Bbc radio 4

In a comic-strip cartoon, beads of water apparently radiating outward from the head of one of the characters indicate embarrassment. Lines flying horizontally from a character, all in one direction and tailing off with distance, indicate rapid movement in the opposing direction. Every western child knows this; but were you to show the cartoon to a Tuareg nomad in the Sahara, these ciphers — which are really more a form of hieroglyph than a depiction of any recognisable object — would be meaningless. Likewise in a film, cutting between scenes  would totally confuse our Tuareg, who would wonder why we had apparently left one place and gone suddenly to another.

I’ve worked for the BBC for years and have been listening to the Today programme all my adult life, but joining it as a presenter feels like exploring a new frontier. Being on top of your brief is one thing; the mechanics of a three-hour live radio programme quite another. Take the junctions leading up to the ‘pips’ at the start of each hour. From television, I’ve been accustomed to directors counting presenters down to these junctions while they ad-lib on air — the idea being to stop talking as the voice in your ear says ‘zero’. But radio presenters are pretty much on their own, watching the clock and

Hard on the heels of the 90th birthday of Nicholas Parsons (10 October) comes the 65th birthday of the Prince of Wales (14 November). Neither is due for retirement any day soon. Indeed, I suspect retirement would be the death of the long-serving host of Radio 4’s Just A Minute. The Duchess of Cornwall listens to his programme, I know. Perhaps her husband does too. Either way, Parsons is a perfect role model for Prince Charles. Nicholas is young at heart, unfailingly charming and wholly committed to the strange lot that fate has accorded him. He has been hosting Just A Minute for 46 years and not missed a single recording.

If you haven’t scuffled you haven’t lived, and our local scuffle is the best of the best. A scuffle is a sort of off-road bumper cars in 4x4s, and it’s one of the highlights of the summer. Our car, The Scuffle Pig, was on her third outing this year. We thought she’d been dealt a fatal blow in 2011, when a foolish friend encouraged a fellow scuffler to get her out of a dip by ramming her. The back windscreen was smashed, and I had to leap out and strip my then 12-year-old stepson down to his underpants in front of numerous spectators in order to get rid of the

In January of this year, Melissa Kite wrote our cover story about how the RSPCA has morphed from being an animal welfare charity into an animal rights group.  She wrote of the ‘culture of fear at their headquarters’, and explained ‘how deeply suspicious some animal experts have become of this once-respected body’. Since then, the problems have only worsened. In July it was revealed that the charity’s Chief Executive, Gavin Grant, was paid ‘between £150,000 and £160,000’ a year – at least £30,000 more than his predecessor.  Last week it was found that the charity has access to the Police National Computer, allowing it to investigate any suspect, witness or defendant’s criminal record. One RSPCA whistleblower –

The Spectator’s Mary Killen — otherwise known as ‘Dear Mary‘ — was on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning discussing whether or not it was right for a Sainsbury’s checkout assistant to refuse to serve a customer who was on her mobile phone. Here’s the clip from this morning’s programme, and below we’ve put together some of our favourite Dear Mary dilemmas of the last six months. listen to ‘Dear Mary on mobile phone etiquette’ on Audioboo Q. I was sitting in a South West train the other day. A woman across the aisle was making nonstop calls into her mobile phone, speaking very loudly in what sounded to me like

Well done to the BBC Today programme’s Sarah Montague for not screaming abuse at Tommy Robinson, the English Defence League leader, when she interviewed him this morning. It seems that many wanted her simply to shriek abuse at the man – and now she is being criticised for having been too lax. Being aggressive with interviewees simply because you don’t like their opinions never really works; getting a bit arsey with them when they obfuscate or hide the truth, however, does work. But it makes no sense, having taken a decision to interview the clown, to then subject him to an intemperate tirade of bien pensant outrage. This is the

My irritability grows with age and tends to attach itself to things that surprise even me — for example, to the widely popular sight of people riding horses on country roads. The smug, self-righteous look on their faces makes my blood simmer dangerously. And another thing that particularly grates with me at the moment is the ubiquitous use of the expression ‘no problem’. Until recently the normal response to a ‘thank you’ would be ‘that’s quite all right’ or ‘my pleasure’ or maybe even, in the American manner, ‘you’re welcome’. But now, in Northamptonshire at any rate, it is always ‘no problem’; and while this is presumably meant to be

I’m So Excited is the latest offering from Pedro Almodóvar who, Deborah Ross says, she would usually love. But is I’m So Excited quite so, well, exciting? The trailer, which promises singing gay flight attendants, The Pointer Sisters, and plenty of booze, is below. And Deborah’s verdict? You can read it for yourself here. Do you have a favourite opera? In this week’s Spectator, Simon Courtauld declares his love for Verdi’s Don Carlos. It’s not about the structure, or the production, or all the little things that opera critics often criticise, he argues, but more about ‘the glorious music and the drama of the royal court in 16th century Spain.

If you succumbed to Downton fever, then the BBC’s latest period-drama, The Village, might have attracted your attention. But if it was Downton Revisited that you were after, you might have been sorely disappointed, says James Delingpole in his Television column. Set in 1914 Derbyshire, The Village is everything that Downton is not: ‘taut, spare, grown-up, accomplished, dark, strange and poetic, according to the critics’, and according to James, both clichéd and clunky. Here’s a clip from the first episode: Classical quartets seem to be all the rage in Hollywood at the moment, as this week’s Cinema review – Clarissa Tan on ‘A Late Quartet’ – illustrates. The film is,