Radio 2
Claudia Winkleman’s new Radio 2 show gets off to a brainless start
Last Saturday on Radio 2 Claudia Winkleman was inaugurated as the host of what was formerly Graham Norton’s mid-morning spot.…
Why I love a bit of death on a Sunday night
There’s nothing like a nice bit of death on a Sunday evening. Radio 4 originally transmit their obituary programme Last…
Did Radio 2 really need to give us four days of the Beatles to celebrate Abbey Road?
This Changeling Self, Radio 4’s lead drama this week, clearly ought to have gone out in August. It’s set —…
Scala Radio is a real threat to Radio 2
It’s not surprising given the way that electronic communication has taken over so much of our daily business, minimising human…
Zoë Ball has the voice and warmth but not so much the chat
Whether by accident or design, Zoë Ball took over the coveted early-morning slot on Radio 2 this week just as…
What are the writers of The Archers trying to achieve with the Freddie Pargetter story?
‘I’m not here to rehabilitate,’ says Pamela, who teaches creative writing to prisoners in Northern Ireland. She doesn’t think of…
The marketisation of BBC radio is a recipe for creative disaster
There’s been a lot of fuss and many column inches written about levels of pay at the BBC, as revealed…
The dumbing down of the Reith Lectures
It’s been a heavyweight week on Radio 4 with the start of the annual series of Reith Lectures and a…
Why is Today losing its audience? Because it doesn’t care about its listeners
Headlines announcing that Radio 4’s flagship Today programme is losing its audience while Radio 3’s Breakfast has put on numbers…
Split decision
Think back to that morning in September 1967 when the Light Programme was split in two, Tony Blackburn launching Radio…
Seeing the light
‘You can’t lie… on radio,’ says Liza Tarbuck. The Radio 2 DJ was being interviewed for the network’s birthday portrait,…
‘I could do many things... but I could not listen to Bach’
Six years ago, on Good Friday, the journalist Melanie Reid was thrown off her horse while on a cross-country ride…
The blind boy who learnt to see with sound
The deadline for Radio 2’s 500 Words competition falls next Thursday. Children between the ages of five and 13 are…
Long before Twitter, Wogan offered continuous conversation
For once, the superlatives that have greeted Terry Wogan’s death from cancer have been entirely in keeping with the man.…
Agincourt was neither necessary, nor great. We’re mad to celebrate it
Can anyone explain this sudden enthusiasm for Agincourt, that unexpected victory over the French, now being celebrated, or rather commemorated,…
What’s the point of BBC Music?
To Radio 2 to meet Bob Shennan, controller of the BBC’s most popular radio station (the station attracts one third…
Why it would be absurd to sell off Radio 2 - even if it could do with a refresh
The idea that Radio 2 should be sold off by the BBC to a commercial rival is as nonsensical as…
The man who discovered Ebola
By some quirk of fate, just as news reached the papers that the Scottish nurse who had contracted Ebola while…
One man’s guilty pleasure is another’s palpable greatness
The film critic Anne Billson wrote a typically pugnacious piece recently about the phrase ‘guilty pleasures’, which has spread like…
The sound of growing rhubarb
When the BBC proposed to do away with 6 Music a few years ago, the media-savvy fans of the station…
Tom Stoppard’s Pink Floyd play gives Radio 2 a dark side
How many listeners, I wonder, actually tuned in to Darkside as it went out on air on Radio 2, after…
