Radio 4

I listened to Radio 6 for a while this morning, it wasn't too bad, as it had a feature on Joe Strummer and the Clash, but the fact that there are 3 Alanis Morrisette songs on the A playlist doesn't bode well.

I probably listen to Radio 4 less than I used to. At university I felt like a freak for doing so. The panel shows really annoy me, except for Just A Minute (though I haven't listened to that for ages). 'The Board Game' - wtf? Today might get better now Sue MacGregor has gone. I'm a R5 morning news person mostly. I never ever listen to plays or readings - it just doesn't suit my listening habits.

I always feel like R4 is stuck in a bit of a bind, trying not to fall into the trap of thinking that middle class, polite radio is synonymous with intelligent speech radio programming, yet knowing that that demographic is not served by any other station. So it sticks with that traditional style that makes those listeners happy while alienating others.

Interest extinguished.

Edna, this is always the criticism levelled at R5, so no you're not alone. But for some reason, the times I listen to it always see plenty of non blokiness. I love Fi Glover, Jane Garvey et al. And often find Late Night Currie (oh yes) a soothing end to the day.

with the exception of just a minute.

Now if only Momus would call someone a ponce.

Sorry I find Home Truths tiresome because of the presence of Lord Peel.

R4: I used to listen to it a lot but seem to have got out of the habit lately. I prefer silence and staring out of the window, although I still love the Shipping Forecast.

The constant time checks on the Today programme come in handy for someone as myopic as me when getting ready for work.

The only thing on Radio 4 that makes me reach for the off button is the dreadful Go4it kiddies programme on Sunday evenings.

Is Nicky Campbell on R5? He has been pissing me off something chronic for many years now.

Whenever I try to tune in to R4 they seem to have some religious programming, some book-of-the-day or radio play. Not for me.

R4's Pick Of The Week often entertaining too. For three quarters of an hour it makes the whole network sound great.

R4 sort of schedule here:

Also, LoTR fans don't forget the radio adaptation Saturday afternooons @ 14:30 for weirdness of Ian Holm as Frodo rather than Bilbo.

Even more intolerable than Bragg: Libby Purves

This Radio 6 malarky really stuffs up that theory, though. Thanks Chris!

Cal at home, drooling. (kylie, not dementia)

Ha ha. Yes, Simon's called me that before too. And now Momus has called us all ponces as well!

Last year, at a RoMo picnic, we played football! Although it was RoMos Vs RoMos so it hardly counts. Apparantly, of all the football playing RoMos, I was the feyest! (It's hard not to look fey playing football in a suit, drinking Bacardi Breezers).

(Simon also wrote a review in the IoS of my girlfriend's band a couple of months ago where he described them as RoMos - he even compared them to Hollywood! I guess that makes it pretty official)

At the moment, we're talking about stationery!

Why? What has the SB board done to offend you?

Ha! Yes, I think Senay and Tim are DJing soon. It's a shame Alex isn't DJing because he'd play tons of cool Japanese pop.

(Please be gentle with me - I am a recovering Baxendale fan. I've been clean for about 5-6 months now)

They're djing somewhere? again? heaven help us, they should have had their hands cut off after the debacle at Strange fruit at new years!

www.nme.com/features/101062.htm if you're interested.

Um, well in the message I posted containing the link, I did say "At the moment, we're talking about stationery!" which is a bit of a clue to expect people talking about stationery, no?

also the other week some guy - dunno who but typical r4 plummy-voiced - was talking about the london bombers specifically and suicide bombers in general, and said he thought the problem was they needed to go out and get a life and get laid! can't help thinking there might be a kernel of truth in there...

Driving to work this morning, with Radio 4 on, I suddenly felt grown-up for the first time *ever*.

* well, it turns off, but it always comes on whenever you start the engine.

I intrigued as to whether Tha Nippah still fancies Ruth Archer or not.

The news/current events stuff is good, not too UK-centric. The drama shows are fucking terrible, though.

Is anyone listening to this new history series "America"? http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/america/

"A new series from Radio 4 charts the development of the United States, exploring three key themes: Empire, Liberty and Faith. (In three series)". Series 1 (Liberty and Slavery) started last week.

Does anyone know anything about the author/presenter, David Reynolds? http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/academic_staff/further_details/reynolds.html

Things I found out by listening to episode 1:

Each episode is 15 minutes long.

