Dave Berry, George and Lilah, who present Capital Breakfast (Weekdays, 6am, Capital FM), broadcast as though they’ve already been at the energy drinks. Even the news of somebody having a quite moderate win on an afternoon gameshow is greeted like peace in our time. There are three voices to fit into the tiny spaces allowed for speech between the records and the ads and, consequently, none of them can manage a complete sentence. If their objective is to make eavesdroppers like me feel ancient they’ve succeeded brilliantly. The classic Capital record comes from an act with a name that sounds like an entry from a horse racing stud book, much like Hailee Steinfeld and Grey featuring DJ Zedd, the multitudinous people behind Starving. When they followed that track with James Arthur singing about how he held your hair back when you were throwing up and Ed Sheeran remembering how his bed sheets smelled of you, I retreated abruptly like an adult stumbling on a necking party in the guest room. It’s a different world.
When the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics included a balletic celebration of being in hospital, foreign observers looked on in bewilderment. I was born a couple of years after the foundation of the NHS in an age when there was no such celebration, not even among people who had known the days when you had to pay a doctor. In Analysis (Monday, 8.30pm, Radio 4) Sonia Sodha of the Observer looks at how changes to the shape of the NHS have to struggle in the face of the British public’s often sentimental recollection of how they feel it worked in some long ago land of used-to-be.
Aftermath (Monday, 8pm, Radio 4) seems like a good idea. It revisits the site of a significant event and looks at the effect it had on the place and its inhabitants. It is presented by the excellent Alan Dein, who starts by visiting Hungerford, the town in Berkshire that 30 years ago was the scene of the first mass shooting in modern British history.
Against The Grain (Weekdays, 1.45pm, Radio 4) is a timely investigation of how the British farming industry ought to react to Brexit. It hears from planners and academics as well as farmers large and small who have to deal with the realities of the business. It also makes you wonder how come the imminent removal of subsidies on which the local farmers must presumably have relied for so long has not caused any comment in The Bull in The Archers (Weekdays, 7pm, Radio 4). I’d venture that the scriptwriters have made a list of the main characters and where their sympathies lie. I fancy David’s in one column and Pip in another. Brian’s in one and Debbie is clearly in another. It’s probably in a locked drawer somewhere only to be opened under the BBC’s version of the 30-year rule.
