I SUSPECT I am not the target audience for Fortunately (Radio 4), where Fi Glover and Jane Garvey talk to each other in a very podcasty way. But I can see why people would like it.
Glover and Garvey are friends and that comes across. They talk about everyday stuff – pets, the bins, the mashed potato blandness of the recent Covid-coloured festive season – in an amused and amusing way. At one point in the first episode of their new series on Tuesday night Garvey had to disappear. “Just excuse me one minute, the decorator is shouting,” she told listeners.
At another Glover started telling us about her frozen shoulder. “If you say to a group of female friends, ‘I’ve got a frozen shoulder’ … I was going to say half of them will put their hand up, but they can’t.”
They even have a go at being agony aunts during which they talk menstruation, grief and homesickness.
But the reason I turned in on Tuesday was their guest was Liza Tarbuck. Jimmy’s daughter (and Pauline’s, as Tarbuck Jr would be the first to remind you), best known as a radio DJ on Radio 2.
And she’s very good at it. Glover and Garvey are big fans. “It’s rarer and rarer for people who really understand radio to get on air …” they tell her at one point, “but you just know radio and you make it special.”
There is a lot in that. Tarbuck’s Saturday evening show on Radio 2 is a mad thing. Her music choices are entertainingly eccentric (mostly) - last Saturday’s choices started with The Du Droppers and then took in Dexys, “Peculiar” Clarke, Kae Tempest, Department S, Sports Team and Julia Lee & Her Boy Friends amongst others – but it’s the monologues in between that mark her out.
Helped out by listener’s contributions (including on Saturday one listener’s erotic dream about Robbie Coltrane), Tarbuck creates a little sonic world of nonsense, fuelled by various accents, her distinctive wordplay and a filthy laugh. In this respect she’s in the radio tradition of Wogan and Everett. She doesn’t intrude into your world. You have to enter her’s.
(Shaun Keaveny’s show on 6 Music that ended last year did something similar. Keaveny has now moved onto podcasts).
“Steve is having spag bol tonight. Isle of Wight recipe. I don’t know what the secret ingredient might be. Resentment?” Tarbuck asks, laughing.
“Is anyone in charge of what you do and say" Garvey and Glover asked Tarbuck on Fortunately. You can probably guess the answer.
On Monday Elvis Costello talked to Nihal Arthanayake on 5 Live about his passion for the Welsh broadcaster Mavis Nicholson, working with Burt Bacharach and mortality, his own and others.
Talking about the death of his mother last year, the emotion in his voice was palpable.
What he took from that experience, he told Arthanayake, “was the will to live, the desire to live, even when things are compromised.”
We can’t go on, we go on, to slightly misquote Samuel Beckett. He’d have been great on Radio 2.
Listen Out For: Archive on 4: Bloody Sunday – 50 Years On, Radio 4, 8pm, tonight. Peter Taylor has done more than most to explain Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Here, he revisits what happened in Derry on that awful day 50 years ago.
We want to bring you the best The Herald has to offer every day, from our in-depth reads, unrivalled arts and lifestyle coverage, as well as our guide to everything from television, gardening, travel and outdoors to food and drink reviews.
For just £2 for two months, you can instantly read your favourite writers including Susan Swarbrick, Teddy Jamieson, Alison Rowat, Mark Smith, Vicky Allan, Russell Leadbetter and Barry Didcock, as well as Ron Mackenna, Rab McNeil, and the (in)famous Herald Diary.
Subscribe to The Herald and don't miss a single word from your favourite writers by clicking here
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here