Welcome Back, Danny

The nicest surprise I've had for a long time was at about two minutes to nine last Saturday morning when the Radio 5 presenter said Danny Baker was resuming his 9 to 11 o'clock spot, like, in two minutes' times.

I don't write to denigrate the inadequacy of his interim replacements but it hadn't taken me long to migrate to Radio 3's morning of CD reviews for satisfactory Saturday morning radio but I'm back on 5 again now and the scholarly reflections on new releases of high-minded musicianship will have to wait. One listener had wondered whether, during his illness, Danny had been taking pink medicine, brown medicine or no medicine at all.

This is the most welcome comeback I can remember. Danny is the broadcasting genius of our generation and now well into my second decade of listening, and just occasionally sending in a contribution, to his tireless stream of chat-tastic entertainment, I'm more than used to it but not in the least wearying of it. Although we might be tempted to drip on about dumbing down in broadcasting values, how much we miss Bamber Gascoigne, Robert Robinson or A.J.P. Taylor, one might reflect on how it would have looked if we'd have lost Danny Baker. That would have been another Golden Age untimely over with.

His guest tomorrow, usually on between 10 and 10.30, is due to be Stephen Fry, the more ubiquitous and differently erudite pretender to his title of Greatest Living Englishman. They are bound to be good. It could not be otherwise. We have a lot of catching up to do.