Radio: She's not a poet, and she should know it

It's time we had a female Poet Laureate. How about Petula Clark? Yes, Our Pet (R2), currently hoofing it around America in Sunset Boulevard, has written a poem. Admittedly, it's the kind that starts by rhyming rigorously, slips into free form and returns in a slightly different metre - but it's a start. She read it on air, with great verve, but it's pretty long so I can only offer you a couple of highlights. Broadly, it's about the mysterious glamour of the theatre "and all those magic evenings with Lloyd Webber and the Bard/An old play by Whoever, something new by Tom Stoppard ... "

After the somethings old and new, there's a little that's borrowed but of course nothing blue. Our Pet is never less than wholesome, even when indignant. And when she is roused to fury by, say, the sight of suffering humanity her reaction is never to howl in protest, to rant, to lobby or to curse. This is what happens: "My anger will not let me sleep/ And, when my grief becomes too deep ... I sing!"

So she does. It's what she does best and she should probably stick to it. This uneven programme was a tribute to mark 50 years since her first record. It's much longer since what Sacha Distel unaccountably described as her "radio debewt". She was nine then, or 10, depending on who was talking. Distel was an odd choice as compere, being master of the snide anecdote. He first met her in a French theatre, when he followed her onto the stage. But "she went on forever, so I had to comfort a very sleepy audience". Nice one, Sacha.

At the beginning, people lined up to explain why they were there: "I've known Petula a very long time," insisted Peter Ustinov, "and therefore my presence on this programme is entirely justified". But none of them had much to say after that. Mostly, she talked about herself, in the determinedly English accent also used by Julie Andrews and other singers who spend time in America. A walk sounds like a Chinese cooking-pot in this voice, and "school" is almost two syllables. And yet ... it was curiously touching to hear her reminiscing dreamily about holidays in Wales, frolicking about on mountains and slag-heaps with her old Welsh granny. The idyll didn't last. Before long, she was "discovered" by her father who, Ustinov thought, saw the talented tot as a meal-ticket and worked her too hard. She's a granny herself now and still in fine fettle. You have to admire her staying-power - but she has some work to do on the poetry.

Music is big business, and not just for successful singers. There are people who actually compose background music and earn pounds 65m a year from it in royalties. In Music on the Brain (R4), Peter Snow conducted an investigation into the fearsome noise that bedevils every phone-call or shopping trip.

It is not cheap, clearly, but mighty potent. One supermarket had displays of French and German wine. When they played loud oompah Germanic marches, they sold two bottles of the German to one of the French: when they slid into corny accordions, it became five French to each German - yet no purchaser admitted to having been influenced by the band.

That's quite interesting, as is the fact that a Special Needs teacher facing the notoriously disruptive and aggressive Class 7D, brought about instant calm and spectacularly improved results by playing them Mozart. Only Mozart will do it - and instrumental Mozart at that. Yet nobody explained why, say, Schubert didn't work, because Peter Snow was far too busy being gimmicky. I love frivolity, but it barged into this potentially fascinating programme like a pantomime horse at a wake. "Watch what you're doing with that hoe!", quipped the frenetic presenter, pretending to be in a medieval garden while chanting monks provided muzak. Salva nos, Domine.

Now for a couple of series that know exactly what they're doing. In The New Recruit (R4), an old hand visits someone new to the job and maunders on about how things used to be, generally getting in the way and wasting time. Still, in every edition I've heard, the new boy has been benign, courteous and tolerant. David, this week's young florist, seemed to love his visit from the older Diana. Whereas he trained in college, she learned on the job, spending months in the cellars "mossing up wreaths". She used to put a red rose in a coffin, a preservative penny in vases, and plastic flowers ("I know, wash my mouth out") in the window; he works entirely with fresh blooms, usually bought from travelling Dutchmen.

They agreed, however, about the men who buy "apology" or proposal bouquets: they're the big spenders. But discretion is demanded on Valentine's Day. One woman found her husband's credit card bill for a dozen roses and phoned to complain that she'd only received one. Whoops. David knew exactly where the dozen had gone but his lips were sealed. I hope he sent more to the wife, charged the errant husband and said it with flowers.

Some things, these two concluded, are getting better, others worse. These are reflective, retrospective times. With its global perspective, the World Service is well placed to record them. In the first week of My Century, five victims of war described their experiences. These tiny, personal monologues were intensely moving. A woman spoke - as if it were yesterday - of her mother's madness and death from starvation during the siege of Stalingrad, and regretfully, of her own inability to drag the body to the cemetery. A boy remembered being maimed as he rode his bike, against orders, in Sarajevo. An ancient Australian recalled diving for cover when he heard a bang in 1925, the shell-shock he had received at Passchendaele still undiagnosed. Each talk lasted a mere five minutes. Together, they formed a valuable, frightful warning.

The novelist and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was a Jewish schoolgirl in Cologne in the 1930s. Though her family escaped, her father committed suicide when he learned of the death camps. She has never written about it: "You can't wipe it out. You just wish so much that it had never happened." Her Desert Island Discs reflected the chameleon quality of her refugee life.

Shakespeare Wallah, Satyajit Ray

Pyara Mohan Aavo, Parween Sultana

Sonata in E Major (Scarlatti), Horowitz

Avinu Malkeinu, Hazzan Steven C Berke

B Minor Mass (Bach), BBC Chorus

Vallauris Corrida (Robbins), Geffrey Alexander

Jhanka Jahnkava More, Abdul Karim Khan

String Quartet no 16 (Beethoven), Juilliard String Quartet