BBC Radio 4 still draw on a rich pool of British voice actors completely incapable of doing an American accent.

Cahokia Mounds. Who knew?

Revive at a less ludicrous local time. You still have plenty of time to listen to the whole of week 1 before this afternoon's show.

yeah, this looks good. going to have a listen today

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/questionsquestions.shtml

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00dkvqw/

I missed today's episode of America. How long does it usually take for radio stuff to show up on iPlayer?

FUCK "will smith's midlife crisis" is BAD

GOD!!!

So my brother's going to be on Radio 4's Today program tomorrow morning. In case any UK ILX0rs still listen to Radio 4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1G6osCnsbA

lol, andrew marr just did it again, when talking about it

On a serendipitously scheduled segment about Freudian slips, no less!

I particularly enjoyed Naughtie coughing afterwards.

Radio 7 will be Radio 4 Extra real soon now... I had sort of forgot that was happening

Radio 4 extra? Like radio 4 but "urban" presumably.

No, as in "this is still Radio 7 we're just calling it Radio 4 Extra"

that's a pity!

I like the talk way upthread between Edna W, N, et al

who was that inarticulate cunt talking down libraries?

Shaun Bailey, failed Conservative PPC for Hammersmith.

awesome program about sodomy this morning.

buggery all over my breakfast.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012ww6h

Having hated Radio 4 with a passion my entire life (no really, just the theme to the fucking Archers throws me into a murderous foaming rage) I finally have the answer to what, specifically, would turn me into a Radio 4 listener:

Robert Macfarlane on Radio 4, talking about Scottish Mountains. I am beyond clickbaited.

(I will also be desperately sad if Robert MacF turns out to have a weedy little voice not in keeping with his prose style. Actually, I'll probably be disappointed no matter what Rob MacF sounds like, no matter what his voice, his accent... but I'm more disappointed in myself.)

WHAT IF HE SOUNDS LIKE MOMUS. WHAT IF.

I try hard not to bite the "BBC is a mouthpiece of the right-wing" bandwagon and am similarly reluctant to invoke Godwin's Law for the most part. But listening to James Naughtie's awestruck and seemingly credulous description of the RNC's closing night on The Today Programme this morning makes me wonder what his account of the Nuremberg Rally might have sounded like.

I was half-asleep. Maybe I dreamed it.

im gonna listen to it later but not hard to believe. its partly just the weirdly enthusiastic way a lot of news reporters report. i wonder if they think what the subject is. theres one regular on newsnight whose name i forget that always reports back on the latest round of political chaos like an excited schoolboy. then theres the way ultra right figures are covered. emily maitliss did a decent job with marine le pen, even if she gave her far too much air time in the name of fairness (fair time?) before actually challenging her BS. cliche to say i know, but maybe most r4 presenters arent really affected by any of this stuff so cant really summon anything other than blithe amusement.

He did say Trump's speech made Reagan sound like a tentative weakling. But yeah it was typically uncritical reportage, saying the audience lapped it up (duh no shit), no mention of the racial divide or the limited appeal of his message.

they just think its pure performance.

They love finding out what people think about the hot button issues, are less keen on finding out if those beliefs correspond to reality at all.

WHY. Who @BBCRadio4 decided this would be a good thing to do? https://t.co/kEEiJUcNrL

— Wei Ming Kam (@weimingkam) April 12, 2018

privatise.

On Saturday, for 1st time EVER, Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech will be read in full on UK radio (by actor Ian McDiarmid). Please join us @BBCRadio4 8pm. Super-brains Nathan Gower + David Prest have done an amazing production job. Great guests too: https://t.co/3XvDMSH16d

— Amol Rajan (@amolrajanBBC) April 12, 2018

awesome

also psyched for their recently-announced reading of the protocols of the elders of zion (read by sean pertwee) and an abridged two-part adaptation of mein kampf (read by judi dench)

obv an insider, you've seen the Winter schedule.

brb gonna pitch an ongoing series called 'rivers of gammon' to radio 4 which will offer a voice to britons with legitimate concerns

tbf maybe it’s a critical look at the speech and the participants are going to analyse how it set the tone for contemporary rac...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/actors/ian-mcdiarmid-interview-enoch-powell-not-racist/

...ah well.

i guess if anyone had to read it (nb no-one had to fucking read it) then the guy who played palpatine would be my pick too, assuming that davros is unavailable

