Were you devastated to hear that the consumer programme You and Yours is to be axed in the latest round of BBC cuts? Me neither. Nor The Artificial Human nor Thinking Allowed. In fact, there’s a whole raft of BBC radio programmes that I hasten to switch off, though not half as quickly as I run to silence The Archers.

It’s radio that shows the Corporation at its best, even though the output is so often delivered through the prism of an astonishingly narrow range of views and political outlook

It’s radio that shows the Corporation at its best, even though the output is so often delivered through the prism of an astonishingly narrow range of views and political outlook

But I was annoyed about the earlier decision to see off The World Tonight, an actually useful programme for news and analysis. The late Ed Stourton thought that the Corporation’s management had pretty much lost the plot when it culled its lead presenters, though it hasn’t yet sunk low enough to axe the Sunday programme which he often presented. Fortunately, neither has it dispensed with Gardeners’ Question Time, the one programme I not only listen to, but won’t allow anyone to talk over, nor Radio 3’s........

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