I caught this program by accident last week. The radio was on in the background when the phrase “stuck under a bridge in Wales, England” caught my ear. The delightfully gingham-clad country singer and global activist Miss Tina C was instantly forgiven for not knowing that Wales is NOT in England, I don’t suppose they taught that much geography in sixties Tennessee and besides, she set out to capture the hearts of the nation and dang, she’s captured mine.

If you click here, select Tina C’s Tiny Island Tour and settle down for 15 delightful minutes of winnebagos and white trash. Brilliant.

Alas this is the final programme in the tour and I missed the first 3. Let’s hope the BBC repeats them in the near future.

Only when you’ve listened to the programme (it’s just 15 minutes) should you go read this. Enjoy.

On 21 October 1966, Pantglas school in the pit village of Aberfan, South Wales was decimated by a preventable landslide.

144 people, 116 of them children, died.

My father was among the many who dropped everything, drove straight to Aberfan and started digging with his bare hands.

But it was all a long time ago, the people who should have been brought to account are probably long dead and the bitterness has faded at the behaviour of Harold Wilson‘s government – a Labour! government – in allowing the Coal Board to reject responsibility for the landslide and to take the £150,000 from the disaster fund that had been set up to help survivors and use it to pay to remove the remaining tips.

Well, some of the bitterness has faded.

Anniversaries have come and gone. So I don’t know why I’ve been crying like a fool while listening to BBC Radio’s Random Edition, the programme in which Peter Snow takes a look at the contents of an archived newspaper on a particular date. Maybe it was because I wasn’t expecting it? Yes, that’s what it was, being unprepared.

You can hear the programme by clicking here and selecting Random Edition.

Lucinda Brayford by Martin Boyd [in three episodes]

Written in the l940’s by Australian writer Martin Boyd, this is the story of a beautiful and wealthy Australian girl who marries into the English Aristocracy at a time of great change to the traditional order.

On Monday 3 January at 20:30 GMT – Don’t Touch that Dial, a look at the radio jingle.

All fingers and thumbs [click on listen to Wednesday’s play] – if in doubt, go read Andrea’s review!

And finally

I think that this will be of interest only to folks who watch commercial tv in the UK – you know that annoying-but-strangely-cute little critter on a motorbike advertising ring tones? Here’s death of Crazy Frog

Update: Thanks to Neil for pointing to the fact that I’d used the “via” link instead of this link direct to that pesky frog and a reminder that it’s reminiscent” of this which I know I linked to eons ago but can find no trace of. Proof, if proof were needed, that I have the attention span of a gnat and a memory as leaky as a David Blunkett condom.

One of the best things about being on holiday (and long car journeys) is the chance to listen to the radio properly instead of settling down to listen to a programme and realising after 30 minutes that you’ve become engrossed in a project and missed the damn thing.

There have been some cracking programmes on this week but I’ll just point you to three before I get off to bed:

The People’s D-Day, moving accounts of ordinary people caught up in the planning of D-Day.

Front Row on Thursday night:

George W Bush has provoked more artistic hostility than any previous first-term President. With guests including film director Jonathan Demme, dramatist David Hare and satirist Rory Bremner, Mark Lawson examines anti-Bush movies, documentaries, novels, plays and jokes and why most American voters ignored them.

I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. A brilliant way to take your mind off what’s happening in the world.

Want to find some interesting programmes? It’s always worth going to the Radio 4 Listen Again page and taking pot luck.

Last night’s Front Row on BBC Radio 4 had a fascinating interview with Michael Crichton (once I got over the shock at hearing his voice and wondering if he’d employed Donald Sutherland to take his place).

Mark Lawson introduced him as the best selling thriller writer with a knack for dealing in fiction items that soon become huge factual issues (Jurassic Park – cloning, Disclosure – sexual harrassment and so on), the “nostradamus of popular fiction”. But his new book, State of Fear, tackles global warming and the concern that the “global warming industry” might be international hysteria, “filling a fear gap that opened up when the cold war ended, [a fear] that decade by decade it has shifted to invisible things”.

