All the people interviewed by Julia Eisner about their experience sitting with parents during their final hours for The Vigil (Monday, 8pm, Radio 4) offer variations on the same thought. Broadly, it wasn’t like in the movies. Waiting by the bedside of somebody who won’t be getting up again is one of those experiences that leaves everyone feeling faintly unworthy. Some of her voices did it for a couple of days, others for six years; one artist was so closely involved that he was sketching his father at the precise moment of death; another took an evening off and missed the event, forcing them to mutter apologies thereafter when people asked that most piercing question: “Were you with her?” It’s a lovely programme: sane, simple and refreshingly free of prescriptions. Whatever thoughts you may be entertaining at the bedside, you won’t be the first to have had them. Apparently, it’s not uncommon for the patient to wait until the family have left the room to slip away. That could be their last act of consideration or it could just be chance. Either way, this had me misting up.
There are now so many musicians in the semi-pro category it’s almost as profitable for established musicians to coach as to play. In Steve Earle’s Songwriting Bootcamp (Tuesday, 11.30am, Radio 4), BBC journalist and part-time songwriter Hugh Levinson joins others from all over the world assembling in the Catskills for Camp Copperhead, there to sit at the feet of the larger-than-life writer of Guitar Town and The Devil’s Right Hand, to see if he can help them improve their own efforts. Inevitably, some students’ efforts are pretty good. Sadly, because we know they’re composed by social workers or journalists, we can’t believe in them as much as we can believe in Steve’s.
Jerry Seinfeld says that if people’s greatest fear is having to speak in public, that means that most people would rather be in the casket than giving the oration. In Speaking In Public (Saturday, 8pm, Radio 4) David Bramwell of Brighton’s Catalyst Club, one of many spoken-word events that have sprung up all over the country in recent years, wonders if anyone can learn how to do it and consults experts for their experiences and tips.
In the 19th century, when beer was safer than water, brewing was as vital an element of British commerce as the internet is today. Brewers from all over the country descended on the Staffordshire town to take advantage of the local hard water. In Gone For A Burton (Sunday, 4.30pm, Radio 4) poet Jean Sprackland delves into the history of her home town’s identification with the trade, and looks at how brewing worked its way into the language to leave us with the titular expression. And in Letters To Writers (Weekdays, 10.45pm, Radio 3) Ian Sansom addresses fan letters to Geoffrey Chaucer, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf and Agatha Christie. He asks for advice. Intriguingly, some of them write back.
