Arts Etc: The critics: RADIO - I want to like it. I really, really do ; The Verb BBC Radio 3 First Edition

• Published in: The Independent on Sunday
• Main Author: Lezard, Nicholas
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: London (UK) Independent Digital News & Media 15.02.2004

As it was, [Colin Teevan]'s piece was bang on the nail, particularly insulting about Hoon's use of language, although it was spoilt by being read out live. This is meant to give a piece a feeling of spontaneity and vim but it actually half kills the thing it loves. I've done this myself on the radio - you have to read your piece out in front of everyone before broadcast, for the purposes of practice and timing, obviously. If there are any jokes, they are generously laughed at by everyone else in the studio. But then you have to read it out again, later. And which is worse? People laughing at exactly the same points in the script - or people not laughing quite as much, or - and this is particularly deflating, as you might imagine - people not laughing at all any more? All responses, on this second reading, sound insincere, and there's nothing you can do about it except record the stuff earlier in another studio, on your own. Which rather works against The Verb's feel and ethos. But then that ethos allows for the unironic use of phrases like "writers' workshop" - which also gets me scrabbling under the bed for grandad's Luger. Oh dear. I feel awful about this. "The Verb was presented," said the Radio 3 continuity announcer with the slightest suggestion of distaste, "by who else but [Ian McMillan]." Who else, indeed?