Refreshing Thought for BBC Today Programme?

Theo Hobson aired a refreshing view about Thought for the Day in the Grauniad this morning. 

Many see TFTD as a morsel of religious rot in the Today programme’s otherwise balanced journalistic diet. Yet Hobson claims it offers a holiday from the “subtle tyranny of secular-speak”:

Why? Because this is a different sort of voice from those that strut through the media: witty-rude columnists, worldly-wise experts, with-it arts critics, etcetera. Blue, in contrast, feels free to speak about his inner struggles, his sense of fear, of need, of guilt, and so on. You don’t get that from Simon Jenkins or Zoe Williams.

He may have a point. Between John Humphries barking down the phone at suspect ministers, Robert Peston eeeeelong-aaaating his vowels over the recession, and Sarah Montague enunciating too ruddy well for that time of morning, the dulcet tones of a Lionel Blue or an Indarjit Singh come as welcome respite.

And voices aside, after hearing the bad news stack up over the half hour since getting up, you need TFTD as a window on a slower, more measured dimension. It helps you slightly unclench your cereal spoon fist for just three minutes every morning.

I thought Ariane Sherine’s humanist TFTD replacement was weak on that front.

But how about Jarvis Cocker’s triumphant alternative, when he guest edited Today on 31 Dec last year? It’s a speech from philosopher and interpreter of Zen Buddhism, Alan Watts, who died in 1973:

Download: 7805882.stm

Would you like to hear more of this?