BOOK OF THE WEEK: ATTENTION ALL SHIPPING — A JOURNEY ROUND THE SHIPPING FORECAST
Monday to Friday, Radio 4, 9.45am/12.30am
Speaking as a man who once contemplated calling his daughter Finisterre, I can understand the urges that drove the travel writer Charlie Connelly to visit all the places referred to in the Shipping Forecast and write about them. As a result, he can explain why Finisterre no longer appears alongside Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight and the rest of the gang. He can also spin yarns about the places, including the village where Marilyn Monroe ‘s father was born, and the people found in them, notably German nudists (aren’t they all?). Chris Campling
THE WORRICKER PROGRAMME
Sunday, Radio Five Live, 10am
The Five Live Special Report is a bit of an in-and-out thing, but when it is good it is very good — and this one looks great. First, reporter Matthew Chapman comes up with the goods — that a number of Robert Mugabe’s henchmen, having done their best to ruin Zimbabwe, are now living high off the hog in this country — and then Worricker picks up the ball and runs with it as far as he can. And that is quite a long way, usually.
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IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF MUHAMMAD
Monday, Radio 4, 8pm
Edward Stourton, having presented an analysis of modern Catholicism and gone In the Footsteps of St Paul, has now turned his attention elsewhere. Here he begins an examination of the roots and routes of Islam, which with more than a billion followers is the second most popular religious movement in the world. How topical can you get? Particularly when he starts off in Saudi Arabia, birthplace of, among others, Osama Bin Laden, and a country increasingly seen as an exporter of terrorism. To understand the present, though, we have to learn about the past, and few reporters are as adept as Stourton at teaching us. Those helping him in this task include Dr Sami Angawi, a Saudi academic and descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.
ALWAYS THE BRIDESMAID
Tuesday, Radio 4, 11.30am
Janet Ellis — now there is a name from the past — presents a two-part tribute to two great comic actresses who, according to Ellis, never quite managed it from the fringes to the stage centre of fame. Which is a bit unfair to the first of her subjects, the constantly wonderful Joan Sims of the Carry On films (only a true star could have done what she did: ageing from blonde sexpot to nagging battleaxe over the decades), although you can see her point with regard to the second, Pat Coombs. CC