RadioReview/Bernice Harrison:Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird, has broken more than four decades of print silence with a magazine article, and literary publishers who would cheerfully have gassed an entire aviary to commission her will probably be somewhat miffed to hear that she chose to write for O, Oprah Winfrey's magazine.
It was discussed on Front Row (BBC Radio 4, Wednesday) and the conclusion was that Lee probably felt she couldn't refuse. When Oprah, one of the most influential women in the US, asks you to do something you just do it, said presenter Mark Lawson. The 80-year-old winner of the Pulitzer Prize writes in passionate defence of reading. She recalls arriving in first grade a practised reader, having been read to by her parents and siblings because in Depression-era Alabama there wasn't anything else to do. "Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books," writes Lee.
And that, incidentally, is the strength of the BBC arts show - you tune in expecting to hear a review of the new London production of Chekhov's The Seagull (and you do hear one - the gist being that the script by Martin Crimp is so messed up in the name of modernisation that it's patronising) and you end up wanting to rush out to buy a scandalously high-priced glossy American magazine.
In fairness, Rattlebag (RTÉ Radio 1) is being just as broadminded in its interpretation of its brief these summer days and it's all the more entertaining for it. On Wednesday, Myles Dungan and his guests discussed blogs as creative outlets and democratic means of expression, and on Tuesday the guest was artist and academic David Godbold who gave an easy to understand and very engaging primer in buying art.
The feature was prompted by the notion that there will be people with SSIA money who will want to buy art as an investment. In the most polite way, Godbold suggested that buying off the railings at St Stephen's Green mightn't be the surest route to making a solid investment; paintings are the art form most likely to appreciate, he said, and buy what you like because you could be looking at it for 20 years while you wait for its value to rise.
The very idea of buying art for investment is of course a particularly new Ireland money-sloshing-around sort of thing to do, so I was interested to hear Outside the Loop (RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday), the first in a four-part series that promises to "look at members of society who have not benefited from the Celtic Tiger". But as it was a programme made up almost entirely of sound-bite interviews with elderly people, it wasn't what I expected at all.
Producer Jacqui Corcoran visited homes for the elderly in Waterford, interviewed people in the streets and accompanied the Dungarvan district nurse on her rounds, so an impressive number of elderly voices were heard in the half hour. But as they were mostly saying the same things: "people now are too busy, communities are gone, everyone's just looking out for themselves", etc, it was repetitive and oddly meaningless. Vox pops are fine but to make an argument - or a programme - they have to be put in some context, maybe backed up by a sprinkling of facts and figures. It didn't help that the quotes seemed to have been shoehorned into an agenda - people were asked questions such as "Have people too many expectations now?". There were a few positive voices but overall it all just sounded like one great big Liveline-type moan.
For comedy on the radio, 28 Acts in 28 Minutes (BBC Radio 4, Wednesday) is a brilliant drivetime option. It is exactly what it says; John Humphrys introduces 28 comedians who have to be funny in one minute - after that, Humphrys turns off the mic. Favourites include DJ Danny's version of Eminem's Slim Shady mixed with Chris de Burgh's Lady in Red; a typically droll but side-splitting monologue from Irish comedian Michael Redmond; and Martin Moore talking about appearing on the show as being a highlight in his career - "that's career as in the dictionary definition, going downhill quickly". And the best part is that if you can't stand what you're hearing, you have to wait only a minute for something better, or at least different - and it's not often radio listeners can say that.