On my shelves in the front room I have a series of fine books about David Bowie by the writer Simon Goddard. Each book is dedicated to a year in Bowie’s life. The series has currently reached 1974 (it started with Bowie Odyssey 70) and is set to continue until it reaches the end of that decade (which means another five or six books depending on when Goddard draws a line).

These books sit beside another half dozen books (at least) on David Robert Jones (as was), including one by Kevin Cann entitled Any Day Now which more or less tells you what the singer was doing on any given day between 1947 and 1974. (Thursday, September 25, 1969: “During the evening, David presents a meeting about the dangers of drug-taking at Bromley Centre Of Music and Arts …” Cue knowing chuckle.)

Cann’s book was published in 2010 and it’s fair to say that so much of our interest in the pop stars of the 1960s and 1970s has become of late … Well, what’s the word? Encyclopaedic?

It’s as if we have to know as much as possible about them, turn over every small stone in the story to see what is underneath. You can see it with The Beatles too, Dylan probably (though I’m not a fan so I’m not keeping up) and the Stones.

The BeatlesThe Beatles (Image: free)Is this a good thing? A healthy thing? Part of me is very doubtful. Do we need to know everything? Doesn’t it get in the way of imagination?

I think it might, but that doesn’t stop me consuming everything about Bowie as it comes along.

All of which is a long and winding road to get to Archive on 4 - Bowie in Berlin last Saturday night on Radio 4. Presented by Francis Whatley, the documentary film-maker responsible for the TV documentary trilogy Five Years, Finding Fame and The Last Five Years, and produced by John Wilson, it takes the most mythologised years of Bowie’s creative life - his retreat from drugs and Los Angeles to the “smack capital” of Europe - and attempts to find something new to say about them.

Does it? Yes, because Whatley meets with some of the women who played a part in this part of Bowie’s story but have rarely spoken: performer Romy Haag, journalist Sarah-Rena Hine and former actress and painter Clare Shenstone.

Shenstone’s tremulous voice is the key emotional anchor to this hour, a counterpoint to Bowie’s own familiar tones as heard in archive clips.

There was much to like about this documentary, most notably its attention to sonic textures. But Shenstone was the heart of it.

In 1977 Shenstone received a phone call from Bowie. “He said, ‘I’m in a bad way. I need you to come,’” she recalled. “‘Please, please. I need you. He said, ‘I’m so scared.’”

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Shenstone had first met Bowie in the 1960s and had even been at his wedding in 1970. Her account is the most affecting thing here. Her description of a day spent with Bowie in the east of the city is remarkable and revealing for anyone who wants to know more about the origins of Bowie’s now most resonant song, "Heroes".

“As the light was beginning to go we went back through Checkpoint Charlie,” she told Whatley. “We walked along the other side of the wall. There were spotlights and you could see the sentries and you could see the guns silhouetted. And we were holding hands and he took my other and he kissed me and it was so beautiful.”

For Shenstone, the song "Heroes" was all about that day. “Because we are lovers. That is a fact … That’s true,” she told Whatley.

I found Shenstone’s account hugely emotional because, of course, Bowie’s story is part of my story. He was my late wife’s favourite and every time I hear him sing now I think of her.

Maybe he is part of your story too. And that’s why we want to know everything about Bowie’s life - or Dylan’s, or McCartney’s; choose your own as required. Because it’s an extension of our own.

In other news, I met Stig Abell at Bloody Scotland in Stirling last weekend which reminded me that it’s been four years since he helped launch Times Radio with an interview with the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Four years and four Prime Ministers later, Times Radio is still going strong - less angry than LBC, maybe a little less uptight than 5 Live.

On Monday morning’s Breakfast Show, presented by Abell and Aasmah Mir, the much-heralded guest was Nigella Lawson who gave us her rules for acceptable eating behaviour. Phones at the table are OK for fact-checking, but nothing more. Eating in bed is allowed, but only with a spoon or fingers. Eggs should be kept at room temperature.

Crisps are fine and, Nigella added, “sometimes buttered toast is the most wonderful meal.”

Hope that’s all clear.

Listen Out For:

American Paradox, Radio 4, Sunday 1.30pm

And here we go. There’s a presidential election looming and the BBC is about to go full on in its coverage. In the first of two programmes, James Naughtie is off to the swing state of Arizona.