We British: An Epic in Poetry Radio 4 | iPlayer
The Loss of Lostness Radio 4 | iPlayer
All About Property with Gabby Logan Radio 5 | iPlayer
On Thursday, Radio 4 celebrated National Poetry Day with a whole day’s programming devoted to how poetry has made the British who we are. (God, how the BBC loves exploring who we are, uniting the UK in a cross-cultural, multi-platform, educational yet uplifting moment.) We British: An Epic in Poetry was, indeed, an epic. Even though the poems stopped for regulars such as The Archers and The World at One, you were never more than a few moments from a rhyming couplet.
Now, I’m up for a spot of high-minded historical-cum-poetical discussion – and when it’s Simon Armitage who’s talking, I’m especially up for it – but a whole day of such stuff means that, naturally, there are points where your interest flags. Where, for instance, an academic reads a poem with the compelling verve of a station announcer reaching the end of their shift. Or where an actor chews on another poem like a teenager on a Tangfastics-and-legal-high rush. Ack: just read the thing!
After a while, though, I started to enjoy the unevenness of tone. The BBC is usually so good at what it does, its programming standards are so uniformly high, that a spot of live human crapness is refreshing. Plus it gave you a moment to make a cup of coffee or to wander off to make a phone call. Like many people in this distracted age, I’m not really up for a full day of anything cultural, except maybe reading. Six hours of history via poetry is beyond my stamina. Better to dip in and out and catch up on iPlayer when you want.
Being distracted was the topic of Saturday morning’s very enjoyable The Loss of Lostness, also on Radio 4. The engaging and funny Stephen Smith switched off his GPS and made a case for not knowing where you are. He wandered around Hampton Court’s maze, getting nowhere at all, and he interviewed people who agreed with him. Will Self was the best, as he was the most apocalyptic. “GPS tells you where you are but doesn’t orientate you at all,” said Self. “Mapmaking is the neurological method we have to commit things to memory.” Self predicted that in the near future, humans would have “no memory, no capacity to orientate ourselves and no ability to walk anywhere”.
Smith also went to see Graham Gouldman of 10cc, ostensibly because he used to go to record shops and get lost in the rows of vinyl. A fairly tenuous connection, I thought, though Gouldman did come up with a lovely song to finish the programme. Yet, at no point did Smith consider that people still get lost in music: they just do it at home, happily getting sucked into a YouTube or Spotify musical hole. Surely that type of lostness happens all the time on the internet? We’re always losing our way; we’re just sitting on the sofa while we do it.
Over on 5 Live, a station I used to love, but that seems inessential these days, Gabby Logan has a show All About Property. On Sunday night, in the slot that’s been entertainingly occupied by Emma Barnett for quite a while now, Logan does her level best to make houses interesting. She is such a pro, Logan, such a safe pair of hands, that sometimes I feel sorry for her. The BBC clearly doesn’t know quite what to do with her talents.
Off Logan went, chirpily discussing loft conversions and knocking through kitchens, like a desperate dinner party hostess. But even she could not hide the underlying tragedy of our current housing crisis. When talking about the rental market with cheerful expert Lewis Rossiter, everything in the studio was upbeat. The phone calls, though, were from people who were stuck with their kids in temporary accommodation, whose landlords charged too much rent and never called back, who didn’t know their rights and responsibilities. The gap between the housing have-it-alls and those who regard a permanent home as an unaffordable luxury was very clear, despite Logan’s jolly – and somehow irrelevant – professionalism.
