Rewind radio: Live coverage of Nelson Mandela's memorial service; Book at Bedtime; Alice's Wunderland – review

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/dec/14/mandela-memorial-bedtime-alice-wunderland-review

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Live Coverage of the Memorial Service for Nelson Mandela (World Service)| iPlayer

Book at Bedtime (R4) iPlayer

Alice's Wunderland (R4) | iPlayer

The BBC comes into its own when covering state events, wheeling out the gravitas-packing team of Huw Edwards, Sophie Raworth and all available Dimblebys to comment on precisely which dignitary is arriving when and wearing what kind of hat. But Nelson Mandela's memorial service wasn't the usual BBC thang. It wasn't the usual media thang, to be fair. Print and TV coverage wavered between lofty (don't these colonials/prime ministers know how to behave?) and sycophantic (Mandela was Mother Teresa, only black and a man). If you wanted to know what was really going on, you had to turn to the World Service.

Sitting right inside the stadium, presenters Audrey Brown and Ros Atkins were warm and genuine and, crucially, spontaneous guides to the service. Brown, in particular, kept listeners in touch with what was actually happening. "People on Twitter are asking, 'Where is Obama?', but in the stadium there is no sense of that, people are focusing on what is happening here," she said. And: "There was an undercurrent when Zuma came on stage." She conveyed both sympathy towards President Zuma and an understanding of the people's anger towards him. Such easy humanity from a non-Dimbleby!

We zoomed in and out of the memorial action, listening to Christian readings, Hindu prayers, shake-the-foundations singing, varyingly appropriate speeches. The atmosphere roared out of the radio: loud, emotional, like a sporting event. The crowd was the unnamed extra presenter. When one of the members of the South African parliament came on stage and sang, like an avenging angel, the whole audience went quiet: Brown translated, and informed us when the singer switched into a different local language. Gradually, gradually, the crowd joined in until the song became an anthem. Later, a speaker said that the rain didn't matter because, according to South African tradition, when it rains, it just means that the heavens are opening their doors... so Mandela can come in. The crowd yelled its approval. When Obama spoke, Brown admitted she could hardly hear what he was saying. The audience had taken over.

At one point we went to another presenter, standing in the streets outside the stadium. She told us that the streets were empty, that everyone was indoors, watching the service. She held out her microphone. We heard nothing, other than the rain.

When you hear the quality and depth of the World Service's reporting, it seems utterly shocking that it has had much of its funding removed. From 2014 it will no longer receive a grant from the Foreign Office. It will have to fight for a slice of the licence fee, like every other BBC department. You worry that it will lose out to spangly Strictly costumes. Events such as the Mandela memorial make its case.

If, at the end of the day, you're having trouble calming down after the pre-Christmas brain disco of work dos and after-hours shopping, may I recommend this week's Book at Bedtime? It's Truman Capote's short stories, read by Kerry Shale. Shale is an excellent reader, managing to bring Capote's pin-sharp portraits to life without ever making you feel as though you're hearing An Actor, Acting. And Capote's writing is so perfect: tight without ever being airless, deft sentences, precise language, gripping small tales of human life.

And if you're still awake after that on a Thursday, then stay listening for Alice's Wunderland, the second sketch series by actress Alice Lowe. It, too, uses language carefully, though much more playfully. Lowe snaps words away from one another and puts them back together in new patterns: "You pulled the legs off a bichon frise!" Quirky and odd, this week's programme hopped from a Dickensian version of the dole office to a modern-day Tinkerbell ("I got tattoos that'll make you cry...") to an innuendo-filled, laughter-tracked funeral parlour, Are You Being Hearsed? Like a series of contemporary Lewis Carroll poems, and just as strange and charming.

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