Radio review: Voices of..., BBC Radio 4
SPELLBINDING, entrancing, bewitching - rack up the adjectives and pile 'em up high.
Voices of... is addictive and funny.
This episode gets under the skin of Andy Partridge - songwriter, singer and front-man with XTC.
He stripped his memories, blue-vein bare for us.
In between the stories, we were treated to the XTC hits - Making Plans for Nigel and Senses Working Overtime.
It wasn't much fun growing up in a council house in Swindon - the classic teenage "Why not paint the bedroom black?" stuff, he laughs.
His mother had mental health problems. She's "bad with her nerves", his dad would say.
She had electric shock treatment, "the heavy stuff".
He was an only child and she threw out all his toys. You wouldn't know a kid lived there, he said about home.
He has plenty of toys now - he loves toy soldiers.
As for his mother: "She was the bigger child in the relationship. I parented her. It screws you up terribly in later life," he said, but it's also "part of the arsenal you draw on, whatever your art".
And he manipulated her, he said, calling himself "appalling".
Andy is sharp, a deep thinker and incredibly funny.
His dad was musical. He remembers him whipping out his battered acoustic guitar from behind the sofa. Andy borrowed it, took it to school, dangling it around his neck.
The girls would stroke it "like it was a miniature pony". It was a way to get to them, even if he couldn't play it.
As a star he was well behaved, he only trashed a hotel room once after he lost his Valium supply.
A letter from teenage girls fantasising about hacking up his wife and hiding her bloody limbs all over the house, put him off fame a little.
"These are fans?" he asked incredulously.
Every word was a gem.
It's another treasure from Falling Tree Productions.
The only quibble was the ending."I have arrived at myself," says Andy; then, pouf, that's it, over.
Like the best, he left us crying out for more.
