Can't believe no one has mentioned the shipping forecast yet! Or Test Match Special. Or Woman's Hour. Or Loose Ends. Or Brain of Britain. Or Round Britain Quiz.
All brilliant, for different reasons.
I was brought up with Radio 4 as a constant & reassuring background noise, so I've been listening to I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue and the Archers for as long as I can remember. Not that I listen to either any more, but I'm still a Radio 4 devotee.
I like Poetry Please, and I love In Our Time, especially when Melv gets a bee in his bonnet about something. I like the books one with dusky-voiced siren Mariella Frostrup. I even like Gardeners Question Time, even though I'm not really a gardener.
I find the quality of the comedies highly variable. I've always loved the News Quiz, which has done a good job of evolving with the times (unlike ISIHAC, which sounds very tired and dated now), and Just A Minute, which is exactly the same as it ever was but has stayed fresh by regularly introducing new young blood. But I can't stand the Now Show and I can take or leave most of the formulaic panel games. But the best of it is superb. I'm sure there's loads of great stuff I've forgotten, but a few recent examples that spring to mind are: The Mark Steel Lectures, Old Harry's Game, Bleak Expectations, Count Arthur Strong, The Very World Of Milton Jones.
Loads of really good dramas too. Particularly love the Clive Mereson Sherlock Holmes with Michael Williams/Andrew Sachs as Watson. And the adaptation of Les Miserables of a few years ago is one I can happily go back to again and again.
Some of the programmes I enjoy most are the one-offs you catch by chance because the radio is just on while you're doing other stuff. Missed the one about lesbian yak weavers of Timbuktu (is it on iPlayer? Sounds fascinating. I didn't even know yak were native to Timbuktu - or do they import them?) but there was a great one recently about the insidious rise of pink.
Tend to skip Money Box, You & Yours and, of course, Quote Unquote. Not a big fan of Today, mainly because I can't stand John Humphrys. Any Questions makes me shout at the radio, but Speak Your BranesAny Answers makes me throw stuff at it. (That reminds me - Down The Line was another superb comedy.)
d.