The Origins of the North Radio 4
The Joy of Cakes Radio 4
I like Melvyn Bragg – because of his northern roots, because of his background, his intellect and his politics, because he has had a challenging personal life – his first wife killed herself and that grief is captured intensely in his nakedly autobiographical novel, Remember Me.
I also like him because his mother called him after a film star and because, in a documentary about his life, he admitted that really, his mother would have been happy if he’d married his first girlfriend and settled down to raise a family near by.
But you have to have staying power to listen to the fall of Rome and the rise of Northumbria – the nights are on the turn, the leaves are turning golden and the morning roads are choc a bloc with parents who won’t let their children walk a mile to school.
It wasn’t the week for the Origins of the North.
Yes, it’s September. The leaves are starting to die and fall from the trees and the Great British Bake-Off is back.
That means the great Irish bake off is happening in a kitchen near you.
Not all of us rush to Avoca for the perfect carrot cake or scones to unwrap, dust with caster sugar, rough up a bit with a rolling pin and pass off as our own.
And, if you are in the mood for getting up close and intimate with your fan oven – all hot and steamy – then you could do worse than listen to the selection of baking programmes on the Radio 4 website.
It goes under the title: The Joy of Cakes.
The selection includes Ruby Tandoh baking the perfect banana bread and Jay Rayner chatting about how you could have worse hobbies than baking bread.
There is also that twinkly-eyed silver fox Paul Hollywood, if you need that extra bake-off fix. (Personally, I’d rather have Mary).
