A WISE MAN once said that a man’s soul can travel as fast as a camel’s trot. If we go any faster — as, in the modern world, we are accustomed to doing — we lose our sense of connection with the world, and we are lost.
So how does a man’s soul cope in a milk float? There was plenty of time to ponder such mysteries during Three Men in a Float (Radio 4, Wednesday of last week), the true story of three spiritually deracinated individuals who decided to make the journey from Lowestoft to Land’s End in a 50-year-old milk float.
It was, they said, an adventure worthy of Scott of the Antarctic or Sir Edmund Hillary — but a great deal more original. The title of the documentary reflected the intended homage to Jerome K. Jerome, who lauded the virtues of leisurely travel, but the concept owes as much to David Lynch’s untypically gentle film The Straight Story, about an American crossing the great plains on a lawnmower.
For all their whimsical banter, our three adventurers were not just Hooray Henry japesters. All were committed to the ideal of the slower life, and were genuinely affected by the interest and altruism that their journey inspired in others. In par-ticular, each evening they had to find a local willing to let them charge their vehicle from a domestic socket. A cooker was best — three hours and you’re off. Anything with less ampage might take up to 12 hours.
There is something heroic about travelling at the pace of a canal barge. You get a lingering look (and whiff) of roadkill; you have to remember what the sign said ten minutes back when you eventually reach the junction it applies to; and you have to endure the million and one stimuli that you can ignore when bombing down the motorway.
I have seldom wanted time to pass more quickly than when listening to the first two episodes in the current series of Chain Reaction (Radio 4, Thursdays). The conceit here is that one celeb gets to select and interview another celeb, and, in the next show, the interviewee turns interviewer, selecting yet another celeb, and so on. Since the expectation is that interviewees choose someone who has inspired them, the chain reaction should lead to ever more inspiring and entertaining people.
The reality is something rather more mundane. It is not that I have a problem with David “Doctor Who” Tennant interviewing Richard “I don’t believe it” Wilson. They are two perfectly likeable individuals, with some amusing anecdotes and a charming way about them. The reason I had to switch this off was the sycophantic, near-hysterical approval of the studio audience. Observations that in normal company might raise a polite smile were greeted with raucous laughter; a merry quip with wild applause. It was like a Question Time audience after a night on the town. Either the canned-laughter machine was doing overtime, or the warm-up act was dynamite.
The normally reliable 6.30 p.m. slot on Radio 4 has just launched another dud in the form of Rudy’s Rare Records (Tuesdays). The radio sitcom is more often honoured in the breach than in the observance, and this latest Lenny Henry vehicle is as stale as Terry and June.
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