Kate Chisholm

‘We will know one day why it happened,’ said the mother of Helga Mosey. ‘We will know one day why it happened,’ said the mother of Helga Mosey. Helga was just 19 when she was killed in the bomb that destroyed PanAm flight 103 as it flew over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on the night of 21 December 1988. Mrs Mosey was being interviewed the day after, doorstepped at her home in the Midlands by several news teams anxious for a story, a reaction, a headline. This week’s Archive on 4 was the first in a series, ‘A Life Less Ordinary’, which is not so much reliving history as looking back at the radio interviews, the TV reporting, the newspaper stories to examine the ways in which these very dramatic events impact on the people at their heart.

What are we supposed to make of those odd pictures of Osama bin Laden sitting crouched in a dingy, undecorated concrete room watching something blurred on a small TV screen? Is this really the face of jihadist evil? These were the questions behind this week’s provoking 15-minute drama in the From Fact to Fiction slot on Saturday (Radio 4). What are we supposed to make of those odd pictures of Osama bin Laden sitting crouched in a dingy, undecorated concrete room watching something blurred on a small TV screen? Is this really the face of jihadist evil? These were the questions behind this week’s provoking 15-minute drama in the From Fact to Fiction slot on Saturday (Radio 4).

‘She hung up and ended the interview,’ said John Humphrys on Saturday morning’s Today programme (Radio 4), sounding rather bemused. ‘She hung up and ended the interview,’ said John Humphrys on Saturday morning’s Today programme (Radio 4), sounding rather bemused. Had he really been cut off mid-round? The battle not yet won. He’d just been talking to Reem Haddad, director of Syrian state television and also, or so the BBC’s website declares, a spokesperson for the Syrian administration (an odd combination of roles, one might think). Haddad had questioned Humphrys’s use of the number ‘500-odd’ persons as having been killed by state troops during the current uprising in Homs and Deraa.

Trust a radio critic, she who is paid to listen, not to rely on the wireless set in her car for information when stuck on a highland road miles from anywhere in a jam that stretches far into the horizon in both directions. But when a forest fire closed the road we were travelling on back across the mountains I realised I hadn’t a clue how to retune our southbound radio from the preset buttons and so couldn’t find the local station, Moray Firth Radio. After three hours, in the gloaming, we turned back along the road we had travelled. If only we had waited — or listened to MFR. Ten minutes later, the road reopened, exactly as MFR had announced to their listeners, as we ruefully discovered only the next day after an expensive overnight stay.

Five clever updates of Old Testament stories filled Radio 3’s late-night speech slot this week and revealed just how difficult it is to make these stories work in a contemporary setting. Five clever updates of Old Testament stories filled Radio 3’s late-night speech slot this week and revealed just how difficult it is to make these stories work in a contemporary setting. Without the cadences of the Authorised Version, the rigour of the language, its powerful rhetoric but also its inflated poetic style, Noah and his ark, or Samson and Delilah, can appear quite ridiculous. How do you make sense of miracles in our enlightened times?

Big changes are happening to the airwaves, part of the frenetic technological revolution that’s been unleashed by the development of a digital language. Big changes are happening to the airwaves, part of the frenetic technological revolution that’s been unleashed by the development of a digital language. Radio, against expectations, is proving itself a vital force in these fast-moving times, because it’s flexible, adaptable and still compelling. The human voice, the imagination of sound, will endure when perhaps TV will fade out, evolving into another kind of internet exchange.

‘We are humbled,’ said Keiichi Hayashi, ‘we are humbled by the power of nature.’ The Japanese ambassador to the UK was talking on Monday morning’s Today programme on Radio 4. ‘We are humbled,’ said Keiichi Hayashi, ‘we are humbled by the power of nature.’ The Japanese ambassador to the UK was talking on Monday morning’s Today programme on Radio 4. It was a stark and moving moment. He spoke slowly, gently, thoughtfully, choosing his words carefully, the shock of what has happened in Japan echoing through his voice. In contrast, Jim Naughtie fumbled clumsily on air, unsure what to say, or how. He was in Japan, not Mr Hayashi. ‘You’ll know that I’m talking to you from Sendai.

Amid the fear and drear of cuts, and yet more cuts, Radio 3 has offered its fans an adrenaline boost by suddenly announcing a huge increase in the number of ‘live’ performances on the station. Amid the fear and drear of cuts, and yet more cuts, Radio 3 has offered its fans an adrenaline boost by suddenly announcing a huge increase in the number of ‘live’ performances on the station. ‘It’s not about cost,’ says Roger Wright, the controller, ‘it’s about the distinctiveness of the Radio 3 brand.’ By the middle of May, he promises, Performance on 3 will be truly live every weekday evening, and not just a specially recorded concert, broadcast a few nights, or weeks later.

Recent events in Egypt have exposed not just the chasms in our understanding of what’s been going on in the countries of the Middle East, but also the effects of changes in how the BBC is spending the licence fee on reporting ‘fast-breaking’ stories. Recent events in Egypt have exposed not just the chasms in our understanding of what’s been going on in the countries of the Middle East, but also the effects of changes in how the BBC is spending the licence fee on reporting ‘fast-breaking’ stories.

All this talk about cuts might not be such a bad thing, if it forces us to think about what really should not be left to rot and wither away for lack of funding. Take the BBC’s World Service. Do we really need it in these post-imperial times? After all, it was set up in 1932 so that the King could keep in touch with his subjects, day and night, around the globe, wherever they might be. Those first broadcasts rather touchingly suggested that the King and his representatives in Whitehall actually cared about what happened to the peoples of Togo, Tanganyika and Christchurch, NZ.