The Mail on Sunday

...AND THE BEST RADIO

- Mark Cook

SUNDAY DESERT ISLAND DISCS REVISITED RADIO 4 EXTRA, 10AM & 9PM

The annual retrospect­ive of programmes looking at those who died in the previous year kicks off with Vera Lynn (right). The Forces Sweetheart, who passed away at 103, chooses her own Room 504 as her favourite track, and watercolou­r paints, brushes and paper as her luxury.

MONDAY THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY RADIO 4, 12.05PM & 10.45PM, MON-FRI

Matt Haig is best known for his dark and quirky novels for adults and children, such as Father Christmas And Me and How To Stop Time. His latest, The Midnight Library – about a woman experienci­ng the lives she might have had and changing things she regrets – is read by former Call The Midwife star Bryony Hannah.

TUESDAY SOUL MUSIC RADIO 4, 9AM & 9.30PM

Bill Withers’s 1972 track Lean On Me, with its supportive message, has gained extra traction this year with Covid and Black Lives Matter. Among those discussing it, and Withers’s life, are Rolling Stone journalist Andy Greene, composer Neil Brand and nurse Sara Morell, whose own home recor ding of the song became an internet hit.

WEDNESDAY NEIL INNES: DIP MY BRAIN IN JOY RADIO 4 EXTRA, 11AM & 9PM

Diane Morgan continues her tribute to Neil Innes, Monty Python collaborat­or, musician and comedian behind the anarchic Bonzo Dog DooDah Band and Beatles spoof The Rutles, who died in 2019. She has help from Stephen Fry, Arthur Smith, Michael Palin and Innes’s wife Yvonne.

THURSDAY

KEN BRUCE RADIO 2, 9.30AM

As part of Radio 2 House Music, where artists perform in their homes, Brit award-winners Travis play two special numbers – a track off their recent album 10 Songs plus an old number as never heard before – from the foursome’s separate residences in the UK and US. A British tour by the Glasgow rockers is planned next year.

HAIL MARYS AND MINISKIRTS RADIO 4 EXTRA, 2.30PM

In the 1950s and 1960s there was an influx of Irish builders to the UK, but many women also came looking for work – and to escape from restrictiv­e abortion laws and religious repression at home. Orla Barry talks to some of those 250,000 Irish women about the social and sexual freedom of the time and the issues they face today in old age. There’s a song or two, too.

SATURDAY OPERA ON 3: FALSTAFF RADIO 3, 6.30PM

Verdi’s comic opera – his final work, aged 79 – about Shakespear­e’s comic creation from The Merry Wives Of Windsor and Henry IV Parts 1 and 2. It stars Bryn Terfel in the central role of Robert Carsen’s 1950s-set production, in which the corpulent rogue sets out to seduce two wives to try to get his hands on their husbands’ money.

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