Woman’s Hour Drama
Radio 4, 10.45am
Every morning this week, up to and indeed beyond the day devoted to lovers, a series of themed plays by Katie Hims takes a fresh look at an old subject: the kiss. And not just any old kiss - great kisses, first kisses, good kisses, bad kisses... you get the picture. In today’s play, Waterloo East, Dan (Lee Ross) breaks up with Jeanie (Claire Rushbrook) at the eponymous train station. Theirs is a break-up kiss - but is it? On Valentine’s Day itself, incidentally, the story might make you cry, so now might be a good time to shop for Kleenex.
Dancing with the Russian Bear
Radio 4, 8pm
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It seems like old times - recession looms in the West and, in the East, while the Cold War might not have broken out again, the peace is looking distinctly chilly. Over three programmes Tim Whewell, the former Moscow correspondent of the BBC, examines why and how Russia and the West have come to fear one another again. In the first programme, Whewell talks to President Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Sergei Prikhodko, and comes up with an interesting trigger for the current froideur: America’s undiplomatic response to early overtures of friendship by Putin (above). Prickly people, presidents. And then there’s the Russian conviction that at least some of the causes of unrest in the former Soviet republics can be traced back to Uncle Sam’s interference.
Asian Network Report
Asian Network, 6.30pm
The cost of women’s clothing has fallen by 35 per cent in ten years, thank to the growth of fast fashion. In Fast Fashion Nation, the DJ formally known as Nihal follows the passage of a T-shirt from its birth in an Asian sweatshop to its sale in Britain.