FUTURE DAY
BBC 6 Music, all day
One can quibble with 6 Music’s assertion that it is 25 years since synthesizer- based music first raised its coiffed head and practised looking bored for fun and profit (what about Tubeway Army’s Are “Friends” Electric? from 1979? And Kraftwerk’s Autobahn from 1975?) But there is no denying that this looks like being a fun day out for the bleep. Gary “Tubeway Army” Numan is Phill Jupitus’s guest in the breakfast show (from 7am). Then Human League do the decent thing for Gideon Coe (10am), before Steve Lamacq is joined by Daniel Miller of Mute Records, which gave the world Depeche Mode, Erasure and, of course, Throbbing Gristle. There is also a chance to hear listeners’ Top Ten synth riffs. Yes, I didn’t know there had been ten different ones either.
HA HA ART
Radio 4, 11.30am
Those who enjoyed Nick Baker’s serious but never dull history of language as a topic for humour last week will be setting aside pod time for today’s dissertation. He considers, inter alia, the image of the artist through the ages (beret, smock — OK, make it the image through Punch, circa 1878) as well as how it came to be that modern artists became objects of derision (and, no, they didn’t bring it on themselves).