Most news radio, particularly in the run-up to an election, is about things yet to happen; sentences beginning “Ed Miliband is today expected to”, or “a new poll published later today will say”. Similarly, most sports radio is about games yet to be played and therefore is less about physical activity than the pathetic optimism of fans. These are always “big” games, apart from the ones that are “massive”, the tiny subset that are “massive, massive” and the special handful for which only the single, awe-struck syllable “huge” will do. Hope is the lingua franca of Alan Brazil’s Sports Breakfast (Weekdays, 6am, TalkSport). Here, every sun rises on a day fresh with possibility. Here, Alan and his accomplice Brian “Pitbull” Moore are happy to encourage us all in the illusion that we can somehow guess what will come to pass when the match is played later in the day. The following day, they won’t bother referring back to whether they were right or wrong because by then another sun will have risen on another set of fixtures in which to invest our hopes. Alan’s theme tune is Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah, which seems about right.
Geoffrey Boycott delivers a very different sort of radio gold, for which much thanks. He’s breathtakingly pompous, of course, utterly tin-eared when it comes to any form of humour, and prone to calling all female colleagues “love”, but in the context of a commentariat who have been trained by their upbringing and social media to avoid saying anything that might cause offence, Boycott is more precious than ever. The more his colleagues aspire to a smooth and professional way of doing things, the more we need somebody who’s neither. Every time he enters the commentary box for Test Match Special (Friday, 2.45pm, Radio 4 LW and 5 Live Sports Extra) on this West Indies tour, it’s as if he’s been conveyed there directly by a particularly bitter wind off Ilkley Moor. Geoffrey’s utter certainty that he knows exactly what’s wrong and how to fix it immediately takes the pressure off everyone around him. Within half an hour of the beginning of this series, England were losing wickets and Geoffrey had announced that half the backroom staff should be sent directly to the airport. All Ed Smith, who is Boycott’s polar opposite, had to do was offer the odd pained “mm” sound. When Sir Geoffrey does finally leave the crease he’ll take more replacing as a summariser than he ever did as a player.
The sound of the week comes from Dr Fagan, the depressed headmaster of the very minor school to which the hapless Paul Pennyfeather is consigned in this two-part adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline And Fall (Sunday, 3pm, Radio 4). “The Welsh are the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They just…” – pause – “sing.” Dr Fagan suffuses that single syllable with a universe of regret, like a Ry Cooder fill on a Blind Alfred Reed song. Waugh continues to work brilliantly on radio. Decline And Fall provides a timely corrective to some of the windier pronouncements made about education in the course of the election campaign. Pennyfeather, who has been hired to teach German, protests he doesn’t actually know a word of the language. “It doesn’t do to be too modest,” says Dr Fagan.
The unfailingly charming Dave Grohl is the star guest on The First Time (Sunday, 1pm, 6 Music) with Matt Everitt, picking songs by the Beatles, Neil Young and Led Zep.
