What happened to BBC Radio 3?

The decline of Radio 3 makes a sad story. Established in 1967 to reflect the world of classical music, and high culture in general, it has become a swamp of mediocrity, peopled by presenters who might feel more comfortable on a pick ’n’ mix stall. Every day, in almost every way, it seems determined to forfeit the goodwill of listeners who remember what public service broadcasting used to sound like.

Last week, building up to International Women’s Day, the station fluttered its feathers like a randy peacock. The Kanneh-Mason family, those latter-day Von Trapps, were on parade, and there were lashings of featherweight female composers. In the case of Florence Price, a favoured daughter, featherweight is possibly a division too steep.

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For this is a world of constant abrasion where genres are defied, trails are blazed, and ambassadors for global roots are piped aboard like Admirals of the Fleet. A lady called Paola Mendoza was invited to bring the week’s frolics to a close, and they surely chose wisely. The Resistance Revival Chorus she helped to set up proclaims that ‘joy is an act of resistance’ – and don’t you forget it.

‘Spurious democracy’ was the phrase coined by John Drummond, Radio 3 controller between 1987 and 1992. Drummond made enemies every time he walked into a room, but he knew what he was fighting for: western civilisation. His memoir, Tainted by Experience, recounted the battles he waged on its behalf, at the BBC and as director of the Edinburgh International Festival. He was a brave man who had no use for inverted snobbery.

There are no longer any Drummonds. Nor are there recognisable successors to Nicholas Kenyon and Roger Wright, who took up the helm when he left. They were accused of diluting the station’s tone, but loyal listeners would willingly return to those days. Under Sam Jackson, who marks two years in the post next month, Radio 3 has become a glee club for adolescents.

Let’s celebrate the good things it does. There is a chamber concert each weekday at 1 p.m., and an orchestral concert at 7.30 p.m. Composer of the Week, presented by Donald Macleod, offers an hour-long perspective five times a week, and Saturday evenings are given over to Opera on 3.

Private Passions, steered by Michael Berkeley, ploughs through the waters each Sunday at midday, and Alyn Shipton brings Jazz Record Requests four hours later. There is also a nightly Essay on weekdays at 9.45 p.m., which doesn’t always hit the bull’s-eye but is worth an arrow. Words and Music, at 6 p.m. on Sundays, is always assembled with care.

The other side of the inventory reveals some shockers. This Classical Life, with Jess Gillam, the gifted saxophonist, is a tittering mishmash. Music Planet, where all those genres are daringly defied, is a duffers’ delight. Earlier… with Jools Holland doesn’t work. The boogie-woogie man loves classical music, but his enthusiasm is that of the teacher one page ahead of the class. When a Radio 3 presenter tells us that Alfred Brendel is a ‘legendary pianist’, as he did, it’s time to pack away the tent.

Holland is not the worst offender; not while Elizabeth Alker draws breath. Nor is she the most irritating chunterer, so long as Tom McKinney is on parade. Kate Molleson could give them both five yards’ start and breast the tape a full second ahead. Yet this gormless trio are monarchs of the microphone set against Linton Stephens.

He loves his ‘conchairtoes’, does Stephens, a bassoonist recruited to add a popular touch. McKinney, who also exaggerates his northern vowels, manages to mangle fairly simple words like Barbirolli. If you can’t pronounce correctly the names of familiar composers and conductors – and it’s clear these people struggle – then why are they on the wireless?

There should be no room for this quartet, whose speech (a different thing altogether from accent) is so sloppy – deliberately sloppy. It’s that ‘spurious democracy’ again. We’re no poshos, they appear to be saying. We speak like ordinary people. Oh, give over.

Macleod, Shipton, Ian Skelly, Martin Handley and Petroc Trelawny have voices suited to the station’s purpose, and a musical knowledge that enhances their presenting skills. Tom Service, mustard keen, still sounds like a boy scout after two decades behind the mic. Groovy Georgia Mann you wish well, but if she is to find her voice, she will have to leave the banal Essential Classics slot. Katie Derham, who cannot complete a sentence without corpsing, should pack her bags. Her race is run.

Derham, like Holland and Clive Myrie, was roped in from television to scatter some stardust on the network. There’s no disguising that they are laypeople: enthusiasts, certainly, but Radio 3 needs expertise, not celebrities with an hour to fill.

Expertise doesn’t butter many parsnips in this kitchen. In a just world, Geoffrey Smith would still be presenting his superb programmes on jazz, which were binned six years ago. It’s an inexplicable loss. We have hours of ‘immersive’ mood music, and trailers every 30 minutes for something called BBC Sounds, but no Smith, who brought an expert’s touch to all he did. There it is, in a nutshell: the self-willed fall from grace of Radio 3, a station whose sole purpose is to educate.