Radio listener with Jim Gilchrist

jim gilchrist

But does he mean it? He turns his Victor Meldrew catchphrase “I don’t believe it!” on its head in his four-part “celebrity radiography” BELIEVE IT!, in which he laces alleged reminiscences with unlikely tales and a certain surreal logic.

Playing himself – with some assistance from his “ghost writer” Jon Canter and actors including David Tennant and John Sessions – Wilson claims that he never drank because a traumatic childhood experience suggested that alcohol was indelibly associated with truth and death. “What could be more scary?”

These picaresque memoirs also reveal how Wilson caused George Best to miss a penalty, and why a car journey with Sir Laurence Olivier ensured that his confirmed tipple would be elderflower cordial ... Or so he says.

But how do you really convey the essence of a person? Radio 3 discusses this issue extensively in its “Portraits Day” on Monday, which includes a special edition of NIGHTWAVES: CAPTURING A LIKENESS, broadcast live from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, when presenter Philip Dodd is joined by author Ian Rankin, artist Alison Watt, poet Robert Crawford and John Leighton, director general of the National Galleries of Scotland.

They discuss the nature of portraiture and the various challenges and tensions involved in the art of capturing a likeness, be it through figurative or abstract painting or literature.

The portrait – of sorts – which adorned the first-edition cover of THE GREAT GATSBY was of a disembodied woman’s eyes and lips, drifting above a glare of neon lights. F Scott Fitzgerald’s great American novel is Radio 4’s two-part Classic Serial, starting tomorrow. Bryan Dick plays Nick Carraway, the narrator, Pippa Bennett-Warner is the vivacious Daisy Buchanan and Andrew Scott plays Gatsby himself, the self-made man who finds that that the one thing he desires remains immune to his money and charisma.

BELIEVE IT!

Wednesday, Radio 4, 11:30pm

Night Waves: Capturing A Likeness

Monday, Radio 3, 10pm

Classic Serial: The Great Gatsby

Tomorrow, Radio 4, 3pm