When Shakespeare's sonnets replace talk of the tempest

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, May 17, 2009 | by Radio preview By Barry Didcock

LOOPIEST Breakfast Show Of The Week Ahead Award (which should really be given in perpetuity to Alice Cooper's three-hour Planet Rock slot) goes to BBC Radio 3 for its contribution to the BBC Poetry Season on Wednesday. Why? Because instead of the news or the weather, they'll be reading Shakespeare's sonnets 18, 23 and 33 (from 7am). A further 11 sonnets will be read throughout the day on the station, ending with sonnet 71 (Spike Milligan's favourite) on Late Junction (11.15pm). And if you're still up for that, you won't have missed The Essay: Under The Infl uence (BBC Radio 3, Monday, 11pm), in which WN Herbert discusses the work of Scotland's makar, Edwin Morgan.

Three long-forgotten but recently discovered stories from famous authors come to the airwaves this week in Lost And Found (BBC Radio 4, Tuesday-Thursday, 3.30pm). First up is The Undertaker's Tale by Mark Twain, which lay undisturbed by scholars for a cool 130 years before coming to light.

It's followed by tales from PG Wodehouse (Providence And The Builder, lost for 99 years) and Malachi Whitaker (Blackberry Day). No, I hadn't heard of him either.

I have heard of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, however, whose attempt to enter parliament on the Liberal Unionist ticket in the 1900 election is dramatised in Vote For Conan Doyle! (BBC Radio Scotland, Friday, 11.30pm).

John Sessions stars as the prospective MP in a play written by Bert Coules to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the author's birth.

Radio 2 celebrates another anniversary this week - the founding of Island Records. Island 50 (Saturday, 10pm) is the fi rst of a two- part series presented by Don Letts which tells the story of how Chris Blackwell, a moneyed white Jamaican, became one of the leading tastemakers of the 1970s. And it's not all about Bob Marley, either: Fairport Convention, Nick Drake and Cat Stevens were all signed to the label, too.

Finally, if you need to wash last night's Eurovision debacle out of your system, tune in to "the thinking woman's beardy crumpet", also known as Elbow frontman Guy Garvey, left. He returns to his two- hour spot on BBC Radio 6 tonight (10pm). I wonder where he's been . . .