The cast of Channel 4’s sketch show Absolutely are reassembled this week for The Absolutely Radio Show (Sunday, 7.15pm, Radio 4). Morwenna Banks gives us her Little Girl’s bracingly candid guide to divorce (“and when your mum saw the pictures on Dad’s phone she was very, very cross and did drink a pint of wine even when it was the morning”); Calum Gilhooley calls a company he has recently patronised to ask them to fill in a survey on how he performed as a customer; and a sibling in New Zealand is called with the sad news that Dad has once again taken a turn for the worse. She needs some persuading to book a flight. “Is he going to die this time? What colour is he?”
In BBC Proms 2015 (Saturday, 9pm, Radio 3) Yo-Yo Ma undertakes a performance of Bach’s Cello Suites in their entirety, an act that calls for considerable reserves of physical stamina on his part and two hours of spare time on yours. This may actually be the most popular piece of classical music of the present day, it being the piece that film editors reach for when looking to express the passage of time or the breaking of a heart. The fact that it involves just one musician and one instrument helps immeasurably in this. The fewer adornments music has, the longer it seems to endure.
In The Power Of Political Forgetting (Saturday, 8pm, Radio 4) David Aaronovitch looks at how the passing of time frees politicians to revive ideas that seemed to have been discredited and consigned to the past. Not having lived through the Depression, Margaret Thatcher did not share Heath and Wilson’s terror of mass unemployment. Today’s leaders don’t remember national service or the 11-plus. He’s joined by professional rememberers Juliet Gardiner, Andy Beckett and Conservative peer Daniel Finkelstein. Jeremy Corbyn’s name may well come up.
Going to see live music nowadays can cost you an arm and a leg. It was not always this way. Too Much Fighting On The Dance Floor (Thursday, 11.30am, Radio 4) is Adrian Goldberg’s timely examination of the live music scene in the late 70s and early 80s, when you often took your life in your hands on an average night’s gig-going. In those days it was a cheap evening out, didn’t require a credit card, and sometimes attracted the attentions of gangs with unpleasant opinions intent on causing a ruck. Looking back are Clare Grogan, Paul Morley and Peter Hook of New Order.
Talking of music and violence, Friday Night Is Music Night (Friday, 8pm, Radio 2) raises the curtain on the Rugby World Cup with a show from the Hackney Empire involving musical stars Louise Dearman and Camilla Kerslake, entertainers Alistair McGowan and Richard Stilgoe, plus former players Will Carling, Conor O’Shea and Bill Beaumont. Rugby has never had an easy relationship with the world of showbusiness so it will be interesting to see how this works out. Swing Low Sweet Chariot is threatened.
A Place Of Greater Safety (Sunday, 3pm, Radio 4) is the first part of a dramatisation of Hilary Mantel’s account of the French revolution as seen through the eyes of Robespierre, Desmoulins and Danton. “Notoriety is important. Paris is seething. If you want to cut a figure you have to seethe twice as fast as everyone else.”
Finally, Maggie Smith – A Biography (Weekdays, 9.45am, Radio 4) has Bill Nighy reading Michael Coveney’s account of the life of our grandest dame.
