Georgia Mann

What’s your musical poison? The songs or symphonies that make you shudder with displeasure? Whether it’s K-Pop, Bruckner, Barry Manilow or Be-bop that you consider to be an assault on your ears, I strongly advise that a little of what you think you cannot stand, does you good. Try listening to more music you don’t like, and your horizons will expand as the algorithmic shackles of your listening life are thrown off. Trust me, I play music on the radio for a living, and it worked for me.  The morning after the news of Dolly Parton’s death broke, I was presenting Essential Classics on BBC Radio 3, where the playlist is entirely classical every weekday.

‘Listen to this drivel’ is not the combination of words a radio presenter longs to see in reference to their exertions, but it’s what The Spectator associate editor Damian Thompson had to say about me on X recently. I’d provoked Thompson’s ire by telling people what was coming up that morning in my Radio 3 programme, Essential Classics, in a one-minute video delivered with a somewhat unserious tone. Thompson did later apologise for being rude but declared: ‘It’s just awful to hear the new house style of Radio 3.’   Thompson joins other Spectator writers who have their collective underwear in a twist about the style of presentation on Radio 3.