Radio
The liquid murmur of posh ladies
Published 06 September 2007
What is it that makes Woman's Hour so appealing to male listeners?
Woman's Hour Radio 4
"Woman's Hour? I live by that programme." That was the surprising, but not uncommon, reaction of one male friend when I told him I would be reviewing one of Radio 4's most venerable institutions. Think of it, and you immediately think of the cuddly-but-scarily-tough persona of its main presenter, Jenni Murray, who has been with the show since 1987. Well, now you can also think of legions of semi-employed young men tuning in as they stand, with Marigolds on, in front of a sink full of dirty dishes. The BBC press office folk are being coy; they won't tell me what proportion of the Woman's Hour audience is male, but a 2004 article in the Independent claimed about a third.
I am tempted to put this popularity among men down to remnants of the boyhood paranoia that girls are always talking about us when we're out of earshot, but the truth is a little more prosaic. Programme-makers must hate to be told this, but daytime radio is there to be half-listened to. It has to compete with so many other sounds: the noise of running water as you do the washing-up, or the roar of traffic on your commute to and from work. To me, this explains much of Radio 4's appeal: soft, burbling, middle-class voices whose vaguely tranquillising effect helps the day glide smoothly by.
This was best summed up by an item on Tuesday's programme, ostensibly about cocktails you could make from the spirits bought on holiday - limoncello, ouzo, Jägermeister - that linger forlornly at the back of the drinks cabinet once you're home.
Granted, there were a couple of useful recipes, but this item's real message was in the gurgle of liquid being poured into glasses, the clink of ice cubes being dished out, and the laughter of posh ladies getting drunk at 10.30am on a weekday. It said: don't worry, this morning's a write-off. You're obviously late for work, so why not call in sick? Or, if you're already en route, why not crack open that bottle of gin you have sitting in your desk drawer when you get there?
Many of the week's fluffier items fell into the category marked "sedative": antique jewellery boxes, an interview with a former tea lady at the House of Commons. And not even big names like Prunella Scales and Patricia Routledge could save the current instalment of the long-running comic drama Ladies of Letters, which rested uneasily on a dodgy conceit of two women who'd had laptops installed by their hospital beds so they could continue sending each other bitchy emails.
But Woman's Hour is not all froth and nonsense. Unlike most glossy women's magazines, the programme doesn't rely on creating relentless paranoia about body image to attract an audience. If there is an overtly feminist element to its content, then it is the regular features on health, which consistently make the point that women's bodies are their own business and no one else's.
This week, listeners were treated to detailed advice on polycystic ovarian syndrome and a cautionary item about pregnant women who pay for "boutique" ultrasound scans so that they can buy photos of their unborn baby (the people giving the scans may not be qualified to spot problems with the developing foetus). The health slots are unglamorous, but they are also some of the most engrossing sections of the programme. Why? Because it's always satisfying to hear well-researched journalism that explains difficult subjects to a non-expert audience.
The highlight of the week was a running item on child obesity. Each day, a different mother was asked to present a "food diary" for one of her children. At the end of the week, a dietician was brought into the studio, along with the families, to discuss their eating habits. Aside from all the useful dietary advice, the item carried some guilty pleasures: one was getting to hear a mother publicly embarrass her child on national radio (Helen Ross, from Dundee, chuckled as she noted that her 12-year-old son Andrew "tended to get stuck in the sweet aisle at the supermarket"); the other was that of hearing a child hungrily naming various kinds of junk food: chips, pizza, chocolate, and so on.
But I did wonder where all the fathers had gone. Surely they had a role to play in keeping their children healthy? Or were they all busy snaffling biscuits from the kitchen cupboard?
Andrew Billen is away
Pick of the week
World Briefing
Daily, BBC World Service
Put simply, the best news programme on air.
Just One More Thing: Columbo!
11 September, 11.30am, Radio 4
History of the classic American TV detective series.
Club Asia
963 and 972AM
Non-stop Bollywood pop hits; a great accidental radio discovery.
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