Death of a Code Breaker (MIM for Radio Wales) | BBC Sounds
A History of the World in Spy Objects | Spyscape
Legacy | Wondery and Goalhanger
File on 4: Disability and the Adult Industry | Radio 4
The Essay | Radio 3
Death of a Code Breaker has all the ingredients of a locked door mystery – the howdunnit as opposed to the whodunnit, though that’s also a big question – but sadly it’s a real-life story. In August 2010, the naked body of an MI6 code breaker, Gareth Williams, was found zipped inside a sports bag in the bath of his Pimlico flat. The shower curtain was drawn, the light was off, the bathroom door was shut and the heating in the flat was turned up to full, even though it was summer. A locked door mystery indeed.
Unsurprisingly, there was much speculation as to what had happened, with occasional salacious undercurrents. Williams was gay, and hints of that homophobic tabloid special, “a sex game gone wrong”, detracted from his death. He was just 31, extremely bright and well liked. His death overshadowed his too-brief life, and how he died has never been satisfactorily explained.
Now, there’s a podcast (of course there is). Hosted by Dr Sian Williams (no relation), it takes the case seriously. Gareth Williams’s analytical abilities took him to a job in GCHQ, and he was seconded to MI6. An expert in how people die in small spaces explains why he thinks William’s death is murder; another man says: “I know how he got in that bag.” Yet another expert insists he can explain the lack of DNA evidence.
Williams wasn’t a spy, but he was constantly called one in the media, because code breaker is too long for headlines. In A History of the World in Spy Objects, we get more exciting snippets of James Bonding. How Jackson Pollock’s art became useful to the CIA; how the poisoned umbrella was invented; why a coffeemaker kept moving around a Soviet flat; how the B-2 stealth bomber was invented. We’re also promised episodes on the Enigma machine and a briefcase filled with secrets owned by Napoleon.
These are neat tales, neatly delivered by interested famous people such as Jason Isaacs and Thomas Heatherwick, all held together by an OTT voiceover from historian Alice Loxton. The episodes remind me of social media: punchy, interesting stories that won’t change your life but will give you something to talk about with your pub mates. Quick glimpses into a parallel world where, you hope, the bad guys still stroke white cats and the goodies come equipped with an exploding briefcase.
More history in Legacy, yet another two-hander from Goalhanger, the production house known for The Rest Is Politics, The Rest Is History, The Rest Is Money et al. Hosted by Afua Hirsch and Peter Frankopan, this is a history podcast that’s going to need time to settle. Frankopan isn’t completely at ease with presenting, or the easy chat required to draw an audience in. Hirsch is much better, but so far, has been relegated to the role of asking questions. The show itself is a mix of You’re Wrong About, The Rest Is History and Hirsch’s own We Need to Talk About the British Empire. It takes well-known people from the past and questions our received knowledge about who they are. (We start with Napoleon.) I’m not sure why Goalhanger keeps hiring middle-aged white guys to do the talking: Hirsch could do this stuff far better on her own.
Much better are the selection of one-off documentaries on BBC Radios 3 and 4 from this year’s Multitrack Audio Fellowships. Multitrack is a charity that gives paid fellowships in audio production to people from under-represented groups, and first-time producers have come up with a fabulously wide range of programmes as a result. The File on 4 doc Disability and the Adult Industry was an absolute eye-opener. Hosted by wheelchair user Ellen Macleod, with investigative journalist Nastaran Tavakoli-Far (The Orgasm Cult, The Cost of Happiness), it met several disabled people with an enthusiasm for making adult videos, and explored questions of consent and voyeurism. Does it matter if pornography watchers get their kicks from a disabled person’s apparent inability to consent to sex if the person involved actually has consented and is happy to make the video? Fascinating and enlightening.
On Radio 3’s The Essay strand, three shorter, more experimental Multitrack pieces were aired. Laurel Wilson looked at the djembe drum’s move out of west Africa and into, particularly, the Caribbean; Ricardo Burt, clubber, radio-maker and runner, gave us a piece about what running can do for the clubbing community; and in An Turas, produced by Stephen Maguire, we heard from five poets from around Scotland, who spoke in various dialects and languages.
The Djembe Drum: Beyond West Africa seemed straightforward but was beautifully made, with some lovely points from drummer Eric Hippolyte and drum-maker Souleymane Compo. The djembe is often used at funerals. “Sometimes we’re not so mindful of where we come from,” said Compo. “Until when it comes to the final transition; we acknowledge we have to come to our African spirit.” Rhythm of the Run used the cut-up and sampling techniques of DJing to atmospheric effect; and An Turas gave us a mesmeric, soothing, almost otherworldly soundscape. Each very different, each great.
