In tune with Dylan

Bob Dylan on Radio Two? Sounds like an oxymoron to me. His Bobness, the hippie troubadour and Voice of Sixties America on the Light Programme, the station for Hooverers and flu-sufferers? But Radio Two has been transforming itself in the past few years, sneaking in Jamie Cullum and Suzi Quatro alongside Cliff and Terry, Ronan and The Organist Entertains. While Bob Dylan, at 64, is rather weirdly, like all those other ageing rockers, turning into a reluctant wrinklie.

Back in March last year, the American satellite station XM lured Dylan into DJing for them by promising him ‘total creative freedom’ and a national radio audience with hour-long sessions that would not suffer the indignity of being broken up by commercials for Viagra (XM is a pay-radio station, from $13 a month). Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour electrified the American airwaves as effectively as his 1965 gig at the Newport Folk Festival. The Controller of Radio Two snapped up a whole series of his programmes and began airing them nightly over Christmas, before sending them over to the digital music channel, BBC6, at New Year. If you’ve not been given a DAB for Christmas, you’ll have to start saving now because you won’t need the Viagra if you listen to Dylan on radio. It’s scintillating, mesmerising stuff, pinning you to your chair, that gravelly Midwest drawl slicing the air with its menacing whiplash.

A car hoots. A cat howls. A voice comes into your living space through the ether. ‘It’s night-time in the big city. A man is asleep with a gun under his pillow…’ Dylan on radio is not just about playing music, although with his hand-picked selection of tracks from his own collection of swamp pop, jug bands, country, creole, cajun, R&B, blues, big band, bebop that’s intriguing enough.