Radio review - light programme

Published Monday 18 August 2008 at 11:15 by Jeremy Austin

Is it a British thing to feel uncomfortable in the presence of one of the world’s greatest players of the self-blowing trumpet?

Certainly Elaine Paige, when she met Barry Manilow on her Elaine Paige on Sunday programme, didn’t seem that fazed by her guest’s auto-hyperbole.

“I did loads of research, as I always do,” he tells our Elaine when talking about his Showstoppers album from 1991. “I made demos of hundreds of songs and they were all great.

Or how about this, when recalling his debut in Las Vegas as second on the bill to the great Helen Reddy. “I was told they were going to be eating their steaks and talking, but they loved me,” he says modestly, later dropping in: “When I sold out the MGM Las Vegas, I thought, ‘What’s going on?’”

Or this: “Do you know Bill Kenwright? What a sweet guy.”

Paige was suitably Radio 2 - polite to the point that she was unable to show the passion she undoubtedly has for her guest and the subject.

Unlike Phill Jupitus. In The Man Who Bought Hendrix’s Stage, it’s all he can do to stop himself genuflecting in front of the many amazing exhibits in Joe Chambers’ Musicians’ Hall of Fame museum in Nashville.

To be fair to him, it sounds a fabulous place. Chambers explains that his museum - collected during his 25 years as a session musician - is a tribute to the backroom boys, the session musicians.

Phill is beside himself. At one point, he spots a flute that has been played on tracks by the Beach Boys and Canned Heat, as well as on the theme from Shaft, among countless other classic tunes.

“That instrument is my musical history,” he gushes, “sat in front of me in that cabinet.”

So interesting is this show that it doesn’t need Jupitus’ enthusiasm to make it a riveting listen, but it gives the show an invaluable authenticity.

To be honest, the sort of person who will get excited listening to interviews with Bobby Woods, Elvis’ session musician, Scotty Moore, his guitarist, and Cricket J I Allinson, is going to be a music fan. With Jupitus, those fans get a fellow fan as their advocate.

Is it true, he asks Chambers at one point, that Allinson played a cardboard box as a drum on Peggy Sue? If only Paige had shown that depth of knowledge when interviewing Manilow.

“You can ask him later,” says Chambers. And there is an audible ‘pop’ as Jupitus’ excitement bursts forth (it wasn’t Peggy Sue, he discovers, but Not Fade Away and You’re So Square. The fool).

In a medium where the voice is everything, a narrator endowed with enthusiasm and intelligence is the king. And so it is with Mark Watson, who returned this week with his second series for Radio 4 - Mark Watson Makes the World Substantially Better.

In the last series, he tackled vice - “The last series wiped out the seven deadly sins”. This time, he has chosen six virtues. For the first episode - courage.

Watson was once an ultra-nervy performer who hid behind a faux Welsh accent. Now he is a fiercely intelligent, articulate comic whose mixture of brilliant observational comedy and, as he puts it, “thought”, is unmatched.

He is a skinny head and shoulders (can you have a skinny head? No matter- move on) above most of his contemporaries. And he is a supreme example of how modern comedy differs from that celebrated by Lee Mack in Soup in a Basket, which finished this week with a look at the decline of the Northern Club scene.

While clubland undoubtedly produced some great British comics - Russ Abbott and Bernie Clifton who are interviewed, Bernard Manning, one of the greatest deliverers of material, who obviously isn’t - somehow their material seems more dated than some of those who preceded them - from the Marx Brothers, through the Goons to the Pythons. While Mack tries valiantly to celebrate this period in comic history, he merely succeeds in convincing why we should merely look back on it fondly and move on.

DETAILS

Elaine Paige on Sunday: Barry Manilow - R2, Sunday, August 17

The Man Who Brought Hendrix’s Stage - R4, Saturday, August 16

Mark Watson Makes the World Substantially Better - R4, Wednesday, August 13

Soup in a Basket - R2, Tuesday, August 19