Well, thank the Lord, or whatever higher power you favour, that that is over. The last days of election coverage this week have been a bit tetchy. John Swinney asking Kaye Adams to stop interrupting him on Radio Scotland; Nick Ferrari going on about a non-story from Tory party central about Keir Starmer’s Friday night plans and having people phoning in to tell him so on LBC; Nick Robinson clashing with Richard Tice over Nigel Farage’s Ukraine stance on Radio 4’s Today.

It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if things could calm down a bit now and we could concentrate on something other than politics for a week or two. 

Fat chance. Radio is very much addicted to the ongoing need for constant politicking. The impact of Twitter (I refuse to call it X. But then I still call Starburst Opal Fruits) on how we perceive and increasingly shape the world and the way we report it - the need for constant updates and dopamine hits - will be the subject of books and theses in the years to come.

Anyway, rather than listen to the desperate, depressing last-minute scrapings from exhausted politicians and political correspondents, and as someone who is profoundly allergic to Wimbledon, I have mostly been listening to Radio 3 this week.

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The station’s transformation continues apace under Sam Jackson. It’s been announced that next year Petroc Trelawny will be replaced in the Breakfast slot by Tom McKinney, with Petroc then taking over from Sean Rafferty as host of the drivetime In Tune show.

Rafferty has admitted he has been left “shellshocked” by the decision which sees him leave Radio 3 after presenting In Tune for more than a quarter of a century. 

I’ll miss his familiar voice - one I used to hear reading the news on BBC Northern Ireland when I was growing up, so it’s been something of a constant - and I’ll miss Trelawny in the morning where he’s always been a joy to listen to.

As ever with schedule changes, the response has been noisy and often sceptical. The accusations of dumbing down have been common. Jackson will consider his shuffling of the pack a success if the falling listening numbers improve or - maybe a more achievable goal - stay roughly the same.

I guess I qualify as a sceptic, though I’m probably not a regular-enough listener to be able to speak with much authority. I was a bit wary of a new six-part series Music Matters: Music on the Front Line which started on Radio 3 last Saturday. And not only for the redundant repetition in the title. 

This new series presented by Clive Myrie sees his fellow correspondents talking about the importance of music in their working lives. The question is do we need another Radio 3 programme that does something passingly similar to Private Passions? And do we need yet another show in which BBC presenters talk to each other?

In theory I’d say no, but, actually, I rather enjoyed the first episode on Saturday morning. John Simpson was the guest and he had plenty of good war stories to tell, including his first posting to Northern Ireland in 1970 at the height of the Troubles. 

“I got into terrible trouble on the very first day I was there and was hugely lucky to escape with my life,” he told Myrie. Pulling out a tape recorder during an IRA funeral was not, perhaps, the smartest idea.

“I was grabbed afterwards and the chap in charge said, ‘Take him over there and give him one up the nostril, which meant sticking a gun in your nose and firing.”

They had him pegged as an army spy. If it hadn’t been for a passing Sunday Times journalist, Simpson’s might have been a short-lived career. 

The BBC’s World Affairs Editor told Myrie that he reckoned he’d had 10 near-death moments in his reporting life. “It’s part of the job.”

Songwriter Richard ThompsonSongwriter Richard Thompson (Image: free)

What made this programme work was that Simpson was able to dovetail the music choices with the biography, whether that was listening to Mercedes Sosa in Argentina during the Falklands War or Duke Ellington in a souk in Baghdad in 1990.  

His description of being bombed during the Second Gulf War is a story that Simpson has told many times but it remains vivid and horrifying. The music - Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony - reflected the turbulence of the events he described.

Next up, Lyse Doucet. I like to think she’s a big Iggy Pop fan. I’ll be disappointed if I'm wrong.

Finally, a brief detour to Glastonbury. I was up early last Sunday morning and caught the news bulletin on 5 Live at 7am, which mentioned Coldplay’s headlining slot the night before. The newsreader pointed out that the band had made history by becoming the first act to headline the festival five times.

A BBC editor then cut to a snippet of Shania Twain’s That Don’t Impress Me Much. It was a set-up for a mention of Twain’s Sunday afternoon appearance in the legends slot at the festival. But it was hard not to hear it as a sly diss on Chris Martin and the band. Very cheeky, but I did laugh.

Listen Out For: Private Passions, Radio 3, Sunday, noon

The great folk rock guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson is the subject of this week’s Radio 3 music and memoir show. Expect Beethoven, Purcell and Benjamin Britten on the playlist