Tales from the Mausoleum Club on Radio 4 Extra

The BBC are repeating the 1987 radio comedy series, Tales from the Mausoleum Club. This was a series of comic pastiches of great works of Victorian literature, recast as a series of macabre tales recounted by the members of London’s most exclusive club. There are only two requirements for membership: You have to have an excellent story. As for the other qualification …

The first episode, ‘The Inaudible Man’, follows Dr Bates, an ear, nose and throat specialist as he tries to stop a mysterious supervillain. This archcriminal has invented a machine to throw his voice, based on a quantum theory of sound, and now plans to use it to throw the country into a national crisis.

The programme was broadcast on Wednesday, and can be heard of BBC iplayer here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007k1w6.

Further episodes are

2) Heart of Skegness, Wednesday, 18th December, 5.30 pm.

4) The Turn of the Knob, New Year’s Day, 5.30 pm.

According to the schedule on BBC I-player, episode 3, A Study in Starlets, is on Christmas Day at 7.00 O’clock and repeated on Boxing Day at 5.30. However, I can’t find it on those days in the Radio Times, but you may try listening at those times anyway, just in case.

Brian ‘Vultan’ Blessed on Brian Cox’s Science Show, Tomorrow Radio 4

A few weeks after announcing he had completed astronaut training at Russia’s Star City and was in line to voyage to the International Space Station, Brian Blessed is on the radio tomorrow. He, Stephen Attenborough and Dr. Kevin Fong will be on Brian Cox and Robin Ince’s The Infinite Monkey Cage discussing space tourism. The programme goes out at $.30 pm.

One of the other speakers on the programme, Dr. Kevin Fong, is well worth hearing if you have the opportunity. He’s a Chinese-British doctor who specialises in space medicine. As well as being a knowledgable speaker, he’s also a very funny guy. I saw him back in the late 1990s talking about the medical problems involved in space travel at the Cheltenham Festival of Science. It was at the time the Bird Flu epidemic was raging. Fong turned up suffering from an awful, but blessedly normal cold, for which he apologised. ‘It’s all right’, said the good doctor, ‘I was in Beijing last week, but it’s only the common cold. It’s amazing the amount of space you get on the Underground now if you’re an Asian with a cold.’

As for the living legend that is Brian Blessed, what more needs to be said except

‘GORDON’S ALIVE!’