Radio

Published on Wednesday 15 April 2009 17:27

Kings of the Road Tuesday, Radio Scotland, 11:30am Love in the Bus Lane Friday, Radio Scotland, 11:30am Afternoon Play: The Iceman Goeth Thursday, Radio 4, 2:15pm

IT MAY be one of the most boring and, in places, bleakest, of Scottish main roads, with occasional relief granted by the Bathgate "Pyramids" – with or without fluorescent red sheep, or the lonely floodlit bulk of Kirk o' Shotts – but even the M8 has its tales to tell, and BBC Radio Scotland, believe it or not, is devoting a week to it. The ultimate drivetime radio, perhaps, the week includes new feature programmes, as well as regular daily shows picking up the M8 theme.

In Kings of the Road, Billy Kay meets the men who built the motorway, including those who levelled the Deans Bing at Livingston, a vast relic of the shale oil industry, and spread its red blaes as a base for the carriageways. The navvies were often "tunnel tigers" from the Highland hydro projects, or migrant "Donegals" from Ireland.

Emigrants from elsewhere feature in Love in the Bus Lane, by DC Jackson, with Lisa Gardner and Stewart Porter in a romance between Krystyna from Poland and Billy the bus driver, who plies the Edinburgh-Glasgow route daily. Elsewhere, regular programmes such as the Radio Caf, Good Morning Scotland and MacAulay and Co will all broadcast from along the Central Belt highway. Watch out for the cones …

Actors playing their contemporaries may sound a bit on the cosy side, but in The Iceman Goeth, not only does Ian Glen play fellow thesp Ian Holm, but the subject of the play, Holm himself, crops up, giving a candid interview about his life and craft. The subject matter is a 1976 production of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, which never ran, due to the young Holm's devastating onset of stage fright. Total meltdown, one might say.