Radio Review

I know it's a syndicated show, but you do get the sense that Bob Dylan might not have the tightest grasp on what his Radio 2 listeners are actually like. On last night's Theme Time Radio Hour his subject was California, and mention was soon made of Levi Strauss, who brought us, as Dylan memorably put it, "disposable pants". He pondered whether his listeners might be wearing those, "or maybe you're wearing Gucci".

It was as quirky a musical tour of California as you could imagine.

We heard some handy statistics - it produces 17m gallons of wine a year, and is home to the world's tallest tree - but mostly it was just cracking, peculiar one-liners. California, he observed, is a great place to live "if you happen to be an orange".

The music sparkled, reflecting the sunny, feel-good and alternative place it was about. But it's mostly Dylan's delivery that you focus on, all swishing and twitching of pinched sounds. Each word is unusually emphasized, buzzy and unpredictable. When he mentioned Massachusetts, the four syllables sounded like separate, and newly introduced, concepts from different galactic language systems, all yet unheard to the human ear, and smothered in hissy sibilance.