.png)
3 hours ago
1
The Scott Mills Breakfast Show Radio 2/BBC Sounds
Magic Breakfast with Harriet Scott and Gok Wan Bauer Media
Bed of Lies: Conflict The Telegraph
Extreme: Peak Danger Radio 4/Novel/BBC Sounds
It’s Scott Mills’s first day as Radio 2’s new Breakfast Show presenter, replacing Zoe Ball, who did her last show in December, and he’s “overwhelmed”. He will “give it all I’ve got” and is keen – so keen! – for us to know how grateful he is. He woke up at 1am and 2am and 4am, he says, because of his nerves: “I just got up in the end.”
It is all, he says, a bit much. Though the muchiest part of the show turns out to have nothing to do with Mills. Fellow Radio 2 host the Rev Kate Bottley – not the world’s best presenter – is standing at a railway station to tell us that the BBC has rebranded Stockport train station as Scottport for the day. Why? Honestly, who knows? Mills is certainly bewildered. (“What’s going on?” he stage-whispers.) Mills is not from Stockport, has nothing to do with the place. Also, that wordplay doesn’t really work, does it? Especially when New Mills station is just around the corner.
Mills is an excellent broadcaster, but on his first show was a teensy bit too “can’t believe it’s little old me on this huge show”, when he readily admits he’s worked all his life to get there. His second and third days were much better. New quiz the Easiest Quiz on the Radio, where a listener answers daftly simple rapid-fire questions (any hesitation and they’re out), is great, and on Wednesday the discussion about how far people will travel for something they love was a very warm Radio 2 moment, with listeners calling in to tell him about their favourite chippies and bookshops. The banter with co-hosts Ellie Brennan and Tina Daheley isn’t quite right yet, but the music selection is perfect and the energy is bang on too. No doubt as Mills relaxes, his neediness will recede. You want to tell him to relax, enjoy yourself, stop worrying. You’re good.
There’s a new breakfast host over on Magic Breakfast too. Harriet Scott, longtime brekkie veteran, got a new permanent playmate on Monday in the shape of Gok Wan, who, under a lot less pressure than Mills, was campy and fun from the off. “Are you happy to be married to me?” he wondered to Scott on Wednesday. “I feel like we can weather any storm,” she replied.
This being Magic, their links are super-short, often scripted but not seeming so. And Wan proved happy to step up to the mic. Given exactly 14 seconds by Scott to introduce the next record, he went straight in. “It’s all about the look of love, whether you’re A, B, C, D, E or even F,” he said, making Scott chuckle. “There you go!” he chirruped. “Look at that for a link! I’m here all day, kids!” Adorable.
The excellent investigative team of presenter Cara McGoogan and producer Sarah Peters are back with a new Bed of Lies. They’ve already given us two great series, on the undercover police who slept with their targets and on the infected blood scandal. Their new show, Conflict, concerns the role of British undercover intelligence agents in the Troubles in Northern Ireland and just how involved with the paramilitaries they became.
The BBC’s Stakeknife is about exactly this subject too but is a very different show. Where it bangs straight in, McGoogan chisels away with remarkable innocence and sometimes unintentionally politicised language. “Can you believe this happened in our country?” she asks a British detective, when in fact the question of whether any part of Ireland should be ruled by the British was at the very heart of the Troubles. Initially, I found this naivety a problem, but came to see it as welcoming for other young people who are unaware of how Britain and Ireland have “interacted” over the years. Stakeknife is for those who know, Bed of Lies for those who don’t.
Plus, her innocence means that McGoogan is audibly, genuinely shocked that the British establishment would use murderous tactics against the people it calls its citizens. So she should be. It is completely shocking. We also hear from Michelle and Gavin, whose father, Michael Power, a Catholic taxi driver, was shot dead by Ulster Defence Association (UDA) paramilitaries in 1987. They were in the car too. They were eight and four. Gavin ran down the road repeating: “They’ve missed me but they’ve got my dad.” Michelle’s eyes were full of shattered glass that cascaded down as she rubbed them. Why was their dad, a completely innocent man, targeted? Why was his murder never investigated? By the end of the first episode, McGoogan is using the word “collusion” to describe the relationship between the British army, the police and the UDA. It may take her until episode four to get to Stakeknife, but her doggedness is admirable.
I am by nature uninterested in mountaineers, but eight-part BBC Sounds podcast Extreme: Peak Danger, about a couple of newlyweds who in 2008 climbed K2, swept me along with its immersive sounds and details. Excellent interviews reveal what happened in what turns out to be the then worst mountaineering disaster ever (11 people died). I found myself just as affected by a young man who brought down an experienced but very ill Sherpa companion as I was by the fate of those who perished. A beautiful telling of a tragic tale.
