Just two guys shooting the breeze about big truths.

I have to
admit that my expectations of 'The Robert Peston Interview Show
(with Eddie Mair) Radio 4,
Mondays 11pm weren't
high.

The
trailer for the programme involved the presenters acting out the sort
of matey 'banter' that always sounds false, the basic premise,
Peston and Mair take turns to choose who will be interviewed meaning
that one has prepared for what is to come and the other is,
allegedly, coming to it cold seemed pretty hokey too.

To
cap it all Mair piped up at the end of the trailer to say 'its late
night and anything could happen'; whenever I hear something like that
a disappointed little voice at the back of my mind always chimes in
saying, 'it probably won't though.'

Actually
the resulting programme was better than I'd hoped; better in fact
that most things to be found in the graveyard slot on a week-night.

The
guest on Monday night was the novelist Julian Barnes and the focus of
the discussion was his book 'Levels
of Life' written about the experience of losing is wife, a misfortune he
shares with Robert Peston.

What
followed was a sensitive, honest and frequently touching discussion
of what its like to grieve for a loved one, one of the great shared
experiences of being human and yet something we pretend always
happens to someone else.

Barnes
cites the loss of religion and the way we have devolved dealing with
the practicalities of dying to professionals for our general
inability to cope with the only inevitable thing about being alive.
He also touched on the way gender influences our approach to death,
women with their greater emotional intelligence and deeper
friendships tend to make a better fist of things than man, with the
latter either falling back on clumsy cliché's or treating the whole
thing as if its like getting cramp during a game of rugby; something
you can 'run off' if you try hard enough.

None
of this was particularly original, but it was hard to disagree with
the fundamental truths being expressed, even if some of them probably
outraged the liberal, broadsheet reading sensibilities of some
listeners.

The
programme wasn't perfect by any means, Robert Peston still has the
most annoying voice in radio, those weirdly stretched vowels have got
to be fake and the self consciously 'quirky' set-up is pretty much
redundant since if the conversation is interesting enough you forget
all about it anyway. Also Eddie Mair seems fairly superfluous, his
main contribution seeming to be to chip in occasionally when Peston
is in danger of going off on a tangent, even though that is exactly
what makes most interviews interesting.

That
said there was much to like here, programmes where serious
journalists are allowed off the leash can sometimes be self
indulgent, this one though reminded me of what radio and late night
radio does best of all; deliver that thrilling feeling of
eavesdropping on a fascinating conversation taking place in the next
room, rather than listening to something scripted and rehearsed
coming from a a studio.

For
me it is something that takes me back to childhood, lying in bed
listening to an old portable radio with a red plastic cover, Radio
Luxembourg and Kaleidoscope on Radio 4, not understanding most of
what I was hearing,but enjoying the thrill of listening in on the
adult world.

Ultimately
this programme, like any other interview show will stand or fall on
the quality of its guests. This was a promising opener though, mostly
because Barnes had nothing to plug, meaning he and Peston could get
on with the serious business of having a conversation about things
that are difficult, revealing and worthwhile.