Oh, England. Give us a break from your footballing entitlement

Harry Kane - who has scored more goals for his country than anyone else - was dismissed as “overrated”. It was down to Savage to remind his callers that Spain were demonstrably the better team on the night.

Underlying all the calls was the (understandable) disappointment from England fans that they hadn’t won, but also an unspoken entitlement that they deserved to. One caller phoned in to have a go at Maradona for his handball in 1986, which frankly seemed just a little after the fact.

But then the past does linger on long after it has disappeared in the rearview mirror. On Radio Scotland last Sunday Mark Stephen spoke to Ayrshire miners 40 years on from the miners’ strike for Our Story and what was clear was how vivid in the memory those days still remained to them.

NUM president Arthur Scargill at a Labour party gala in Cumnock, Ayrshire (Image: free)

They talked about the clashes at the pits, their support for the strike and Arthur Scargill. “I support him 100 per cent,” one of them told Stephen. “I used to kid my wife on if we have a wean we’re going to be crying the wean Arthur. And then it was a lassie we had.”

What they didn’t like talking about were those miners who had gone back to work during the strike. What must have it been like for them, Stephen asked?

“You’d need to ask them. We just never spoke to them,” he was told When the strike ended in 1985 they wouldn’t get on a bus with people they were still calling “scabs”.

The mines closed soon after, but 40 years on the antagonism remains.

Let’s accentuate the positive for a moment. On Radio Scotland on Tuesday night Del Amitri’s Justin Currie turned up to talk to Roddy Hart for a couple of hours.

It was a remarkably upbeat occasion given that earlier this year Currie revealed he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. But he told Hart that the medication was working and, frankly, he sounded in great form; as funny and honest as ever. It was a pleasure to spend time in his company.

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The most evocative radio programme of the week was Searching for Butterflies (Radio 4, Sunday and Monday) in which Syrian geologist Mudar Salimeh discussed his quest to find butterflies in the country’s mountainous Latakia region. Salimeh was a sweet, wryly funny guide, but didn’t shy away from the damage caused by civil war, physically and psychologically. There were plenty of ghosts.

What I took away, though, was the sense of place as captured by audio artist Nanna Hauge Kristensene. Here was the sound of rain and running water and thunder and birds and insects and Salimeh’s soothing voice. A sonic comfort blanket despite the encroaching shadows.

Finally on Sunday morning Paddy McGuinness was hosting one of Radio 2’s endless quizzes with members of the public. Referring to Radio 2’s Saturday morning DJ Romesh Ranganathan, McGuinness asked one contestant: “On Saturday Romesh was joined in the studio by which famous Carr?”

You can’t see that second R over the radio which might explain why the answer given was not Alan, but Kit, which you might recognise as the car in the 1980s American TV drama Knight Rider.

“My God in Heaven,” McGuinness exploded. “Are you absolutely winding me up? You think we’ve got an actual car in the studio? We drove Kit from Knight Rider up the stairs straight into the room with Romesh?”

“I don’t know,” his guest replied. “Maybe it was on location.”

Listen Out For

BBC Proms, Radio 3, Wednesday, 7.30pm

This Prom marks the 50th anniversary of the death of singer-songwriter Nick Drake on Wednesday. Celebrating his songbook, Olivia Chaney, Marika Hackman and The Unthanks collaborate with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in this special Royal Albert Hall event.