Another week, another brace of programmes by Paul Gambaccini. Doesn’t this man ever sleep? You can see why commissioning editors fall over themselves to accommodate him, of course: he takes infinite pains to make sure that he never goes into an interview underbriefed, and would probably run the supposition that the sun rises in the east through any number of fact-checking scenarios before committing it to tape or print. Is it because he is an American? Is it because he is a trainspotter in excelsis? Either. Both. What the hell.
I must admit to a certain ambivalence concerning Gambo. Always the most informed man in the building, his research is both a blessing and a curse. When, last year, he presented Stage to Screen, about stage musicals that were made into movies, his command of his subject was deeply impressive. Every interview, every statistic, every anecdote, was the right one in the right place. You could have taken each programme, transcribed it, and bunged it on to Wikipedia without a qualm.
When, however, he brings the same devotion to duty to his annual Class Of... interviews with the breakthrough pop artistes of the previous year, he can seem a pernickety maiden aunt lecturing a lineup of larky larrikins on the perils of rock’n’roll hubris.
Luckily, this week’s shows find him on firm academic ground. In And the Academy Award Goes To... (today, Radio 4, 10.30am) he stakes his claim to being among the first in 2008 to employ this most tedious of Oscar clich? titles. Gambo’s contribution to the madness of it all is a nicely judged little piece of social history, in which he deconstructs four famous films and places them in their wider social and political contexts. Programmes about Lawrence of Arabia, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Silence of the Lambs and The English Patient will take us nicely up to the Saturday before Oscar night.
Then, on Tuesday (Radio 4, 1.30pm) he talks to Jimmy Lock and Geoff Emerick about their knob-twiddling lives in The Sound Makers. Love engineered the first Three Tenors album; Emerick did the job for the Beatles’ Revolver. There’s nothing they don’t know about making recorded sound live – and Gambo wants it all, every last golden drop of it, do you hear?