I have to confess that I haven’t been entirely convinced these past years by the threat of global warming. If meteorologists can’t predict the weather correctly for the following day, how are we to believe their (and that of others in the scientific community) speculation on weather/climate changes two, ten, twenty, a hundred years down the line?

Do go and listen, it’s a thoght provoking interview.

And in other news, time to recycle possibly the best Christmas animation on the net.

[Picture courtesy BBC Radio 4]

Some wonderful tribues to John Peel across the blogosphere: Hydragenic, Leah, Billy, Billy again, David, Huwge and Richard.

Aside from his legendary status in the music world, if you’d like to undertand why the nation is mourning this lovely man, go listen to this week’s edition of Home Truths.

A new comedy drama starts soon on BBC Radio 4 – About a Dog. The first episode, Let Sleeping Dogs Lie, is on today at 18:30:

Jack has a problem. Or rather, his mistress does. Well, she’s more of an owner than a mistress. And she needs to decide whether or not to move in with her boyfriend, Adrian. Adrian likes designer leather furniture and pricey Italian bath-fittings; but he definitely doesnt like dogs. Which brings us back to Jack. And his problem.

The voice of Jack the dog is played by Alan Davies and it’s written by the ever so goodie Graeme Garden so it could be good.

If you can’t get to a radio at 18:30 BST (that’s about 29 minutes from the time this entry is posted), you can listen here or use the Listen again facility.

I can’t believe I forgot to post this – comic poet Pam Ayres is back on the radio.

You can listen to last week’s here (click on Ayres on the Air) and the second part is at 11:30 BST here in the UK, it should then be available on that same Listen Again page from just after midday.

There’s an example of her poetry in the extended post. Enjoy.

I Wish I’d Looked After Me Teeth

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth,
And spotted the perils beneath,
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food,
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.
When I had more tooth there than fillin’
To pass up gobstoppers,
From respect to me choppers
And to buy something else with me shillin’.

When I think of the lollies I licked,
And the liquorice allsorts I picked,
Sherbet dabs, big and little,
All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.

My Mother, she told me no end,
“If you got a tooth, you got a friend”
I was young then, and careless,
My toothbrush was hairless,
I never had much time to spend.

Oh I showed them the toothpaste all right,
I flashed it about late at night,
But up-and-down brushin’
And pokin’ and fussin’
Didn’t seem worth the time… I could bite!

If I’d known I was paving the way,
To cavities, caps and decay,
The murder of fillin’s
Injections and drillin’s
I’d have thrown all me sherbet away.

So I lay in the old dentist’s chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine,
In these molars of mine,
“Two amalgum,” he’ll say, “for in there.”

How I laughed at my Mother’s false teeth,
As they foamed in the waters beneath,
But now comes the reckonin’
It’s me they are beckonin’
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

More of her poetry here.

Just spotted, sick starts in 8 minutes, the Radio 4 Saturday Play:

With a degree in aesthetics from a “micro-ivy” college, Mike Daisey went to Seattle with no plan in mind and found himself in 1998 working at Amazon.com because he suddenly needed dental insurance. He claws his way up from the crazy hours and targets and work sirens of customer service to the more sedate world of Business Development in the hope that some day soon he can cash in his stock options. And then he realizes that early on in this dehumanized world of ecommerce, he lost himself.

Mike Daisey, an American writer and comic, looks back at an episode in his life which is cynical but also affectionate.

Written and Performed by Mike Daisey

Listen live here.

Years ago I listened to a compilation of funny radio clips. Apart from the wonderful Brian Johnston, one clip in particular stuck in my mind. Deepest of deep joy, non blogging friend Eva sent me that very clip earlier today in mp3 format. And I’ve been giggling ever since.

All you need to know beforehand is that it’s a live radio quiz broadcast from Liverpool. Oh and it’s about 495kb. Worth every kb.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: The Quiz.