Melvyn Bragg leaves In Our Time - Radio 4.

[PrimevalStomp]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cewnllp1de8o

No news on who will take over his role. I do hope it will continue; even if I’m only half listening it always feels solid in a world of madness.

Tom Sutcliffe said something on Front Row that really put me off him.
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I vaguely remember that, @TheCrasher. I gather JKR is having her name besmirched in lectures and seminars at universities (the family young come home full of shocking tales) and it’s those same lecturers and tutors who can with alacrity start up podcasts. They don’t seem to be under any more accountability than TikTok.

At least I’ve had a lifetime to suss out the BBC’s evolving agendas.

Throwing some names in the ring - very much depending on what manner of human they want :

Clara Amfo
Bernadine Evaristo
George The Poet
Theaster Gates
Kate Mosse
Katherine Rundell
Edmund de Waal

These are not all people I would welcome in the role, but … 🤷‍♀️

I remember hearing it and thinking 'How on earth can he get away with saying that?'

Oh dear, there aren't many on the list I'd listen to, @PrimevalStomp .

I do wonder about them retiring the format. I can’t really imagine it without Melvyn. But then I thought the same about Desert Island Discs when Roy Plomley went, and Sue Lawley was infinitely better.

I think there are a lot of people who could do it, but not the big names. Agreed please not Stephen Fry. I don’t think Dominic Sandbrook would be any good at all, even if the Beeb could afford him - he’s made his own niche. I don’t think the faux self deprecation would work on IIT, you need some quite alpha energy to wrangle all those academics. I personally don’t think Mary Beard either. I’d put someone like David Lumsden (?) in the mix, I love the podcast Past Present and Future. Just possibly Alan Rusbridger? He might irritate a lot of people though. Not me, I love him.

Agreed please not Stephen Fry. This. I hate his 'intellectual' voice.

I preferred Kirsty Young on DID, other than I tended to play bingo with 'austere' and 'excoriating'. Thought Lauren Laverne was a weak choice but she's OK.

oh yes, Kirsty Young would be great.
I love listening to IOT as a podcast especially for the bit at the end.

Well, I don't know about podcasts but they spoil every broadcast documentary or similar type of programme with all the extraneous noise they insist on adding. We got rid of muzak from lifts but not the BBC. Nobody can listen to a voice without some intentional interference being played over it. And nobody can listen to any informational, knowledge, history- or science-based programme without jollying it up with insanely artificially hyper delivery. They have ruined Round Britain Quiz by putting a completely unsuitable woman in as presenter. I've wondered if she was drunk on drugs or alcohol. The muzak habit has even spread to the World Service, which has gone to the dogs in that and other ways.

When they gave Syed the Sunday late night half hour that Laurie Taylor used to do, I just had to turn it off because it took him so long to get to the end of a sentence. He probably did it within the half hour but I couldn't be bothered to wait that long.

Yes I find it really difficult. I don't understand their sound design at all. It seems like a sort of obstacle course. Get past the random yelling about a completely different programme, endure the bleeps and bloops and clashy crashes to get to the intro, then gear up for the main run: voices over synths occupying the same frequencies as the speech, finish by decoding the beats against consonants.

Sound design everywhere is challenging. 80% of Gen Z watch video with subtitles now. But we have limited recourse to subtitles on the radio!

I used to worry that I was the only person in the world who found that format unlistenable to.

And after the obstacle course start, we then have ten or fifteen minutes of what I think is the meat of the thing - but then we get I’m Bleepitty McBleepface and this is X-able: The Story of My Blood Pressure Going Through The Effing Roof. And then they start. By which time I’m so confused by this strange unfolding of the day that I consider going back to bed.

It’s the very first instance of my beginning to feel I’ve lived too long!

Oh gosh I’ll miss Melvyn Bragg, but he has been sounding increasingly frail.

I’d like Tom Sutcliffe. Saturday Review used to be the highlight of my listening week.

Agree with please not a comedian.

Oh, yes, Tom Sutcliffe would be a good choice.

Same. Can't stand him.

What about David Olusoga?

They have ruined Round Britain Quiz by putting a completely unsuitable woman in as presenter.
They've ruined it. I wasn't that keen on it anyway but now it's dreadful.

I just had to turn it off because it took him so long to get to the end of a sentence. Is that what it is?

Good call!

Great choice

It needs a presenter who chairs well - asks good questions that helps the listeners understand and doesn't patronise the academics.

Also, someone who's a bit better on mathsy subjects would be good.

Having said all that, it is one of my favourite programmes, so I hope they get the right person and don't wreck it.

Speaking as someone who can’t stand MB, or his pomposity, but loves the concept of the programme, I am very glad to hear this news!

I love In Our Time. I was sad this morning when I heard he’s going (but he is 85).

That's a really good description. Obstacle course, indeed. I find myself silently screaming at the radio, "Get to the flipping point!" All this filling and faffing about instead of getting on with it means that more often than not I just turn it off. Hence, I listen to far less on the radio than I used to. And I've been an avid listener for most of my life.
I will still give Moral Maze a go and I recently discovered a series on Friday nights called Free Thinking, also an hour-long discussion programme with some interesting topics and contributors. In Our Time is very well put together and runs remarkably smoothly between the contributing academics. It's also notable for the wide range and interest of the topics it covers. I'm guessing Bragg had something to do with that and for me he had more pluses than minuses, though the voice hasn't been good. A quiet, rather than rowdy or showy presenter is needed.

Tom Sutcliffe used to present it. At least he was quiet and unobtrusive so you could concentrate on the clues and try to work out the answer. Now it's impossible to think or even just enjoy it passively, because of the disruptive personality, chatter and guffawing of the presenter.

From UnHerd, a piece by Giles Fraser in praise of In Our Time and Melvyn Bragg which highlights its great virtues such as not faffing about and getting on with it and getting the academics to perform without waffling on, which are attributed mostly to Bragg's own qualities and major contribution.

In part:

"The style is cultured everyman — ranging over a kaleidoscope of art, religion, science, history — all without any apologetic flannel. “Hello. Catherine of Siena was born in 1347…” Whether it is fossils, quantum physics or the philosophy of Schopenhauer, there is no witty foreplay. Unashamedly highbrow, In Our Time has been an excuse for academics to show what they can do at what might otherwise have been the dreariest moment of the radio schedule. And, for nearly three decades, Melvyn Bragg has been a one-man Reithian powerhouse, single-handedly keeping alive the holy trinity of Lord Reith’s vision for the BBC: to inform, educate and entertain."

Link: https://unherd.com/2025/09/the-bbc-has-nothing-to-bragg-about/
It's also on https://archive.ph/ if you copy and paste in the unherd url.