Everybody likes to think that they’re familiar with a wide range of music. Very few people are. People who know a lot about music only know how little they know. Counterpoint (Monday, 3pm, Radio 4) returns for its 30th-anniversary season, once more pitching retired teachers against local government officers and tour guides, in a battle of musical knowledge that calls upon them to answer questions about both Pierre Boulez and Billy J Kramer. The contestants tend to have a classical grounding and can panic when faced with beat music. I always love the bit where they review their options and find that Gilbert & Sullivan has gone, Bach has been taken and all they’ve got left is the albums of Oasis. Counterpoint is impeccably chaired by Paul Gambaccini, who probably knows the answers without looking them up. Fans of Gambo are further pointed in the direction of the Radio Today podcast, where he lets BBC top management have both barrels in a way you don’t often hear.
Sylvester James’s 1978 high-energy disco classic You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) is indubitably one of the greatest records ever made. So great, in fact, that it proved impossible to follow up and cast a shadow over everything else that Sylvester did in a career that began when he was a member of San Francisco’s outrageous Rockets and ended with his Aids-related death in 1987 at the age of 41. In Mighty Real – McAlmont Sings Sylvester (Thursday, 11.30am Radio 4), British musician David McAlmont retraces his steps and finds evidence of a trailblazer who didn’t always bask in the sunshine of the love of his fellow musicians.
I enjoyed The Victorian In The Wall (Monday, 2.15pm, Radio 4), Will Adamsdale’s gentle stage play about a good-for-nothing writer who decides to pull himself together when his girlfriend is away on business by green-lighting some ill-advised home alterations. It has a unique tone to it, bolstered by the occasional use of choral speech. Will’s alterations reveal the presence of one of the 19th-century house’s previous occupants living in a cavity wall. Having established the Victorian in the wall, they seem not entirely sure what to do with him, but this is a congenial listen and it’s only a shame this is just too long to go into the 6.30pm comedy slot.
If you care about radio at all, you should listen to Gillian Reynolds – Audiophile (Saturday, 8pm, Radio 4). Gillian’s been listening to radio since before the war and writing about it for the best part of 50 years. Her personal tour d’horizon takes us from when radio was still a relatively new technology and the sole medium charged with holding the nation’s hand during the darkest times, to its current identity crisis as it faces the challenges of newer media. In the course of it, she talks to fellow industry veterans such as Sue McGregor, Jenny Abramsky, Nick Pollard and Jimmy Gordon.
