she became, at 22 and after just six months of training, a prison officer in Cambridgeshire, documenting the people incarcerated there and what daily life is like behind the gates. The job is full of extreme challenges, but there are moments of surprise and inspiration that make it worthwhile, too.
The British musician, composer, and activist for women’s and worker’s rights, Eliza Flower, is the subject of Free Thinking (Thursday, Radio 3, 10pm). Flower was a fascinating person in many ways: she wrote the original music for her sister Sarah’s hymn,
Nearer, My God, To Thee, as well as setting some of Walter Scott’s works to music and being a close friend of John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau and Robert Browning.
And, finally, Misha Glenny and Miles Warde return for the 50th episode of their consistently brilliant How to Invent a Country series, which continues to feel like an in-depth public service way of doing history. This week, it’s The Invention of Turkey (Friday, Radio 4, 11am), with the programme recorded on location as the story unfolds of how Mehmet the Conqueror arrived in Constantinople in 1453, renamed the city Istanbul, and turned the main cathedral into a mosque, shaping its path from there on. Fascinating, intelligent fare.