Pete Ashton’s Blog

Lovely observation about Radio 4 on Speechification

I’ve often thought that a lot of Radio 4’s output is essentially obsessive compulsive. You get a lot slightly unhinged programming. Themes that are just a little bit too narrow, people who are ever-so-slightly too immersed in their subject. Don’t get me wrong: this is a good thing.

I think Radio 4 preserves a slightly out-of-date (almost Victorian) curiosity about the world: collecting and cataloguing, preserving and promoting. Radio 4’s a bit like a Victorian Museum: an essentially indiscriminate collection of curiosities. The stuffed Ox next to the Persian rug next to the bronze age funerary goods…

The program they’ve bootlegged is well worth a listen too.