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Once again, Mark Steel’s in Town (Radio 4). That Mark Steel is still anywhere at all is good news. It was touch and go for a while. Last October, in an article announcing he’d been diagnosed with cancer, the comedian joked about a likely spin-off: “Mark Steel’s in Ground.” Thankfully, Steel was given the all-clear last month, and now he’s back doing what he does best: visiting a new place each week, diligently researching its history, landmarks, cuisine and customs, all the better to explain to a local audience that their town is rubbish.
It is a perfect format. If you want to win the hearts of a comedy crowd in any part of the country, tell them their history is ridiculous, their council lunatics, and their antique shops stuffed with junk. Familiarity breeds contempt, yet contempt breeds familiarity, too. It’s part of a great national tradition of mickey-taking, a sneer born of love.
There was no mention of Steel’s recent health troubles in the first episode of the new series. (As he told The Telegraph in January, “It would be churlish to grumble.”) Instead, as ever, it was the town that was the star, and that town was Margate in Kent. Steel had visited in winter, taking in the museums, galleries and shops. “I enjoyed the common theme of all of them, which is that they were all shut.” Despairing, he asked: “Where do you get things?” The sheer bafflement he threw into the word “get” had me cackling in the kitchen.
Steel is one of the few comedians on the radio who actually makes me laugh out loud – it’s all in the delivery, more than the writing. That said, the writing is impressive. He packed a huge amount into half an hour. He spoofed Betjeman’s ode to the town (getting the metre spot on), interviewed a curator from the Crab Museum and mentioned countless bits of local lore, from Pete Doherty’s big fried breakfast to The Waste Land, which was largely inspired by TS Eliot’s holiday in Margate. Steel quoted a critic who called the poem “an apocalyptic view of misery and loss by a disturbed man possessed with visions of squalor”. A perfect comic beat, then: “That’s you, inspired that.”
The show celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, and all 69 episodes – from Bungay to Birkenhead, Walthamstow to Whitby – are up on BBC Sounds. Taken collectively, it’s a snapshot of modern Britain – as was, in a very different way, Bring What You Expect to Find (Radio 3). Part of Between the Ears, Radio 3’s always surprising strand of experimental surround-sound documentaries, it brought listeners to Stonehenge for the summer solstice, among the Wicca and shamans. Drums echoed and an ambient soundscape droned in the background, as pagan vox pops faded in and out (“My name’s Keith, and my druid name is Creon...”).
These soundbites came totally straight, without commentary, and were all the funnier for it. “I don’t like labels,” said a chap who nonetheless had chosen one. “I call myself a Pagan Buddhist Liquorice Allsort.” With refreshing self-awareness, he continued, “That sounds ridiculous… But it means everything to me and it means nothing, you know? Because what does it mean?” Well, quite. “It’s like, when we think of ‘Liquorice Allsort’, we think of the sweet. But liquorice is very much a natural thing, and it grows from a tree. And we are all. And we’re all sorts.” It does indeed take all sorts.
An ancient, craggy monument imbued with the wisdom of the ages, to which those in search of guidance and prophecy have turned for generations, Professor Sir John Curtice was the subject of Profile (Radio 4). It promised to reveal “the man behind the cult personality,” a slightly odd way of describing the bespectacled polling expert and statistician. With an election just days away, he is ubiquitous on our screens – but “who is the real John Curtice?” is not a question that had hitherto crossed my mind.
In 1979 he was enlisted to crunch numbers for David Dimbleby’s first election night broadcast. “Maybe I do just remember him, but I couldn’t swear…” Dimbleby recalled, if recalled is the word. In public, Curtice seems ordinary. But what of his private life? What dark, sordid secrets would Profile’s crack researchers uncover? Brace yourself. It turns out that he watches Newsnight, enjoys tending his allotment, and makes a good lemon drizzle cake. A quiet homebody, married to a curate, Curtice seems to be the rarest thing in politics: a good egg. A pity he’s not on the ballot.
Mark Steel is back doing what he does best – taking the mick out of your home town
Given the all-clear from cancer last month, Steel is back on Radio 4, visiting towns across Britain then hilariously ripping them apart