Actors are usually thick as two short planks, so more fool anyone asking them their opinion on anything other than the theatre, darling.

they tend to be only slightly less thick as pigshit as footballers, but they have bit of "gravitas" and a better vocabulary.

settle down everyone this v bad idea, actually, is good

Naively, I assumed people would click on the link. So let me clarify, for @Andrew_Adonis and others, that the speech is broken up, and critiqued by voices from across the spectrum. Not just read out in a single go. Though of course some will still object https://t.co/ZTGNYHnNgt

— Amol Rajan (@amolrajanBBC) April 12, 2018

lol pwned

If you click on the link there is no such clarity given. pic.twitter.com/ujrd2kvxjN

— Stephen Bush (@stephenkb) April 12, 2018

lol does everyone really think this tx is an ENDORSEMENT of the speech?? ffs

not partic interested in ian mcdiarmid's opinions on politics but actors playing villains famously often get into a kind of stockholm syndrome with them because to an extent you have to, as a technical question of playing the role properly

I am pretty sure none of the people kicking off about this, including the historian interviewed for the show who is currently trying to get the producers to cut her out of it, thinks the BBC position is ‘Powell was correct’.

it doesn't have to be an endorsement of the speech to make it a bad idea for a show

as far as i can tell she's not happy about amol rajan's tweet, rather than the show (which presumably she, like everyone else, has not heard) - taking his personal twitter account as part of the "promotion" of the show

really i think it comes down to that tweet, which is remarkably tone-deaf. he he hadn't made it, or had taken a different tone, i doubt any of this would have happened

i think it's incredibly worthwhile to examine the racist past of this country's racist politicians but i admit there is something quite basic about the objections to this show that i think i'm not getting

The guy's a hero to swathes of the Conservative Party, which no-one seems to ever pass comment on, so you could argue the BBC aren't doing anything controversial.

i might be less concerned about it if i felt there was an equal likelihood that, say, the 50th anniversary of jimmy reid's 'rat race' speech would be marked with a similar show on the bbc, or any similarly important moment in leftwing uk history

as it is, i think giving airtime to the full text of a notoriously racist speech is likely to provide a rallying point for the worst of the uk media with endless accompanying articles about how and why enoch was right and the uk has gotten worse since then, and how bad can he be really if the biased bbc is giving his speech all this airtime if u really think about it

could it be that it's important to hold up and examine the beliefs and consequences of a big old racist in the harsh light of day PARTICULARLY when he's still regarded as a hero by tories?

Or articles on how he wasn't really a racist - oh, hold on, we've already had that from some dimwit of an actor.

What is more likely to happen? (xp)

it's particularly crass timing given stories like this have been prominent for the last few weeks and months
http://www.itv.com/news/2018-04-11/windrush-generation-nhs-worker-lost-job-and-faces-deportation-despite-living-in-the-uk-for-more-than-50-years/

(xp) The Tories saying, oops our hero was a racist or, what usually happens when Enoch Powell is mentioned anywhere, lots of wistful thinkpieces on a talent wasted, a great intellect cruelly denied, the lost leader, Thatcher's inspiration blah blah blah.

Whatever the BBC's position on Powell or the manner in which they deconstruct the speech, they will still get plenty of praise from extreme far right groups for running this. The whole project absolutely reeks imo. The people in poorer communities where interracial violent assaults are a common occurrence are probably not the target audience, but the public outcry it has already stirred up just feeds the hatred imo. It isn't exactly a careful nuanced speech, it's completely inflammatory and irresponsible in the first place.

(xxp) Yes, the very people Enoch railed against are finally been sent back to where they came from, huzzah!

bizarro would you really be happy if the bbc played out a re-created version of a famous speech by a prominent left-wing activist and then brought in talking heads to explain its toxic legacy in communities around britain?

If it had had a toxic legacy, why not?

ha well that's exactly why you don't see the "same treatment" given to speeches by lefties

critiqued by voices from across the spectrum

Whoomp there it is. So who (and how many) will critique the speech from the centre and rightwards?

"we have to make this story stand up! find out farage's number"

"on speed-dial mate"

like clockwork

People still listen to Enoch Powell half a century after his famous speech, while nobody cares what @Andrew_Adonis says about anything. No wonder he's so bitter about the BBC broadcasting the Rivers of Blood speech tomorrow!

