THE GREATEST FREE SHOW ON EARTH
Radio 4, 11am
More than 100 brass bands descend upon the Pennines each year for the annual Saddleworth and District Whit Friday Brass Band Contests, a dash from village to village to enter as many competitions as possible in six hours. So forget marching bands, these ones are sprinting. Adding to the eccentricity of this test of puff is the requirement that the judges listen “blind”, which in the past has included having to hide behind a hedge. Dylan Winter follows this year’s competition, in which loyalties and breath control are tested to the limit.
DESMOND CARRINGTON AFTER SEVEN
Radio 2, 7pm
In profiling the Andrews Sisters, Desmond Carrington gets to talk to the surviving member Patti Andrews and finds out how she, Maxene and LaVerne became the most famous female singing ensemble of the 1940s. And it is not all cosy nostalgia about performing with Glenn Miller and Bing Crosby. We also learn how the siblings were always at loggerheads, managed to oust the jazzier Boswell Sisters, and found that the lyrics to Hold Tight, a paean to seafood, were ruled too saucy for radio.