A two-part Johnnie Walker interview with Neil Sedaka (19 and 26 April, 10pm) was the ultimate in genteel reminiscences. "Neil Sedaka," bowed Johnnie. "A man who has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was given a lifetime achievement award in the Songwriters Hall
of Fame and has a street named after him in Brooklyn . . ."

“And I'm still living! I visit every year and I see the street, Sedaka Way. Neil Sedaka Way."

It seems that Sedaka was brought up with 11 relatives in two rooms, five of them adoring aunts who married suddenly, leaving space
for a piano, at which Sedaka would sit playing Chopin, until someone sent him to the Juilliard School. "Oh, it was very strict," he said. "Legit. Brahms." The local kids called him names. It wasn't until he was 13 that Sedaka thought of writing music. "I'd be stuck in the pit during a production of Oklahoma! and just dream of it."

“So, how did you break out?"

“One day, in the privacy of my living room, I sang 'How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?'. I love Patti Page. I said: 'Ooh, that's pretty good . . .'"
And no, reader, I haven't gone and died with a travelling rug tucked round my knees. I was specifically listening to Johnnie Walker in an attempt to come down from seven minutes of Radio 1, during which time Fearne Cotton had been speaking to Tim Westwood down the line at a city farm about his new volunteering project. "Hello, Westwood? Tim Westwood?" There was a crackle on the line, then a low voice. "Hello. I'm here, baby."

Westwood sounded even creepier than usual. Hello baby? Fearne let it slide. She gave a hard laugh. That's what Radio 1 is - a competition
of mutual loathing. Its stars trust in one thing: the smell of their interlocutor's weakness. "I'm going through a life-changing experience today," said Tim. Fearne laughed her non-laugh. You could just see her, with her new, slick, brunette hairdo and eyes like two beads no man can ever quite pocket. She knows he doesn't mean it; he knows he doesn't mean it. There followed a weird exchange in which both DJs pretended to find each other charming.

“I'm in a pen," says Tim.

“Is it a pen where a pig lives?"

“Yes, yeah. Yes. I've been in with a pig, like, stroking the pig and talking to the pig?"

“Right."

“It really made me look at the world different. And then I met this lamb. And it was murmuring. Was it murmuring or bah-bah-ing?"

“Bleating."

“Yes, bah-bah-ing and bleating."

Jesus. What is it like to be these people? And after a show, do they get the feeling that it all occurred during a moment of ambulatory unconsciousness, forcing them to text their friends for their own edification, like the rest of us on those mornings when we wake up face down in a skip? (Did anyone notice?? RSVP.)