Support us at https://t.co/ntwXbJeHQw pic.twitter.com/8Hnjs5ZgsG

— Leave.EU (@LeaveEUOfficial) April 13, 2018

there it is

never thought I'd see the day when ENOCH FUCKING POWELL has become a normal part of the discourse, but you live and you learn don't you

here's some of that deathless Powell poetry

After Rivers of Blood, @amolrajanBBC, why not some of Enoch Powell's poetry? pic.twitter.com/TQAarBpdTc

— Sameer Rahim (@sameerahim) April 12, 2018

lol @ Ofcom reminding Lord Adonis that it can't regulate something that hasn't yet been actually broadcast

It's probably more pertinent in our current 'DEPORT EVERYONE NOW' political climate but broadcasting it in its entirely, editoralised or otherwise, is just phenomenally naive and potentially dangerous at this particular point in our history.

But hey when people of the Windrush generation, who have lived here their entire lives, are being denied access to cancer treatment, it's all just of journalistic interest isn't it?

(xp) I don't know if that poem's supposed to be funny or not but LOL, nice one Enoch.

rivers of something, that's for sure

Stating the obvious but the reaction also shows a pretty deep lack of faith in the idea that the BBC is capable of engaging with the speech in a way that doesn’t, at least partly, give succour to Powell’s supporters - and that lack of faith is based in large part in how they have dealt with the DEPORT EVERYONE NOW political climate.

Don't really want to think about anything white-hot seething up Enoch's shaft

tbf the Radio 4 audience are unlikely to be offended by this

lol

Send your cheques (payable to Leave.eu) to:
Better For The Country Ltd
Lysander House,
Catbrain lane,
Bristol,
BS10 7TQ

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRq73w-OhP1JhAkHMGVf0HWzPSUANddewXb5JJ2mSSsMpYdniBJyg

riddled with toxoplasmosis

the main problem with this is the breathless tone of Rajan's original tweet, yes? given the clarification that the speech is going to be broken up and interspersed with discussion rather than just broadcast uninterrupted - I don't think many people would have been that exercised if they'd just transmitted a show in this format, and mostly wouldn't have noticed that it contained the full text of the speech over the course of the programme if it hadn't been promoted as "1st time EVER in full, read by a famous hollywood actor" etc.

The worst thing is that they've now created a situation where Powell's apologists can present themselves as free speech martyrs, and exploit/hide behind the ambiguity over whether they're defending the content of the speech or defending the decision to broadcast it (which I guess is appropriate considering how much of the speech is "I met someone who said this, and I'm not saying that *I* this, but hey, you know" weaseling.)

The programme listing mentions contributions from David Lammy and a uni professor. No mention of who might be contributing from the other end of the spectrum that Rajan alludes to.

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/jimmy-savile-interviews-mp-enoch-powell-for-radio-1-news-photo/848773318#jimmy-savile-interviews-mp-enoch-powell-for-radio-1-programme-speak-picture-id848773318

Maybe when Sir Jimmy met Enoch can be their next piece of oh so illuminating social history study!

Which one does Michael Sheen get to play in the movie?

Just heard a short extract of Ian McDiarmid's reading, awful hammy British stage acting, accent like Noddy Holder crossed with Fagin, ban it on the grounds of taste.

mama weer all nazee now

gudbuy t' jews

Just to show what a broad church they are tonight, they advertised a Benjamin Zephaniah program just before broadcasting some comedy-fail shite by dismal unfunny UKIP stalwart John Sessions. S-S-S-SER-Subtlety!

^ lol. just came to post this interview with Benjamin Zephaniah on front row this week.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j1k9

I don't want to hear that advert for Tuppence Middleton's Spitfire program again. No it wasn't the "people's plane" you moron!

Probably my fault for expecting better than jingoistic tosh, but they did do a decent program on the evolution of the jet engine that was interesting and was expert led rather having some clueless B-list celeb talking utter garbage!

It's part of the BBC disease that furthers the career of a vacuous chancer like The Coast Guy and sidelines anybody interesting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxHa5KaMBcM&fbclid

free thinking tonight actually having two very anti-prison guests on to talk about the cruelty and ineffectiveness of how we run prisons, credit where it’s due. almost balanced out the previous 12 hours of wall to wall monarchists talk about how important it is that we have good monarchs

Free Thinking used to be on Radio 3, i didn't realise it had moved. Might explain this rare lapse from the 4 party line