Antonia Quirke is an author and journalist. She is a presenter on The Film Programme and Pick of the Week (Radio 4) and Film 2015 and The One Show (BBC 1). She writes a column on radio for the New Statesman.
The show is strikingly and joyously like something from an earlier time, when less offence was taken and given.
“Woman says bollocks near Cheadle” is funnier than “Woman says bollocks in Cheadle”.
On a website “filled with the detritus and ephemera of great artists”, there’s a wonderful hunk of little-heard pieces for radio.
Now in its 26th series, the show takes a song or a piece of music and looks at its impact.
As the sixth full-cast series of Hitchhiker’s Guide ended, it was hard not to mop one’s bleeding ears and think what a sorry task it had been.
In Kearney, the BBC has (for once) identified the right star.
On the 20th anniversary edition of Front Row, Geldof’s ever-building uproar of enthusiasm for the New Jersey gangster saga was sensational.
Chilli Island Radio plays songs like The Doors’ “LA Woman”, with its shaggy-headed bass line, written around the time the first Westerners came to the Gilis.
John Milton dictated Paradise Lost to assistants. 350 years on, the poem still sounds like it was meant to be read aloud.
The show gives the impression that Bruni is sitting with her tousled hair falling around her eyes, a kerosene lamp at the centre of her velvet-swagged table.
