Every year in August the radio-listening nation divides into two opposing tribes: those who are dismayed to learn that the football is back in earnest, and those for whom even the briefest close season without football has seemed a dismal sort of half-life. What these people love most about the first weekend of the new Premier League season is the feeling of possibility they once associated with the beginning of a new school term: new blazer, clean disciplinary record, determination to make a fresh start. Little of this survives beyond teatime on the first day. For partisans involved in Manchester United v Tottenham Hotspur (Saturday, 12.45pm, Talk Sport) that optimism may have been tarnished long before.
Football, more than most sports, is chaos. The media who cover the game are professionally required to pretend that it isn’t. The proliferation of football-related podcasts mean you can choose the illusion you find most appealing. Two of the best illustrate the range on offer. This paper’s Football Weekly presents it as a game of strategy with forces on the field deployed according to the instructions of Napoleon-like figures watching from distant hilltops. The equally fine Football Ramble depicts it as more like one of Brueghel’s teeming canvases, where frankly it’s a miracle that either team manages to score. Both viewpoints are valid.
Radio 4 producers spend a lot of time trying to decide how much their audience needs to have things spelled out for them. In The Food Programme (Sunday, 12.30pm, Radio 4) Tim Hayward meets his food hero Len Deighton and seems to spend so much time telling younger listeners that they should be interested in his guest that he risks frustrating older listeners who already are. Deighton’s parents both worked “in service” and presumably the practicality that led their son to turn a career as an illustrator into a reputation as a cookery boffin and then another as a genre-defining thriller writer must be down to them. Once you know what heat does to food, he says matter of factly, you don’t have much need for recipe books.
The Archers (Weekdays, 7pm, Radio 4) is at its best when reflecting births, deaths, floods and similar non-negotiables. As soon as it strays into the world of careers it seems to lose its footing. I’d be surprised if Ambridge doesn’t skew all national surveys of trends in the employment market, so readily do its young people resist the lure of the city, remaining at home, finding jobs in aeronautics, organic cheese or the provision of twee teas.
Ambridge is now such a magnet for ambitious youth that it even attracts incomers such as the Fairbrother boys, who have turned up to raise geese, despite appearing to know as much about the creatures as I do. The producers seem so keen to stress the message that everyone can fulfil their dream that I fear even gormless Kate Madikane is going to be allowed to make a success of her plan for a holistic retreat in the shadow of Lakey Hill. The only thing that doesn’t fit the pattern is the fact that Debbie, clearly the brightest of the offspring to bear the Aldridge name, continues to live and work in Hungary.
Meanwhile, Brian Aldridge is being ushered into retirement so that stepson Adam can be given a free hand to pursue his madcap agricultural schemes. Brian fears the worst. I concur and have ordered a number of “Team Brian” T-shirts if anyone’s interested.
