TO work from home in these strange, dark times is to be reminded of the comfort of radio. Voices filling the long, quiet hours; the sense they give of a world outside, one we aren’t really part of anymore. You can listen intently or let them flow over you.
Radio is good in a crisis. You can listen horrified to the latest news or turn over to your musical station of choice (6 Music in my case; it’s made me fall in love with Britney Denise Parks, aka Sudan Archives in the last week) and try and put the horror to the back of your mind.
Even phone-ins are worth listening to again. Suddenly, all that tedious contrarian opinion, the unchallenged half-regurgitated gobbets of tabloid opinion, that marked the Brexit years, has been replaced by people simply seeking answers to questions from scientific, medical and/or business experts about the coronavirus and its impact.
And there are moments of escape, too. On Sunday evening Radio 3’s latest instalment of Slow Radio, Rain on a Hot Tin was an ambient half-hour of archive soundings of the slap of water on surfaces. The sound of it rattling on the tin roofs in Indonesia was a balm.
On World at One on Tuesday afternoon novelist Margaret Atwood, above, was asked if she could see any light in the darkness. “Do I think the bulbs will grow?” she replied. “Yes.”
Hope is a state of mind.
ONE TO LOOK OUT FOR Jock, Radio 2, tonight, 9pm
Part of Radio 2’s Funny Fortnight, this new comedy pilot stars Gary Lewis playing a retiring football manager. It’s written by Greg (Still Game) Hemphill and Donald (Mountain Goats) McLeary
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