“Gary Clark Jr there, with ‘When My Train Pulls In’. And as luck would have it, it’s a train that will pick us up the same time next week. I’m Hugh Laurie and this is BBC Radio 2.”
The first in a series about the blues (Mondays, 10pm) ended as it began, with an immaculate neatness from a presenter who had, among other things, been debating-society keen to over-enunciate dates and names (“That was ROBERT JOHNSON playing in NINETEEN THIRTY-SEVEN”).
The programme opened with Laurie and his band covering Alan Price’s “Changes”, a song Price had recorded for the soundtrack to Lindsay Anderson’s forgotten satire O Lucky Man! – a film 40 years old this year and every bit as mad and satirical as when the thirtysomething Price appeared as a member of the cast, banging out all the music on-screen and looking like the nicest and most unflappable person ever to have tuned a piano in the back of a van, while Malcolm McDowell worked his hands up a 28-yearold Helen Mirren’s jumper. (Ooh, isn’t she sexy? Will it never end? Now, I’ll tell you who is sexy. Alan bloody Price in 1973. Nice flat cap. Nice mustard suede shirt. Extremely nice fingers tinkling the ivories.)
After this, Laurie took to the lectern and described in detail the genesis of the song, from a Presbyterian hymn (played in full) to a First World War trench anthem (played in full) and beyond (played in full). The detail, the sheer pedantry, was simultaneously thrilling and unbearable.
Was the whole programme going to unfurl like this? Just a long, come-into-my-brownstudy dissection of one song, with Hugh booming, “Let’s tease out some further connections” and (you feel certain) doing his Bertie Wooster face to give oomph to his cadences; the face that implies he’s just had his bonnet knocked off by ragamuffins?
Laurie did end up changing the record (kind of a shame, although he did make room for a fantastically unpretentious interview with Muddy Waters) but I’ve got to hand it to him: most of the time, his listen-with-mother diction and whopping confidence had me all bright and responsive on my night trudge to buy yoghurt – and I never listen to Radio 2! Ever! Radio to forget the station to. This is probably a first.
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