How many comedians have their own radio shows these days? At the weekend it can feel like all of them. On Radio 2 Romesh Ranganathan is still finding his feet on Saturday mornings while his mate Rob Beckett has his feet under the table on Sunday teatime (he’s a bit too busy, a bit too in-your-face for my tastes, but maybe a Sunday evening is exactly when you need a bit of a gee-up).
Taxes played a big part in the first episode of Mary Beard’s returning series Being Roman on Radio 4 on Tuesday morning. Beard was taking a look at the life of Gaius Julius Alpinus Classicianus, the Procurator - or financial officer - of the province of Britain in the wake of Boudicca’s rebellion which had burnt London and other Roman cities to the ground.
There is a celluloid land beyond Whisky Galore! and The Wicker Man, Trainspotting and Braveheart. What’s it like? A bit of a mess, but an interesting one at times.
At the age of 70, John McAslan reckons he is finally getting to grips with being an architect. “My great hero was Louis Kahn who didn’t really produce a good building until he was 60,” McAslan is telling me while walking to the nearest London Tube station. “I now feel confident that I can probably do a decent building. It’s begun to click on what I think architecture is. It’s taken about 50 years.”
Aasmah Mir is one of four children. Her mother arrived in Scotland in 1966 to live with her new husband Arif in Glasgow. Her dad ran a petrol station. Eventually, he would have a string of them. The family lived in Baljaffray and then Bearsden.
I hated my skin colour as a teenager, says Scots broadcaster Aasmah Mir Aasmah Mir, pictured with The Rev Richard Coles, when she they hosted Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4 Scottish broadcaster Aasmah Mir says she 'hated' her skin colour as a teenager. The presenter and author, who was raised in Bearsden, had an idyllic childhood - until suddenly it all changed.
Stuart Maconie makes for a chatty, amiable travelling companion who would definitely stand a round in the pub and the portrait he paints of contemporary England is, perhaps surprisingly, a quietly progressive one.
RADIO Scotland had a proper big story on Monday morning with the whole will-Humza-resign-won’t-Humza-resign breaking story about the First Minister. How big a story? Big enough to get the BBC’s Chris Mason to hustle to London City Airport to grab a flight to Scotland, Mason told Good Morning Scotland. He’d been planning to spend the day in Milton Keynes covering the local elections in England.
Glasgow is a city full of contradictions. A city with a fine radical past, a shipbuilding city, a city that grew the likes of Jimmy Reid and Jimmy Airlie into the national heroes that they were. A city that welcomed Paul Robeson, welcomed Nelson Mandela, and a city that had an extraordinary arts tradition. Still does.
I rather wished that Romesh Ranganathan had kicked off his new Saturday morning Radio 2 show last week with a proper controversial hip hop banger. Something by N.W.A. maybe, or a Geto Boys deep cut.
