THE DEAR LEADER, THE GREAT LEADER AND THE TOUR LEADER
Radio 4, 11am
Nick Bonner is a magician, landscape artist, musician, general Renaissance man. But it is his role as tour organiser that is the concern of Tony Pletts’s two-part documentary, since it concerns first the failure, then the success, of a Bonner-organised tour of North Korea. Today’s first instalment is terrific, since it involves everything going wrong. Bonner and his party of diplomats, students and ordinary tourists are held up in Customs, then holed up in an hotel on the border between North Korea and China, then sent back to Beijing because their seats on a train to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, have been commandeered by a bunch of politicians. Next week’s successful entry to North Korea can only be an anti-climax.
WHY DID WE DO THAT?
Radio 4, 8pm
We need more really silly programmes such as this, Chris Bowlby’s history of the fine art of sitting. Ever since sitting became so popular, standing up and walking have slipped down the charts, while as for lying down . . . Actually, a Californian (she would be) is leading a campaign to do as the Romans did.