LISTENING to the Eurovision Song Contest live on Radio 2 without the distraction of the naff costumes, and the distracting enjoyment of boom booma boom dance routines of the predominantly style-free contestants, without Wogan's irreverent ridicule of the whole event, seemed at first pointless. And stayed that way - like a note held too long to show that it could be done.
The limited fund of the contest lies in our superior contemplation of the gap between the expense and hype, and the pappy music - emptied out of soul, sexiness or merit. (Like the Teletubbies are only a post-modern giggle if you're a stoned 18-year-old student, it has to be shared, like a joint, with folk of the same mindset as yourself, otherwise it's deeply depressing.) Take away the visuals and the ironists cannot point and shriek. I suppose the BBC is kind of duty bound to let somebody out there hear it.
Still, I'm not really blaming Radio 2. How can I, with the truly cool Jools Holland doing wonders for a Monday night?
The sexiest thing about Jools Holland (well, that I can feasibly elucidate) is that his professionalism comes from the pure source of loving the art - a classy enthusiasm drawing you in without narcissistic fuss.
Burt Bacharach, too, is supremely classy.
The master of popular songwriting was given a terrific tribute this week by Dionne Warwick, notching up an astounding list of hits in a voice like dark honey.
He deserved his accolade on his 70th birthday in The Story of My Life (R2).
Marlene Dietrich's paean was a lesson in cool complimenting. Well, actually it was a seduction draped in smoke, pretending to be an introduction: ''I can't love him any more than I love him now,'' she drawled to an audience.
Elvis Costello described their collaboration by fax and phone and the man's graciousness.
But it was, of course, the songs - you wanted to hear all of them unabridged ... impossible in the time.
The breadth of styles and the variety of artists who interpreted his numbers was like a history of contemporary popular music - Trains and Boats and Planes, Anyone
Who Had a Heart, Make it Easy on Yourself, Message to Martha, Alfie - listening to these, brought out a genuine rush of respect for the
smooth craftsman.
I found the latest scam of US agriculture business interests straightforwardly easy to blame, though. Ignoring the advice of the Organic Standards people, they intend a relabelling con, which would mean that irradiated or genetically engineered food could be sold as ''organic''.
The shopper would not know. This would be very handy because an increasing number the people who are demanding clean, pure food provided by the organic food industry, could now be duped and the competition screwed.
It would be like passing a law whereby free-range eggs would be indistinguishable from battery farm on the supermarket shelf. This wide application of the word ''organic'' is known as lying. But it was good to hear - on the excellent Food Programme (R4) - that the corporate fibbers have totally landed themselves in the manure. Seems they had not reckoned on the strength of the middle-class consumer.
In author and ex-soldier Benny Barrabash's My First Sony, a little boy, Yotam, uses his new gift to tape the arguments which rage and simmer around him. His parents are active in the ''Peace Now'' movement, his grandparents are Israel's pioneers, survivors of the Shoah. Postscript: No Exit (R3) had extracts from the novel, alternating with the writer's careful outlining of his country's tensions and contradictions. The parts complimented each other and formed a deep and textured whole. He was at pains to insist his fictional family was no schematic microcosm of Israel.
And indeed, the lyrical, wry anguish of the writing was that of a storyteller, not a polemicist.
But his description of himself as a soldier, in occupied territory, placed in a morally untenable situation, disclosed the unyielding integrity of the man which shone even from these short prose extracts.
It is in such meticulous sensibility that Israel's hope resides.
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