Both by age and temperament—if not by celebrity–I’m an obvious candidate to join the ranks of TV’s ‘Grumpy Old Men’, and in that role I’d normally be the first to fulminate about ‘dumbing down’ as an inescapable fact of contemporary life.  So, for example, I was spitting expletives over the BBC Trust’s recent recommendation that […]

I spend part of most Sundays reloading my MP3 player with a batch of BBC podcasts, to see me, like a sheep’s heid, through the week. A regular item is the ten minute Radio 4 slot ‘A Point of View’. The current contributor is the popular (or should that be ‘populist’?) philosopher Alain de Botton. […]

I spend part of most Sundays reloading my MP3 player with a batch of BBC podcasts, to see me, like a sheep’s heid, through the week. A regular item is the ten minute Radio 4 slot ‘A Point of View’. The current contributor is the popular (or should that be ‘populist’?) philosopher Alain de Botton. […]