Rewind radio: A History of Britain in Numbers; Forever Young – review

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/nov/23/history-of-britain-numbers-review

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A History of Britain in Numbers (Radio 4) | iPlayer

Forever Young (Radio 4) | iPlayer

We live, we are told, in an age of austerity. There are many people struggling to pay bills, fund food, access the necessaries to buy a weekly bus pass. I don't doubt that this is true. The gap between rich and poor in the UK is great and growing, and money attracts money. If you're rich, you get given stuff for nothing: smiles, frocks, paid positions on important trustee boards. If you're skint, society says to you, "You know what, it's probably for the best. You wouldn't be able to handle any more cash." This is why one God-fearing drug user is left to shout at litter swirling across the street while another one is handed a bank to play with. I think that's the reasoning, anyway.

For those of us who exist somewhere between these two monetary extremes, may I recommend a quick blast of Andrew Dilnot? He is chair of the UK Statistics Authority. Come back! He is also a delightful radio companion for 15 minutes a day, a witty and entertaining presenter and a man who seems determined to make us appreciate the fact that, honestly, honestly, we've never had it so good.

Dilnot's radio programme, A History of Britain in Numbers, reminds me of Stephen Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature. Pinker's book argued that, for those of us in the western world, despite our appalling wars and paedophilic urges and violent tendencies when drunk, life is much better than it used to be. Dilnot's first three programmes, on population, prosperity and health, painted a similar story. Most of us are unbelievably lucky to be living in the UK in the moment that we are. Mothers, in particular. In the 17th century, there was an astonishing population explosion, mostly because the average age of marriage dropped by three years from 26 to 23 (they don't know why). As the average woman gave birth every 23 months during her fertile years – excuse me while I bite my knuckles and hammer my feet on the floor – this meant that families grew from two kids to four. The rest of the kids died, of course; and the mothers too, often. Later, in the first part of the 19th century, the population doubled; in the second, it did the same again. "Children," said Dilnot, "powered the industrial revolution."

I kept on making notes. (Stats make me feel as though someone's going to test me on them.) But even if you missed a point, Dilnot and his production team at Whistledown had some lovely tricks to help the listener understand. Today, we were told, four out of every 1,000 children die in their first year of life. We heard a bip, bip, bip, bip to represent those deaths. Then we travelled backwards in time, to the 1980s (double the amount), the 70s (four times), back to the mid-18th century. The bips became a roar, like static, like rain hammering on a tin roof. More sounds: Dilnot shook a bag of 100 pennies. He took five away to represent today's recession, and shook the bag again. He gradually took out more as we travelled back. Just before the second world war he had 20p. That represented the average income in the late 1930s as compared with today… with the prices of everything staying the same. Try living on 20% of your current wage. That would certainly feel austere.

This seems a cue for ye olde "lies, damn lies and statistics" quote. So let's move away from maths and look at our changing society in a different way. On Friday, in Forever Young: Love and Marriage, we heard stats again (in 1961, men got married, on average, at 25, women at 23; now, it's 32 and 30). But we also heard the tales of four different young people, told by themselves. Like twins Niamph and Nuala, who talked of weddings and dresses and marriage. One was gay, one was straight. Like the young woman who'd had a baby at 16: sensible, practical, inspirational.

And a young man talked of how he first had sex when he was 15, with his girlfriend. He said he'd used internet porn – "because I wanted to know what to do" – but then spoke beautifully about how real-life sex just wasn't like that at all. "They make it look so easy, but if you're body to body, that needs confidence," he said. "That's about trust." The stories behind the statistics are what make those statistics real. We are numbers, and people at the same time.

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