Nick Ferrari (Weekdays, 7am, LBC) is a smooth operator. His sting arrives at the end of his sentences. Last week I heard him say, with his trademark menacing politeness, like a waiter smilingly ushering a guest towards a table near the lavatories: “Mr Farage, you’ve got an enviable following among the electorate and yet according to what you’ve just said you appear to be making policy based on a conversation with a taxi driver.” Before that he had signed off an interview with Paddy Ashdown with the words, “Thank you for being so candid”, which must have had the former party leader sweatily searching his memory for what he had inadvertently just said. This is all in a morning’s work for Ferrari, who is having a good election so far. It was Ferrari, of course, who provided the best soundbite of the campaign during his interview with Natalie Bennett when he asked about the costing of her housing plans. “What are they made of? Plywood?” He should do T-shirts with that one.
When Frankly Speaking (Tuesday, 6.30pm, Radio 4 Extra) was first launched on the old Home Service in 1952, it was hailed as a departure for the personality interview, with the subject confronted by three interrogators, each of whom peppered him with impertinent questions about the real person beneath the public face. They’re repeating a number of these recordings, beginning with Evelyn Waugh, who was so discomfited by the experience that it was said to have led to his next novel The Ordeal Of Gilbert Pinfold, in which an author begins to unravel after hearing voices in his head. We’re so used to hearing interviewees trying to ingratiate themselves with the audience, it’s almost intoxicating to listen to the curtness of Waugh’s responses. When asked if there are any human failings he could forgive, he pauses before offering “drunkenness”, then “anger, lust, coveting your neighbour’s ox” and, finally, after another pause, “killing”. He doesn’t laugh to soften the effect but nor do his interlocutors, who no doubt knew him at the place he calls “the university” and probably also pronounce “gibberish” with a hard consonant. Coming up are interviews with other voices from vanished ages such as Bette Davis and Tennessee Williams.
Couples (Monday, 11pm, Radio 4) is a “semi-improvised” comedy show in which Julia Davis and Marc Wootton play a succession of couples seeking therapy from Dr Tanya Ray-Harding. These include new-age foodies Helen and John, who both walked out on needy partners in order to devote more time to more fully appreciating raisins, and Patricia and Ron, who used to be “landlady and tenant” and are now “landlady and lover”, having tumbled into bed one Sunday afternoon and indulged in what Ron nasally describes as “a plethora of different activities”.
In Snow White And The Seven Signs Of Ageing (Monday, 4pm, Radio 4) Cathy FitzGerald talks to Tamara Henry, a news anchor in LA. Tamara is 43, an age that doesn’t officially exist in Hollywood, and here talks about how she might come to terms with the passing of her youthful bloom and what it might mean for her sense of self. She says the right words but her true feelings are betrayed by the tightening in the back of her throat.
Frankie Takes A Trip (Friday, 2.15pm, Radio 4) is a drama about Frankie Howerd’s 1962 crisis of confidence, which led to him trying treatment with LSD, which was legal at the time. David Benson plays the star, with the best approximation of the comic’s voice I’ve ever heard. Listen, as he would have said.
