Falling short

Maybe it was too soon for Saturday night’s Archive on 4 to reflect on George W.’s reign as President of the US of A. After all, there are still three days left of his administration. But Bremner on Bush: A Final Farewell was a missed opportunity. Rory Bremner was presumably hauled in as presenter because of his sharp-witted impersonations of Dubya, a man so easy to lampoon Bremner must sometimes have wondered whether there was any point in making fun of him. But, surprisingly, he gave us very few of those infamous stutters and stammers, and instead we heard from members of Bush’s White House team and a mixed bunch of commentators, creating a very different kind of programme. Maybe that was the problem. We expect the revamped Archive Hour to be an authoritative version of past events from old recordings. It’s a radio buff’s manna from heaven, the stuff of life, as we are taken back in time purely through the sounds and voices of the past, and through them can sometimes conjure up our own memories of the moment in which we first heard them.