Rediscovering Radio 4

                                                 The Shoebox pretends to be a big house!

During our seven years in France I rarely listened to BBC Radio.  If I listened to the radio at all it was to France Inter or France Musique.  I sometimes ventured onto France Culture, but they tended to have two-hour programmes on obscure items like Bolivian folkdancing or cavepaintings in Mali, which I found a bit self-indulgent.  France Inter had its oddities as well - in the midst of an interesting discussion about the French economy there would suddenly be a break with a song from one of the iconic French chansonniers before a return to the topic in hand. 

I'd always mocked French television as being stuck in a groove - with programme times unchanged in at least forty years, variety shows with people speaking into outsize microphones (had they not heard of overhead mikes?) and the same tired old American soaps dubbed into French.  So it came as a bit of a surprise to return to the UK and find that Radio 4 was even more stuck in a groove.  In fact it's like being in a timewarp.  John Humphreys continues on the Today Show, Women's Hour still parades its selfconscious concern about women's issues,  Any Questions is still touring scout-huts round the provinces, followed by the same dogmatic rightwingers calling in to Any Answers.   Nothing now gives me more pleasure than switching John Humphreys off when he is being self-righteous in the morning.  Unfortunately the contentious smugness seems to have spread to others on the news team, and I find myself switching off the lunchtime news as well.  The Moral Maze doesn't even get a look-in.

Recent articles in the newspapers have raised the question of Radio 4 being overly middle-class.  The role of the English middle classes is another topic on which I can fulminate at will.  But the prospect of change is like reforming the House of Lords - the people concerned are unlikely to proceed happily to the guillotine.  Meanwhile I have discovered that, through my computer, I can access dear old France Inter and find out what's happening across the Channel instead of listening to the London chattering classes pontificating to likeminded souls in Tunbridge Wells.   Vive la différence!

Antony Mair