Back in the day, BBC radio producers would only consider audio acceptable for broadcast if it had been recorded on one of the allegedly portable machines that were reverently referred to at Broadcasting House as “a Uher”. This was the size and weight of a small suitcase full of bricks. When you finally got it to the recording location, it took half an hour to set up. By the time you had got the microphone out and the tape threaded, the intended interviewee had become so paralysed by techno-fear they would have little to say.
Reaction Time (Thursday, 11.30am, Radio 4) recognises the fact that this no longer has to be the case. Since 90% of the population now carry in their pocket the equal of the recording and processing power the Corporation formerly brought to its coverage of entire general elections, you can now trust them to record their own material and send it to you. For the week of Valentine’s Day, Radio 4 puts a toe in the water of such crowdsourced audio with a programme made up of two-minute true-life confessions of a romantic nature, which listeners have recorded on their phones and sent in. A further nice touch is that it’s presented by Narelle Lancaster, one of the listeners.
Also eavesdropping on people’s personal lives is Give It A Year (Monday, 1.45pm, Radio 4). This visits its subjects at the beginning of the year and then checks in with them 12 months later to see how their plans have or have not come to fruition. The first one features the unfailingly charming Roy as he enters his 90th year, adapts to his new life as a widower, makes plans to do a wing walk “before I conk out”, and arranges his first Christmas in a hotel. He recalls the pick-up line he used on his one and only girlfriend. “I said: ‘Oh, you’ve got the same bike as me!’” he laughs.
Of all the musicians who ever had to put up with being the butt of jokes from comedians too weak to have opinions of their own and content to recycle other people’s, Phil Collins is probably the most unjustly derided. He has a musical fingerprint too distinct to be overshadowed by a simple recital of medals and honours. Along with Levon Helm, Karen Carpenter and Don Henley, he’s one of that select handful of drummers who can really sing. His many admirers in the hip-hop fraternity know that he deserves better. Collins is Sara Cox’s guest on Sounds Of The 80s (Saturday, 10pm, Radio 2) talking about his entire career.
Opera On 3 (Saturday, 6.30pm, Radio 3) presents from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, a new production of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, familiarly known as “Cav and Pag”. It sounds terrific but is preceded by fully 10 minutes of the kind of poker-faced explanation of the plot which used to be a feature of sketches in which TV comedians dressed up as absurd folk troupes. A lot of people might be happier knowing that this is the kind of opera to which Martin Scorsese soundtracks his shootouts.
Some of the same listeners might be in the market for Friday Night Is Music Night (Friday, 8pm, Radio 2), recorded last year to focus on Luciano Pavarotti’s greatest hits on the 80th anniversary of his birth. A trio of tenors took to the stage at the Hackney Empire to front the BBC Concert Orchestra on such window-rattlers as O Sole Mio, Che Gelida Manina and Nessun Dorma with Paul Gambaccini as host.
