Why on Earth, in this day and age, would anyone make a radio documentary series about palaeontology, visiting key sites for the fossil record of life on our planet? Have you no television to go to?
Well, actually, a lot of people don't have televisions to go to, and a considerable number of them are potential listeners to the BBC World Service. That, anyway, is one way I justify the excellent four-part Life Story (BBC World Service), which takes lucky Martin Redfern around the globe and is currently winding its way around the World Service's happily repetitive schedule.
There's no doubt that in this high-tech neck of the universe, some of this is familiar material. Next week's programme, for example, looks at the evidence that birds are really the last of the dinosaurs; I'm sure I saw that on telly just a few weeks ago.
Nonetheless, this is beautifully, solidly picturesque radio. It opened, irresistably, on a drive down on a dirt track in South Australia, where an Adelaide academic explained: "We're going older and older, down through the Cambrian, and towards the underlying Protozoic rocks . . ."
"So we're going back, what, 500 million or more years back into the history of the planet?" Redfern interjects.
"Yes, at the point where we're at at the moment we're about 525 million years back in time . . . We're just about to cross into rocks where shelly fossils become very rare, and all we see are the burrowings and tunnels made by wormy organisms, digging into the sandy sea bottom." And there's something about the Australian accent that makes this potentially esoteric material sound immediately earthy. (Redfern's own pommy "Hey, what's that?!" sounds marginally more contrived.)
"Life, the universe and everything" was billed as one of the topics on The Green Light (Anna Livia FM, Wednesday), the end-of-year wrap-up of the community station's environment magazine. But first there was a completely uncritical feature from the summer about Dublin Zoo's "African Plains": zoo chairman Sean Cromien apparently kept tongue out of cheek to use words like "in the wild" to describe the conditions of the zoo's island-bound captives, and "as you'd see them on the plains of Africa" to describe the new mixed-species enclosures.
The Green Light, understandably, bears all the hallmarks of low-budget journalism, with even the best packages only as good as the material immediately to hand. Thus another feature here was a long monologue from an anti-fluoride scientist - including highly suggestive claims about dramatic differences in hip-fracture rates in the fluoridated Republic versus the unfluoridated North. This was quite interesting, but with no context and no debate it sounded distinctly threadbare.
"Life, the universe and everything" came courtesy of Goodie and birdman Bill Oddie. Only it didn't. Instead there was a mess of an apparently unedited interview, complete with lots of background noise, with a doing-his-best Oddie as he adjudicated for some nature-photography awards - and he came up with answers far more complex and nuanced than the questions that prompted them.
I'm all for community radio as a training ground for well-intentioned young (or old) broadcasters; it's just that some learning curves look like a steeper climb than others.
Something about this time of year consistently prompts otherwise sensible radioheads to take their complete and utter ephemera and package it for a prized place in the CD collection of someone for whom you care vaguely but for whom you can't think of a more appropriate present.
Foremost offender this Christmas hails from the "Bertie's Gift Grub" segments on the Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show (Today FM).
The segments have been without doubt a successful part of an increasingly successful programme. They're pretty funny too, thanks mainly to the voice talent of Mario Rosenstock, whose Bertie "Infacta" Ahern is a clever comic creation.
However, I'm afraid by far the best thing about the CD, Gift, is the plain brown packaging (which isn't all that good anyway).
Otherwise, this is a desperately impoverished excuse for political satire, several miles sub-Phoenix - from which it shamelessly lifts nicknames Mata Harney and John Brutal - and not even in the same eco-system as (critic pauses to bless himself) Scrap Saturday. What, you say satire is old hat? Gift is just plain madcap, gas altogether? No it's not.
Of course there are a few smiles on offer here. But let me tell you: that friend who regularly chuckles through the Dempsey-show sketches is going to be jaw-droppingly appalled at how poorly this stuff wears in this format. Unless of course you're also supplying copious quantities of intoxicating substances to accompany the CD. This might not get 'em laughing, but hastening unconsciouness would be some mercy.