This classic picture of Mario Götze shortly after scoring the only goal in last year’s World Cup Final in Brazil was taken by Dylan Martinez, Reuter’s man on the spot that day. The photographer had mixed feelings when Götze netted seven minutes from time and ran right over to where he was stationed, because his background is Argentinian and he would have preferred that they won. He was also terrified that he might not have got the shot. Picture Power (Weekdays, 1.45pm, Radio 4) is a series where photographers recall those moments when their careers, and in some serious cases their lives, flash before their viewfinders. It includes photographers who’ve been involved with life-threatening situations in Syria, livelihood-threatening floods on the Somerset Levels and the unwelcome attentions of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. The programme’s good on the minutiae of the trade as well as the personal impact the incidents had on the photographers. For instance, Martinez’s anxiety about whether he’d got the shot of Götze or not was made considerably worse by the fact that he knew his pictures were being sent to the office live as he took them, so his editor would know before he did.
Sarah Brett and Dan Walker are settling into the rhythm of Afternoon Edition (Monday to Thursday, 1pm, 5 Live). It’s a format that calls for the same familiarity with the sports and political stories of the day as with last night’s TV and a conga line of people plugging what’s about to be last night’s TV. You have to feel for the presenters of programmes like this now that the live webcam is on hand. In the old days the only way they kept their sanity was by rolling their eyes heavenwards and rotating the index finger adjacent to the temple while the loopier guests were answering questions. Nowadays, like the Reuters photographer, they’re always on.
In Irish Micks And Legends (Wednesday, 11pm, Radio 4) Aisling Bea and Yasmine Akram gather over a microphone to breathlessly relate the tale of Brigid, reputedly one of the few women in Ireland to get a tan naturally, who, we are told, got “off her jugs on Christianity” and begged her father to let her be a nun. Anyway, he said she was too good-looking to be a nun and she said, “Well, what about Julie Andrews?” and anyway there’s nothing wrong with shaving your head. It suits Sinéad O’Connor, but that could be because it draws attention to her big eyes. And so on.
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, Judith Kerr’s classic children’s book closely based on her own escape from Nazi Germany before the war, is the subject of Radio 4’s Bookclub (Sunday, 4pm, Radio 4) and the same story is read by Rosemary Leach throughout the week (Weekdays, 2pm, Radio 4 Extra). In Archive On 4: Alan Lomax – Songs Of Freedom (Saturday, 8pm, Radio 4), Billy Bragg presents the story of the younger of the father-son team who travelled around America preserving the vernacular music of hillbillies and chain-gang prisoners in the days when nobody could imagine it would ever be of interest to educated folk. Johnnie Walker returns with Johnnie Walker’s Long-Players (Wednesday, 10pm, Radio 2) in which he and I discuss who baked the cake on the cover of the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed and how Led Zeppelin got away with putting neither their name nor picture on the cover of their fourth album.
