A former colleague described the day he picked up a company car from the garage and didn’t immediately tune the radio away from Radio 2 as a watershed moment in his life. He was talking about the bouncy, middle-of-the-road daytime side of the service, not the cosy, cardigan-wearing side that comes out at night, though that can elicit a similar sensation. Driving back from the supermarket on a recent Friday evening I caught an edition of Friday Night Is Music Night (Friday, 8pm, Radio 2) dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Light Programme. Since this show seems to be one of those pockets of the Radio 2 schedule that, like a Japanese soldier stranded on a remote Pacific atoll, prefers to behave as if the Light Programme hadn’t come to an end in 1967, this celebration seemed quite appropriate. In his best rich Dundee cake of a voice, presenter Ken Bruce threatened “music for everyone”, much as his predecessors might have done in 1945, when dinner jackets were everyday wear for radio presenters and not just for special nights out on the concert stage.
The backbone of the show remains as it always was: the BBC Concert Orchestra performing old wireless themes and popular overtures for nostalgists in concert halls up and down the country. The great thing about the past is that it gets better all the time. This is a scientific fact. The wide-angle rear-view mirror of Friday Night Is Music Night can now encompass anything from Ivor Novello through Richard Strauss to Bacharach and David and, as in this week, a repeat of Elaine Paige’s 50 years in showbiz concert. Furthermore, so robust is the appeal of the repertoire of popular favourites that there are always bright young things coming out of the drama schools and music colleges who have made a speciality of their mastery of, say, Flanders and Swann or the finer points of “the patter song”. This way, the tunes you once resented your parents and grandparents listening to when you were a teenager are still there to be enjoyed when you expand your waistband and come to your senses.
At around the same stage of adult life Money Box Live (Wednesday, 3pm, Radio 4) starts to seem less like the indecipherable mutterings of the grown-ups from the other room and more like a source of important information about power of attorney, the state pension and self-assessment, little things that you really must get round to doing something about. It’s also good to see that the BBC seems to have resisted the powerful temptation to vibe up the presentation of programmes like this.
Although we now tend to associate his name exclusively with monocles and pigs, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse first made his name and his money writing for the musical stage. In Musical Comedy Was My Dish (Monday, 6.30am, Radio 4 Extra) admirer Ben Elton looks at this now less celebrated side of the master’s career. Contributors include Tim Rice and biographer Robert McCrum. Continuing the Blackadder connection and exploring another overlooked area of his writing life, Tim McInnerny plays the great man in Wodehouse In Hollywood (Tuesday, 11.15am, Radio 4 Extra).
Reece Shearsmith is Adam Buxton’s guest in the comedy interview show Chain Reaction (Wednesday, 6.30pm, Radio 4). His impression of the drama school lecturer who tried to impress upon him the importance of clear articulation, while at the same time not being able to pronounce the word, is worth hearing.
