Annie Mac | iPlayer
Pick n Mix | NME Radio
Jon Ronson On | Radio 4
Sunshine and bank holiday weekends bring out the creaky old clubber in me, even though it's years since I found myself awake at 5.30am for any other reason than a child: "Mum, if I can't have a Nintendo DS, will you draw me one?" Now that my bedtime is midnight, I save my fantastic moves for the early evening dance music show. Especially, at the moment, Annie Mac on Radio 1 and Emma Warren's Pick n Mix, broadcast live from the Red Bull Studio for NME Radio.
Both shows are ideal getting-ready-to-go-out-and-dance listening; or, indeed, getting-ready-to-stay-in-and-potter. Annie's is the more upbeat: she's a positive character who loves nothing more than sharing new tunes. Last Friday, she was full of beans due to a trip she'd made to LA, where she'd discovered a sound called moombahton. "The important thing to know is, it's 110bpm," she said, which may sound unimportant on a scale of one to, say, Libya, but you know what she means.
Moombahton turned out to be a sort of shuffly-dubstep-booty-shaker-house thing, ideal accompaniment for making breadcrumbs, or, as I was, driving across town with two tired kids. Bumpy enough to keep me happy, bass-y enough to make them sleep. Annie is developing into one of her station's best assets: music-, rather than personality-, driven, but with enough joie de vivre to engage with the Radio 1 audience.
Warren plays more experimental, beat-sodden music than Annie and is a quieter personality. Her presenting style is more of a gentle word in your ear, rather than a jump up and down in front of you shouting, "Have you heard this yet?". She has impeccable taste, although sometimes I wish she would ramp up the energy: I know Emma and she's a right laugh. But then the world is full of Fearne Cottons. It's nice, sometimes, to hear what a quiet woman has to say and play.
Friend of the freaks Jon Ronson is back, with his late-night Radio 4 programme which – it says here – "sheds light on the human condition". It does, although sometimes Ronson doesn't shed light so much as gently mock. Not this time, however: the programme, about hearing voices in your head, featured Ronson conducting a riveting interview with Eleanor Longden.
Longden started hearing a single voice in her head, giving a running commentary on what she was doing, when she was a student. Subsequently, she was put in an asylum for three months, where her mental health deteriorated until she was hearing 12 voices. The dominant "grotesque" voice came with an image – "immensely tall, swathed in black… nebulous, with a hook" – which started telling her to do things. She had to dress all in red, or pour a glass of water over a lecturer's head. "I actually did," she said. "Which I'm quite proud about."
What a story: and followed with another one, just as interesting. Forget my freak comment: Ronson is brilliant at exposing the slippery closeness of normality and lunacy in his subjects. And thus in us all.
