The interview of the week is in The Art of Living: Frank Ormsby’s Parkinson’s (26 November, 4.30pm, Radio 4). This sensitively produced programme takes the form of a visit to the home of the Northern Irish poet as he deals with Parkinson’s and diabetes. In certain lights, his condition could be seen as a gift for a man licensed to reflect on the extremes of the human condition. This gives him a key to the big issues. Marie-Louise Muir breaks off their conversation from time to time to inquire about his shaking, which often arises in response to a particularly demanding question. He dutifully passes on the joke that he prefers Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s: “I’d rather have trouble holding my pint than forget where I put it.”
Lou Reed: A Life (Weekdays, 1.45pm, Radio 4), Anthony DeCurtis’s new biography of the irascible sage of Long Island, is read by Demetri Goritsas. In the first episode, Reed goes to Syracuse University where he apparently “experiments” with drugs and sex. This is the verb applied to anyone who takes a lot of drugs and has a lot of sex but apparently for a higher purpose.
Is Uni Worth It? (28 November, 8pm, Radio 4) is told through the viewpoint of two young women. One attends a private school and is doing multiple A-levels with a view to becoming a lawyer. The other attends an Essex academy where she is doing a media BTec. Would either or both be better off taking a more practical approach to preparing for the world of work and will either be able to resist the obvious path?
Podcasting House is pivotal to the BBC’s plan to scatter the seed of its various non-broadcast audio products beyond the narrow silos of the people who happen to listen to the programmes from which they arise. Each episode in this “sampler feed” is introduced by two voices (one of which, significantly, is American) and what follows could be Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, Simon Mayo’s True Confessions or one of the other productions that don’t slot into the BBC’s usual schedules.
If you don’t work near a water cooler and hanker for the company of fellow natural history enthusiasts, The Blue Planet II Podcast has Emily Knight and Becky Ripley enthusing infectiously about and delving deeper into the most recent episode. Each one includes commentary from Sir David and other people involved with this most massive of TV undertakings.
Podcasting is a personal medium and I savour those moments where details of the podcasters’ lives glint through. In The High Low, in some respects an audio version of Grazia, Pandora Sykes and Dolly Alderton wonder whether they missed something in their survey of the Harvey Weinstein story. Maybe they did, they decide. There was the week when one was in Thailand and the other at that fashionable media retreat in Somerset. I’d wager their listeners secretly love that kind of aside.
