MOST mornings I start the day with 5 Live Breakfast. Just after the 8.30 news and sport, Nicky Campbell pops up to give a preview of what is coming on his phone-in show at 9am. That’s usually my prompt to turn the radio off or over. 

It’s not totally because of the fact that I really don’t like phone-in shows (though that’s a big part of it). Partly is that Campbell’s approach - clever morphing into clever-clever - rubs me up the wrong way. 

This is, I recognise, a matter of personal taste. Campbell is undeniably a broadcaster who connects with many. I am just not one of them.  

I should also say that back at the start of the 1990s I regularly listened to his late-night Radio 1 show. I still have a huge fondness for Matthew Sweet, whom he played to death at the time, as a result. And I reckon he could be smart verging on smartass back then too. 

Tastes change. Campbell can too. One of the pleasures of his Different podcast on BBC Sounds is that it often feels that Campbell doesn’t seem to be trying quite so hard as he sometimes does on radio. 

I much prefer this version of Nicky. A more laid back, less flamboyant iteration.

This week’s podcast, which dropped on Wednesday, saw him talk to M.E. Thomas, a diagnosed psychopath. She explained what that means clearly and precisely. “Psychopaths are very impressionable. Because without a sense of self they are very prone to being led astray.”

“What separates you from the death row inmate?” Campbell asked her at one point. Maybe it’s intelligence, education or opportunities, she suggested. Or maybe because she wasn’t raised in a chaotic situation (though her relationship with her dad was clearly difficult).

It’s an intriguing interview where Campbell even got to ask, “Are you a potential serial killer?” Probably not. Thomas said she couldn’t see what her motivation would be. “Just because you’re not emotional about most of your actions doesn’t mean that you just do anything.”

In passing, Campbell revealed a lot about his own outlook and himself in the questions he asked. Discussing sex and love and intimacy he described a post-coital moment and asked her if she recognises that feeling.

 “Ah, maybe not exactly the way you describe … But it sounds awesome for you,” she suggested, laughing.

The joy of randomness in radio, part 567. Last Sunday I tuned into Radio 3 to catch Private Passions with guest Ben Watt (of Everything But the Girl fame). The radio was still on the same channel when I turned it on again at teatime just as Sunday Feature was beginning, introducing me to someone I knew nothng about. Some 45 minutes later I wanted to know everything.

The Pleasures and Pains of Denton Welch saw Regan Hutchins celebrated the life of the writer and artist who died at the age of 33 in 1948. 

Welch was 20 when he was knocked off his bike while cycling, suffering a fractured spine. He would live the rest of his short life in pain. But his writings are full of pleasure; the pleasure of food, of sex (his partner Eric was an agricultural worker) and of art. 

There were shadows over all of this - the shadow of illness, obviously, but also the fear of exposure for his sexuality and the worry that a German bomb might fall on him as he tootled around wartime Kent.

As a result, the pleasure was more fiercely held.

Hutchins sought to reclaim Welch from the neglect of cultdom. What emerged in this 45-minute programme was a seductive portrait of a waspish, precocious talent who didn’t live nearly long enough but who still left a legacy however obscure it might be.

And it all rose to a really rather moving climax in which the New York Times critic Sadie Stein suggested that Welch was a voice for those in torment.

“People feel very lonely now, very alienated," she said. "We think we are in uniquely horrible circumstances and in some ways we are. But people have always been in deep pain and it can be reassuring to know that you are not the first.”

Welch is a hidden treasure, but he gleamed brightly in this documentary.

 

Listen Out For: Late Junction, Radio 3, Friday, 11pm

Comedian James Acaster offers up a mixtape that includes electronica, Japanese reggae-pop and experimental hip-hop.