A show that brought a bomber face to face with his victims has been justly rewarded
The Reunion
Radio 4
Awards are lotteries. They compare apples with oranges, reward past reputations rather than current performances and frequently represent trade-offs between the organisations their judges represent. I need to say all that because, a few weeks ago, I lodged here my complaints about the softening and slackening of Today and on 30 April it won the Sony Radio Award for best breakfast show. I can't even argue that the judges must have found it the best of a bad lot, because its rival Five Live Breakfast won the best news and current affairs gong at the same ceremony. However, let me unreservedly congratulate John Humphrys for winning News Journalist of the Year for his reports from Basra, and, in fairness, add that Today's recent coverage of the French and the Scottish elections has done something to restore its prizewinning reputation.
I have no doubts, however, about another Sony Award winner, The Reunion (Sundays, 11.15am; repeated Fridays, 9am), which won gold for Speech Programme. Its format is so simple and effective that the programme is already a classic. The producers simply take a newsworthy event from the past 40 years and reunite four or five people who were involved in it. Passions have invariably lessened but memories have not dimmed; this equals perspective. The programme's special ingredient, however, is its careful use of archive material, which is not only woven into the studio discussion but heard by the participants, making it hard for them to deny what they said at the time.
The beauty of the format is that it can contain hugely disparate content. One episode reunited members of the Not the Nine O'Clock News team and featured an extraordinary moment of reconciliation between Chris Langham and the producer John Lloyd, who had fired him for his drug use and volatility. Other media reunions have involved the cast and crew of the reality soap The Family, journalists aboard at the launch of the Today newspaper and, in the latest series, an examination of the early days of EastEnders.
These programmes are fun, but the big topics work just as well. The 29 April show featured members of the British Antarctic Survey, who in 1984 discovered the hole in the ozone layer that led to the ban on CFC aerosols. It related how a team stranded in huts near the South Pole recharged environmentalism by convincing the world of the cause-and-effect relationship between its industrial output and its atmosphere. It also showed how serendipity - a team with British in its name, a strategic interest in the South Atlantic - made Margaret Thatcher become a prototypical green Tory.
The last edition of the most recent series (6 May; repeated Friday 11 May) was probably the best of the lot - a reliving of the 1984 Brighton bomb. The injured Conservative conference organiser Harvey Thomas, Jo Berry, daughter of Sir Anthony Berry who was killed, the then Northern Ireland secretary Douglas Hurd and the bomber Patrick Magee took part. Although a brace of Peter Taylor TV documentaries covered the same ground three years ago, having Magee in the same studio as his victims brought something new.
What struck me was how little opinions had changed and how much emotions had. Magee said that, "as a thinking human being", he made his decisions and stood by them. Hurd tried unsuccessfully to persuade him that the IRA premise was wrong: the UK government would not be bombed into surrendering to the republicans. Unlike Magee, Jo Berry rejects violence in all its forms, yet now shares public platforms with him. The only ghost was Norman Tebbit, who wrote the producers a bitter letter refusing to appear with an "unrepentant murderer" - yet (said Hurd) Tebbit, despite his injuries, had never stood in the way of negotiations with Sinn Fein.
The programme is moderated by Sue MacGregor. Her haughty voice and direct questions make The Reunion sound like a quintessential BBC programme. In fact it is made by an independent, Whistledown. As I await its return in August, I shall miss it. It is better than Desert Island Discs, for which it covers, and is becoming as compulsive as DID's former replacement, In the Psychiatrist's Chair.
Andrew Billen is a staff writer for the Times
Revolutionary art from China
Chinese art is the talk of the town, with prices at auction rocketing and Tate Liverpool's popular "The Real Thing" exhibition showcasing contemporary work from the world's fastest-growing superpower. The posters on display at the Chambers Gallery come from a very different age: communist propaganda prints from the 1950s to the early 1980s show idealised images of workers, peasants and soldiers, and the "Great Helmsman", Mao Zedong.
Chambers Gallery, London EC1, until 15 June. More information at: http://www.thechambersgallery.co.uk
Pick of the week
All the People I Hoped Were Dead
12 May, 8pm, Radio 4
Barry Norman on the undead of the Cannes Film Festival.
Between Ourselves
15 May, 9am and 9.30pm, Radio 4
Olivia O'Leary chats to a former and still serving prostitute.
In His Hands
15 May, 10.30pm, Radio 2
Candi Staton's personal, musical take on domestic abuse.
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