Radio
Sheer purgatory
Michael Vestey
The other day I was asked what I thought was the most boring programme on the radio. Although competition for this is considerable I knew the answer immedi- ately: Home Truths on Radio Four on Sat- urday mornings. It is more absorbing watching a banana ripen than listening to this programme. The BBC describes it as a `warts-and-all look at the great British weekend'. It goes on for a whole narcolep- tic hour and is sheer purgatory.
It reminds us of all the things we are trY• ing to forget: shopping, teenage children, football, household chores, the tedium 0I ordinary domestic life. If there was an Oscar for naffness, Home Truths would win it. When I heard the first one I said to myself, no, surely not, Radio Four, please don't do this to us. Of course, you as a lis- tener can switch off or retune but I not only have to listen to it once and record it, but hear it again to make notes. One edi- tion I listened to a third time, as it was too dull to be believed.
The presenter John Peel is, as we kilo", an accomplished broadcaster but he links the items in Home Truths by providing his own thoughts and experiences of family life, and it is clear to me that he lives as much a humdrum domestic existence as the rest of us. Can there be anything more soporific than, 'When we go shopping at Sainsbury's in Bury St Edmunds ...' `Sarah Hill phoned in to complain of her dad's slow driving .'? There followed 111 the case of the former an item about chil- dren in supermarkets. After Sarah's coin- plaint, an AA man phoned to say he felt sorry for Sarah's dad as he was saving fuel and doing something for the environment. Zizz, zizz . . . There was an interminable item about men who hadn't wanted children and an audio diary of a student's revision for his exams, a kind of Adrian Mole on tranquil" lisers. This threatens to run and run, Peel desperately appeals for listeners to contact bun with their own examples of domestic Weltschmerz, 'If you'd like to make an audio diary for us ring ...' Or, 'Have you ever been hard up? Tell us.' What he's really saying is, 'Help! We've got an hour to fill. Ring in with any old rubbish and you can go on air.' When I rejoiced at the demise of Going Places on Radio Four, I suppose I should have known something worse would replace it at the weekends. Still, there is always cricket and Test Match Special which has begun on long- wave on Radio Four with ball-by-ball com- mentary of the one-day and Test series between England and South Africa. I know it's not universally loved by Radio Four lis- teners but it is by me. Its future is still under review by the network controller James Boyle; extraordinary, really, when You consider how brilliant it is and how it increases audiences. I have written before that it is live radio in its purest form and for that reason alone it should be trea- sured, not put 'under review' with all the uncertainty implied. The truth is, there is
its unique else for it to go if it is to retain ts unique character. That really should be the end of the matter.
The other day I heard a story about TMS that exemplified for me its public service role. Where I live on the Dorset-Wiltshire border there's a cricket club called the Pyt House Players. A brief glance at the Physique of some of its players suggests to me that their crickcting prowess depends More on enthusiasm than talent. Indeed, as a keen smoker and exercise-sceptic I had to tell them that if I played for them this sum- mer — I used to open for the BBC radio newsroom — I wouldn't be able to run quickly. That's all right, I was told, no one else does. When I suggest net-practice might be helpful as I hadn't played for Years the expressions of horror were such that I felt like a character in a Bateman Cartoon.
Be that as it may, one winter, a member of the club called Eric was watching Eng- land play in South Africa. He realised he Couldn't get back in time for the Pyt House Players annual dinner. In desperation he faxed the TMS commentators covering the tour in the hope that they would broadcast this fact. They did. Shortly afterwards, a member of the club strolled into the local Pub, the Benett Arms in Semley near Shaftesbury and told the delightfully opin- ionated landlord Joe Duthie that Eric wouldn't be attending the dinner. 'How do You know?' asked Joe. 'I've just heard it on Test Match Special,' came the reply. There's something gloriously fraternal about cricket and some of that comes through in the new series of David Gower's Cricket Weekly on Radio Five Live (Thurs- day). The graceful Gower, the only crick- eter I can think of, apart from Ian Botham, who could induce clinical depression when he was out from an elegant but careless stroke, has matured into an excellent
broadcaster. His programme lasts for 90 minutes and incorporates a phone-in though here he needs to be more ruthless. His first caller, 'Doug from Chester', wouldn't stop interrupting him. I know it's meant to be people's radio but I couldn't care less what Doug thinks. Let David speak!
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