Podcasts

The cover painting for The Specialist, a new podcast from Sotheby’s, looks like a scene from Mad Men. The people are so good-looking and so well dressed that you barely notice how odd they are. One chap’s walking along with a porcelain bowl as if it were a macchiato; a lady holds a plant in her palms in the manner of receiving communion; someone else walks the street with a gavel. The admen have done their job: intrigued, I press play. It becomes apparent that the people who work at Sotheby’s have no interest in persuading anyone that they are normal. I listen to Ottilie, Julian and Gregory, and to

Online viewings of Conclave increased threefold following the death of Pope Francis last month. At least some of the traffic was rumoured to have come from the Vatican itself. This raises many questions, but the most pertinent for me this week is, what did the cardinals think of the carpets? Do they really have coffee machines in their rooms like Tremblay? Minibars like Bellini? Their peace spoiled by the sounds of a lift shaft as in the case of long-suffering Lawrence? If any of these details passed you by, it’s worth watching the film again. In fact, after listening to an interview with the production designer, to be broadcast on

How did a myth about the consequences of poor judgment become a parable for aspiration? The question is posed by the Greek writer-actor Alex Andreou in his fabulously entertaining new podcast. His topic is the ancient myth of Midas, king of Phrygia, who was granted his wish to have everything he touched turn to gold. Midas’s new world was brilliant for all of five minutes. What is a man to do with piles of metal when every person he comes into contact with is reduced to the same? The Midas myth has been mangled many times; Andreou recalls that Donald Trump co-authored a book in 2011 entitled Midas Touch in

Pierre White, Marco. Chef. Michelin stars: five (all handed back). Wives: three (all handed back). Restaurants owned: number unclear. Hours in a cell: 14. Party: Reform. Brands promoted: Knorr stockpots, Lidl, P&O Cruises. Protégé: Gordon Ramsay. YouTube views: hundreds of millions. Current residence: the countryside, somewhere near Bath, far far away from anyone who tries to talk to him. The obituaries will all call Marco Pierre White a ‘rock star’, and they will be correct. In the 1980s, he was all shaggy verve and sweat and ash. He ‘changed the game’ – as they all say – not so much through his cooking, but through his good looks. He had

The launch of Radio 4’s Invisible Hands series has been both blessed and cursed by timing. It tells the story of Britain’s ‘free market revolution’, just as President Donald Trump overhauls the free trade consensus of the past 40 years and world leaders grapple with how to respond. The problem is the hypotheticals posed at the start of the first episode – that free market capitalism ‘might be in crisis’; that ‘the global free market might be under threat’ – are already out of date. It’s settled. Free trade is out, tariffs are in. Welcome to the trade wars. The world could do worse than look to the ‘Invisible Hands’

Interviewing for MI6 sounds to have been even scarier a century ago than it must be today. Candidates would enter an office to find a man with a ‘large intelligent head’ seated behind a desk and absorbed in paperwork. Everything would appear normal until he picked up a penknife and stabbed his own leg. A prospective agent who flinched at the sight might do himself out of the job. It is brilliant: carefully crafted, closely scripted, immaculately edited and best of all perfectly cast Rather like one of those rumoured Oxbridge interviews (candidates for a fellowship at All Souls were reportedly served a cherry pie at dinner to test what

I have a confession to make, which may upset many readers. Having only a passing acquaintance with his books, I’ve long experienced a faint allergic reaction to the works of P.G. Wodehouse. It is, I think, to do with the mannered, heavily whimsical nature of his world; the circumlocutory sentences; the ‘right-ho’s and ‘dash it’s and choreographed mix-ups; and the inexplicably passionate adoration of his many fans, among whom I count a number of my family and friends. But before dismissing something that so many intelligent people hold in high esteem, it’s worth considering whether I’ve missed a trick. And so, in the hope that enthusiasm is contagious, I’ve been

