The Stage

Radio review - Light programme

Published Monday 15 March 2010 at 12:10 by Nick Smurthwaite

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. But a brief encounter between the world’s most famous boxer and the world’s most famous pop group in 1964 turned out to be a flimsy excuse for a programme.

Cassius Clay was due to fight Sonny Liston in Miami Beach and the Beatles were due to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show. Everyone was convinced Liston would retain his heavyweight title, and the Beatles were said to be reluctant to be pictured with Clay because they had him down as a loser. In the event, they were won over by his extraordinary charisma and physical presence and the photo-journalist Harry Benson took some memorable shots of the five of them messing around.

Apparently, after this unremarkable encounter, the 22-year-old Clay, soon to become the legendary Mohammed Ali, asked one of his entourage, “Who were those little sissies?”

As a prelude to his five-day visit to the Soho Theatre in May, Dutch entertainer Hans Teeuwen was Rory Bremner’s first guest in the three-part Rory Bremner’s International Satirists. Teeuwen, once described as “the Dutch Eddie Izzard”, wowed audiences at Edinburgh’s Udderbelly last summer with his combustible mix of musical impressions, social (and sexual) comment and zany sketches.

Teeuwen’s comedy became politicised after the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, his close friend, was murdered by a Muslim extremist in 2004, and he has spoken out about freedom of speech on many occasions. In recent years he has appeared more often in the UK than in Holland. His English is so good you’d hardly know he was foreign. Could he be the first comedy ex-pat since Rich Hall to become a regular fixture on the UK comedy scene?

Even the hard taskmasters of Front Row were raving about the newly-opened Love Never Dies, using unfamiliar adjectives such as “thrilling” and “hugely imaginative.” Thankfully presenter Mark Lawson, shocked by his own enthusiasm for an Andrew Lloyd Webber show, restored the status quo with a sting in the tail: “Twenty four years ago the critics hated (Phantom of the Opera) and it has run forever. Now they’re either lukewarm or praiseworthy (about Love Never Dies) so the mathematics tell us it might not run so long.”

Singer Marc Almond was an excellent choice to present Behind the Brel since he owned up to “a lifelong love affair” with the great exponent of French chanson.

Thirty-two years after his death, aged 49, there is still an enduring fascination with Jacques Brel, both as a performer and a songwriter. From first-hand accounts of his stage presence - “he faced the audience like a bullfighter” - we can surmise that his energy and attack, coupled with the passion of his songs, have not been equalled since.

The Brel song best known to the English-speaking world is Ne Me Quitte Pas (Don’t Leave Me), which American singer-songwriter Rod McKuen cleverly reinvented as If You Go Away. According to McKuen there have been 700 separate cover versions.

Even more than Desert Island Discs, R3’s Private Passions often proves to be fertile ground for musical magpies.

Michael Berkeley, the show’s unflappable presenter, who must have heard some odd choices in his time, could scarcely contain his bewilderment at some of playwright Lee Hall’s weird and wonderful offerings. They included the late and little-known American composer and pianist Conlon Nancarrow, who once described his more obscure compositions as “literally impossible for anyone to play,” a recording by regulars at the Black Bull pub in Macclesfield, and a completely incomprehensible Glaswegian singer called Dick Gaughan. I thought my taste in music was pretty weird but in this programme Hall redefined the term eclectic.

Ali: When Cassius Met the Beatles Radio 4, Saturday, March 13

Rory Bremner’s International Satirists Radio 4, Monday, March 8

Front Row Radio 4, Wednesday, March 10

Behind the Brel: The Story of a Musical Genius Radio 2, Tuesday, March 9

Private Passions Radio 3, Sunday, March 14