Radio review: Richard Bacon

Whatever happened to the silly news season of high summer? Richard Bacon (5 Live) pondered this as he interviewed comedian Andy Parsons in Edinburgh. Parsons said that with Libya, the riots and the phone-hacking scandal, more than half of his show has been rewritten of late. Where television had the dramatic pictures, radio had the voices. Reporter Rupert Wingfield-Hayes spoke to Stephen Nolan on 5 Live and, later, Jeremy Vine (Radio 2), as we heard a clip of his convoy meeting an ambush. The crack of fire was swiftly followed by the snap of a panicked command ("Drive! Drive! Drive! Drive!). Karen Graham, a British nurse working in Tripoli, spoke to the Today Programme (Radio 4). "You probably will hear some gunfire," she said from her balcony. "There haven't been many silent minutes since the early hours." Later, talking to Nolan, she described how Libyan state television was claiming there were no rebels in the city. "It's absolutely wonderful," she said sardonically. Libyans in Britain spoke about what and who they'd left behind. A student in Scotland told Bacon that he'd managed to speak to his family at home, but nobody knows what happened to his brother who was arrested as a rebel a few months ago. It was a sobering moment among all the expectation and euphoria.