Sometimes the mind needs to take a break. And I can’t think of a better stopping-off place than the soothing, gloriously bonkers discussions on the Fashion Neurosis podcast, hosted by the British fashion designer Bella Freud. Its premise is that Freud, daughter of Lucian and great-grand-daughter of Sigmund, encourages guests to recline on her couch and talk over any and every aspect of their relationship to fashion. Her mellifluous, affirming manner is much more soft soap than wire wool, but this is not territory that requires a Robin Day, and the concept proves a surprisingly fruitful route into family history, personal stories and high-grade gossip. The pool of guests is

Intoxicating History is the perfect title for drinks expert Henry Jeffreys and food critic Tom Parker Bowles’s new podcast. Its theme is alcohol, but its contents are predominantly historical, which is good news if, like me, you are quick to apply the word ‘bore’ to any man who talks about wine for more than eight minutes. The first episodes came out before Christmas but they have been gathering momentum since Dry January. Today’s drinking culture, which has spawned this bizarre annual group sacrifice, has an interesting pedigree. Europeans have apparently been on their guard against boozing Englishmen for nearly a millennium. The Portuguese were certainly left in no doubt as

Relive with me and enjoy again the downfall of Armand Douglas Hammer. If you remember, Hammer’s Hollywood career had been going as smoothly as anything: there was his 2010 breakthrough playing the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network, his turn as Leonardo DiCaprio’s no. 2 in Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar, the 2018 Golden Globe for Call Me By Your Name. By 2020 he was a GQ cover star: ‘Soul seeker. Scene stealer. Leading man.’ And cannibal, allegedly. In January 2021 an anonymous Instagram account called @houseofeffie posted screenshots supposedly showing Hammer’s texts to a woman. ‘Thinking of holding your heart in my hand and controlling when it beats,’ the message

Farming Today airs at an undignified hour each morning on Radio 4. On the few occasions I’ve caught it live I have felt, first of all, relief that I am not a farmer; second, inadequacy; and finally, a surge of evangelism for the farmer’s way of life. I am now reaching the conclusion that getting up early enough to listen to Farming Today is the very least we can all do. Listening to Farming Today helps dispel the romance of living off-grid By no means will everything discussed on the programme hold relevance for your life. One feature last week was dedicated to a project to preserve ten acres of

The podcasts I’m recommending to everyone at the moment are Nasa’s Curious Universe and the Royal Astronomical Society’s The Supermassive Podcast. Both have me convinced there’s no topic better suited to the oral medium than space. Not even history. Unless you happen to be an astronaut, you’ll find much of what is described so alien, that your imagination will go into overdrive. What does a Brown dwarf look like? What is the ‘tadpole’ orbit of a quasi-moon? The icy surface of Europa has red furrows which make it look like ‘a giant dragged its fingernails’ across it. How did those furrows get there? You will probably find the images summoned

We are all surely familiar with those stories of naive young Brits who travel abroad and are persuaded by a charming new holiday friend to bring back what they’re told is an innocuous package, only to end up on the sharp end of drugs smuggling charges. The latest series of the BBC’s World of Secrets somewhat inverts those expectations: it tracks the fortunes of three innocent young Brazilian sailors and a French captain who were allegedly duped by a Norwich businessman into sailing a rackety yacht across the Atlantic with £100 million worth of cocaine hidden in the body of the ship. ‘One thing you find on breakfast TV is

It was 50 years ago this week, on 7 November 1974, that Lord Lucan fled what was destined to become the most talked about crime scene of the 20th century. A coroner’s inquest jury named him as the killer of Sandra Rivett, his children’s nanny, but his disappearance ensured that he was never convicted of the crime – or of the attempted murder of his wife, Veronica. Stripping away the sensationalism of the story needn’t render it boring Understandably, given the mystery that still envelops his precise actions and whereabouts, Radio 4 has chosen to mark the anniversary with a soft question rather than to provide answers. Soft, but also