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 created such a fuss on Twitter and Facebook that the Corporation caved in. Threat of closure was exactly what the station needed to grow its listener-base, now almost as big as Radio 3, and growing (up to 1.96 million per week in the latest Rajar figures, as opposed to Radio 3’s 1.99 million). The Asian Network, too, has flourished after suggestions that it would also have to be shut down if the BBC was to survive financially in the new digital age. But what’s good for them has now spelt doom for BBC3 (at least as a ‘linear’ channel) and further cuts are forecast. Which station will face the chop next time? Or will the BBC instead take the momentous step of agreeing to abolish the licence fee in favour of a subscription scheme?

It’s beginning to seem inevitable. How else can the BBC afford to keep up with an expanding technological world? But what would subscription funding mean for niche programmes like Radio 4’s On Your Farm? Would it disappear from the schedules?

It was back with a new series on Sunday, and for those up early enough to catch it there was one of those spooky radio moments when everything else stopped still as a sound like no other filled the room. Caz Graham was in west Yorkshire in the heart of the Rhubarb Triangle to witness the growing of the pink stuff.

‘It’s a bit church-like,’ she told us as she walked into one of the huge pitch-dark sheds accompanied by rhubarb-grower Janet Oldroyd Hulme. The shed, explained Graham, is lit throughout by candles placed on sticks among the rows and rows of spindly pink stalks topped by floppy, anaemic-looking, pale-yellow leaves.