Teddy Jamieson

I've just added a bit more and made a couple of corrs so best use this version: It can be a difficult thing, saying goodbye. It can be a challenge to get the tone right, making sure you’re not too sentimental, that you don’t stray into mawkish, while still sounding sincere. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that, after 58 years on the radio, Johnnie Walker did it perfectly on Sunday afternoon when he signed off for the last time at the end of Radio 2’s Sounds of the Seventies.

It’s difficult to feel nostalgic for the era of the New Lad and casual sexism, but at least the soundtrack is half-decent.

Michael Gove has been appointed editor of The Spectator and now Radio 4 has given him his own radio show. We’re stuck with him.

Scotland is a “destination of choice for international visitors”, according to a tourism body whose figures show nearly two million visits were made to the country from overseas in the first half of 2024.

Scotland’s forgotten pop star

It’s fair to say that it probably wasn’t in the plan that Tam Cowan should be the first commentator on the station to properly remember the former first minister. But so it turned out. And maybe that wasn’t so inappropriate. Salmond had been a guest on Off the Ball on a number of occasions and Cowan had a story to hand.

Sharleen Spiteri has never had a number one single. Neither has KT Tunstall, Paolo Nutini nor Annie Lennox, according to the Official Charts. But since their inception in 1952 there have officially been 49 Scottish number one singles dating back to 1968.

The last few years have been turbulent ones for Stuart Murdoch and Belle and Sebastian. The Scottish band had to cancel tours in 2022 and 2023 as a result of Covid and Murdoch’s health issues.

Whilst tourists to the capital flock to Greyfriars Kirk in Candlemaker Row, the Canongate Kirkyard can be overlooked even if it is on the Royal Mile.

This Radio 4 broadcast marked - in a cool, considered way - the 40th anniversary of the IRA’s attempt to kill Mrs Thatcher and her Cabinet on October 12, 1984 during the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton.