ON the evening of December 21, 1988, Annie Lareau, a US student from Syracuse University, was in London waiting to fly home for Christmas but struggling with panic attacks at the prospect. Her friend had suggested she travel with her and other Syracuse students that day, but Lareau couldn’t afford to change her ticket.

That evening, looking for a distraction, Lareau turned on the television. At which point she was confronted with an even greater horror than her own fears.

“The BBC was saying a plane was missing and they didn’t know where or why or what it was, but they thought it was on its way to New York,” Lareau told Kirsty Wark on the latest episode of Radio 4’s The Reunion (Sunday & Friday). “And I knew instantly it was them. I could just feel it in my gut.”

The bombing of the Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie almost half a lifetime ago remains a deep scar in the historical memory of both Scotland and the United States. That came across very strongly on The Reunion, as Wark brought together a number of men and women associated with that terrible night in Lockerbie. Even all these years later the rawness of the emotions from all of them was palpable.

As a format The Reunion can be sometimes larky, sometimes combative. This episode was inevitably much more sombre in tone. But it was also full of small details of human kindness that shone a small light in the darkness.

When Lareau got on a plane to travel home to the US that Christmas, she was moved into first class with another Syracuse student. The pilot came to speak to both of them. He said he was the godfather of a child of one of the Lockerbie pilots and he promised he would get the pair of them home safely.

“I don’t know how that man flew that day over what must still have been the burning of Lockerbie underneath him,” Lareau said.

This was powerful, painful listening that brought home the arbitrary nature of such disasters. One young boy had gone to a neighbour with a punctured tyre on his bicycle. As a result, he survived while his parents and sister were killed. God, the horror of that.

Time for a sharp gear-change.

At the opposite end of the emotional spectrum on Sunday nights on Absolute Radio, Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess is recreating his much loved Twitter Listening Parties which helped music fans get through Covid lockdown.

The latest show saw husband and wife Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert, aka the other two in New Order, discuss the 1983 album Power, Corruption and Lies - Burgess’s favourite album.

Not mine, I have to say. But I do love New Order and any excuse to hear Morris and Gilbert talk is always welcome; Morris because he’s always funny, Gilbert because we don’t hear from her nearly enough.

That said, Gilbert had the best story in this two-hour show.

“When I had Tilly, my first child in hospital,” she told Burgess.

“Stephen, as a present, brought me around an alarm clock. The nurse said, ‘I don’t think you’ll be needing one of them …’ He also brought her “a little mini sequencer,” she added.

“I thought it would keep you occupied,” he said in his defence.

“I think we had enough to keep us occupied,” she pointed out.

Here’s a question to end on. Which is the sexiest science? According to Nihal Arthanayake’s show on 5 Live on Monday afternoon, the answer is physics. Sorry chemists and biologists. Blame Professor Brian Cox.

But all is not well in the world of physics, as guest, teacher and author Alom Shaha, pointed out. Globally, there is a shortage of good science teachers, he said. One in four state schools don’t have a qualified physics teacher. Unlike the theory of relativity, that, I’m afraid, is an all too easy equation to understand.

Listen Out For: My Teenage Diary, Radio 4, Thursday, 6.30pm

Comedian Ivo Graham is the latest celebrity to delve into his teenage diaries for presenter Rufus Hound. Contains Martin Amis and bruschetta.