At times like these, I turn to the BBC for reassurance. The morning after the referendum, it was comforting to be greeted by John Humphrys on Today (Weekdays, 6am, Radio 4). I am subliminally consoled by the feeling that he remembers the last national crisis and the one before that. His oppo James Naughtie must surely be kicking himself for having retired from the programme a year early. Another person who remembers a few decades back is Michael White, of this parish, whose account of the three-day week of 1974 in Archive On 4 (Saturday, 8am, Radio 4 Extra) is repeated this week. The three-day week seemed quite a big deal at the time. Then again, so did England failing to qualify for the World Cup.
In such times, one’s grown-up offspring start to ask about issues such as job security. In turn, you suddenly start to pay attention to shows like Money Box Live (Wednesday, 3pm, Radio 4), in which the gently sympathetic Paul Lewis fields questions from rattled listeners about ISAs, pensions, balanced portfolios, even changes of citizenship, and puts them to the experts, who provide comprehensible, but not quite detailed, answers. It’s a valuable service.
In Defoe: The Facts And The Fictions (Thursday, 9pm, Radio 4 FM) Mark Lawson describes how the great 18th-century writer unknowingly created the literary genres we know as fiction, faction, non-fiction and travel writing, all sparked off by the success of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, both of which appeared without his name and were presented as the true-life stories of their eponyms. Defoe: Moll Flanders (Saturday, 2.30pm, Radio 4) is a feisty Nick Perry dramatisation of his story of a woman born in the singularly unpromising surroundings of Newgate gaol, who graduated from prostitution to wealth via a plantation in Virginia but ended up back where she started.
In Black Flight And The New Suburbia (Sunday, 1.30pm, Radio 4) Hugh Muir travels to Pinner in north-west London to look at why the population in a leafy area like this is now 38% from African-Caribbean and Asian backgrounds. The people he talks to don’t feel it’s particularly odd at all. They moved out here so that their kids could have more room to play. He sometimes finds tension around whether gardens should be planted with flowers or food and the fact that you can’t find a mosque in Chalfont St Giles but overall these people are now suburban, which is almost a nationality in itself.
Sitting in for Graham Norton over the summer months are Fearne Cotton And Martin Kemp (Saturday, 10am, Radio 2) who promise interactivity, “offbeat news stories, banter, good music and top guests”. You would have thought that the stony reception that greeted the new series of Top Gear would have taught the BBC that rapport is not something you can order up like a new theme tune. It’s either there or it’s not.
