THE STRANGE DEATH OF THE ESTABLISHMENT
Radio 4, 11.30am
More than 40 years ago, in the days of Private Eye, Beyond the Fringe and TW3, when Peter Cook was quite possibly the funniest man in the English-speaking world, he and a group of like-minded chaps (ie, well- educated, clever, gifted and gilded) got together and started a nightclub. The Establishment Club’s name was, of course, terribly ironic, droll and satirical, since its purpose was to point and laugh at the Establishment. But, when the club ran into financial difficulties because everyone was too busy being clever to be wise, hard realities were brought to bear on the proprietors, who found themselves in enforced partnership with graduates of the School of Hard Knocks, rather than Oxbridge. Cook’s biographer Harry Thompson tells a vastly entertaining story.
PAUL JONES
Radio 2, 8pm
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Jones’s blues programme is usually interesting, but only occasionally does he come up with a guest of whom it may be said: Miss him and miss out. This is one of those times, as the great Jeff Beck drops by to wag a chin 12-bar-wise. One of the few guitar greats to have kept his Sixties cool (even I, a Clapton worshipper, have to admit that), Beck also tells stories as well as he spanks a plank. Look forward to an hour of pure and simple bliss, oh music lovers of a certain age.