mattypenny

Word In Your Ear - Pat Nevin - “Pat Nevin has musical memories even better than scoring a diving header against Arsenal”….a sentence that could keep Socrates, Plato, and every phone-in host on every radio station busy for years

BBC Witness History - Nazi Eugenics - horrific, tragic and weirdly banal. A tough listen. “In July 1933, Adolf Hitler passed a law requiring the sterilisation of Germans with physical and mental disabilities. Helga Gross was one of those sterilised.”

Word in your ear - Nick Duerden’s talked to 50 pop stars about life when the big time’s behind you - Eddie Tenpole-Tudor (of the Swords of a Thousand Men, and Who Killed Bambi) got down to a shortlist of two for the Richard E. Grant role in Withnail and I

Give Kate Bush back to the Irish - Kate Bush is judged to score 9.5 on the Irish-o-meter

This Cultural Life - Mike Leigh - on the night of the second or third repeating of Abigails Party, the weather was dreadful, a strike had taken out ITV, and BBC2 was showing something ‘very esoteric’. 16 million people therefore watched Mike Leigh’s show

BBC - Political Thinking with Nick Robinson - The Theresa May One - the former PM relates how hearing Lenny Henry changed her mind about the Windrush scandal. Henry was giving a speech at a memorial for Stephen Lawrence and he said that the Windrush people had to produce four pieces of documentation for every year they had been in the UK

BBC - This Cultural Life - Caitlin Moran - aged 13, Caitlin Moran somewhat optimisitically applied for the job of Managing Director of Comic Relief. Lenny Henry replied “You wouldn’t want to be MD of Comic Relief, it’s really boring, but I’m sure you will fly like a comet through British society’’”. Moran says she lost the letter but knows it off by heart

Hancocks Half Hour - The Blood Donor - perfect, in my opinion

That Reminds Me - Nicholas Parsons - originally the host of Just A Minute was going to be Jimmy Edwards, but he was unavailable when the pilot was recorded

WTF with Marc Maron - Naomi Klein - “conspiracy culture often seems like it’s anti-establishment…its a gift to the establishment”

BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4 - Scoop - Mr Whippy ice cream was based on the American Mr Softy. Mrs Thatcher didn’t invent either

This Cultural Life - Jarvis Cocker - Jarvis Cocker says that the lady in Common People is not the wife of the Greek Finance Minister

Linda Smith’s A Brief History of Timewasting - I’ve only heard one of these but it was very funny. There was a great line from Margaret John (Doris from Gavin and Stacey) to the effect that if life was a Countdown puzzle then she’s in the bibbedy-bibby-boo bit rather than the boom-diddy-boom bit. Or words to that effect.

Cardew ‘The Cad’ Robinson? Comedy’s great lost heroes remembered by Robert Ross - The Word in your Ear podcast - lovely chat about old semi-forgotten comedians, like Roy Jay, the “Spook Spook Slither Hither” chap. The podcast / book needs to be a multi-part BBC4 series

EP99: Yoon Suk Yeol–The Hated and the Dead - South Korean presidents can only serve one term. Not having any prospect of re-election seems to be a bad thing

Dave Rimmer’s classic Culture Club book is republished. Boy George hated it “as it was all true” - Word in Your Ear - Culture Club split their songwriting royalties equally, like U2 and REM

History Extra - Great Reputations - Oliver Cromwell - Oliver Cromwell’s was voted the 10th ever Greatest Briton in a poll in 2002. I guess ‘great’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good’?

A short history of the Taj Mahal - the poet Rabindranath Tagore described the Taj as ‘a teardrop on the cheek of time’