In its primary Sunday morning slot, Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4 finishes at noon. This is the cue for radio cognoscenti to turn the digital dial a single notch – to BBC Radio 3. Because as Desert Island Discs ends, Private Passions, its lesser known twin, is about to begin.
I wrote here recently about the celebrations around DID’s 80th anniversary. And many of the comments from Spectator readers were along the lines of ‘yes, but it’s no Private Passions’. And that sentiment, which I partly share, comes, I think, from the fact that PP feels the more serious, the more grown-up of two otherwise very similarly formatted shows.
‘The big difference is that on Desert Island Discs people do not necessarily have to be passionate about music. In fact, sometimes you feel they almost dislike music’
Both feature a sustained conversation between a single guest and presenter, discussing their life and work, choosing music they find meaningful. But where DID is quite rigidly structured, with eight tracks evenly spaced over 45 minutes, reduced to excerpts for time purposes, PP is looser, less of a cradle-to-grave biographical recap than a free-flowing conversation which goes where it will. And together with its longer, whole hour slot, this allows musical pieces, often very long pieces, to be played in full.
Instead of one time pop singer Lauren Laverne, at 45 younger than some of her guests, PP has the older Michael Berkeley – or, to give him his full title, Baron Berkeley of Knighton. Berkeley, an erudite and avuncular composer, was made a life peer in 2013 for services to music: his musical biography covers everything from meeting Stravinsky as a boy to writing choral arrangements for Kate Bush. Benjamin Britten was his godfather.
Where DD is dominated by celebrities with just a smattering of non-showbiz types from academia, business or the law, the ratio with PP tends to be the other way around. Although PP leans primarily to classical music, it is by no means confined to it, and tends to be the more eclectic of the two shows.
Take a recent head-to-head pairing, from the last Sunday in February, when both shows, by chance, featured film industry figures. DID had costume designer Sandy Powell, whose conversation was primarily about the stars she’d dressed and how, and whose music selections were, Mahler aside, from the poppier end of the spectrum. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with T. Rex’s ‘Jeepster’, Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars?’ or Lou Reed’s ‘Satellite of Love’ – they’re all classics. But they’re also very familiar which didn’t make me rush to note down what I was listening to or add them to any playlist.
Whereas when film director Michael Winterbottom immediately followed Powell over on R3, both the conversation and the music selections were wider ranging: we went from the formation of the state of Israel to the demolition of the Hacienda nightclub, from veteran blues singer Alberta Hunter to ‘post minimalist’ pianist Max Richter. Winterbottom even chose music by his own partner – and I winced in expectation of what would follow. Because the last time I remember this selection nepotism happening it was with Steven Spielberg on DID when he used his appearance to plug his daughter’s terrible, terrible pop record. In contrast Mrs Winterbottom – aka Melissa Parmenter – turned out to be an extraordinary composer and pianist whose piece, ‘Ostuni’, was quietly sublime.
I’ve previously noted the tendency for repetitive choices on DID. Both Handel’s ‘Messiah’ and Mozart’s ‘Marriage of Figaro’ have been chosen more than 100 times. PP actively discourages this, as Berkeley revealed on Sunday when his guest, auctioneer Helena Newman chose Richard Strauss’s ‘Im Abendrot’: ‘We used to have this chosen so often we had to discourage people from selecting it,’ he recalled.
Almost every Sunday the newspapers will pull out a DD line from the previews to plug that morning’s show: ‘Playwright James Graham tells of his workaholic woes,’ was the most recent. PP, in contrast, remains firmly beneath the radar, rarely written about in the media. Or take the two hosts’ respective social media profiles: on X, Berkeley has a shade under 5,000 followers, Laverne a shade under 500,000. He’s little known, like most of his guests; she’s well known, like most of hers.
When asked some years ago what distinguishes his programme from its better known rival, Berkeley explained: ‘The big difference is that on Desert Island Discs people do not necessarily have to be passionate about music. In fact, sometimes you feel they almost dislike music. And of course they fade the music out very quickly. I try to get away from, “Oh, you heard this at school,” or, “You heard this when you got married”. Our music doesn’t by necessity fit a curriculum vitae.’
PP was then perhaps the more natural choice for the future King – who, one suspects, sees himself as extremely serious about music – as the show on which to mark his 70th birthday. And Charles duly indulged that side of himself with niche selections that ranged from the Creed from the Russian Orthodox liturgy to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Take This Waltz’.
While DID may be one of the longest running radio shows in the world, PP is hardly a new phenomenon: it will celebrate its 30th anniversary next April. By the time of that anniversary, Berkeley will be nearer 80 than 70. But I do hope Radio 3’s new controller – who has already indicated a tendency to make changes – doesn’t use his advancing years as a reason to force him out, in the manner which has become routine practice with older presenters on Radio 2. Berkeley’s is by some distance my favourite voice on radio and he is still demonstrably agile. But I’ve also increasingly warmed to Lauren Laverne. She does what she does very well.
And to revert to my opening line, I’m not here to advocate one over the other. I’m a fan of both. Those two back-to-back film shows a couple of weeks ago epitomised the contrast: they were both excellent, in different ways – Powell with her glam rock and starry anecdotes, Winterbottom with his sober piano music and reflection.
The two shows are best enjoyed together, as companion pieces, one after the other, with the more populist and poppier Radio 4 show a warm-up for Radio 3’s deeper dive into a more esoteric music selection. Scheduling them back-to-back is a piece of radio genius. And long may both continue – in these harmonious twin slots.
Comments