The show will go out live on the internet in webcam vision, drawing in an international public to a forum without frontiers. While others argue about elitism in the arts, my concern is that a mighty swell of populist feeling is perpetually ignored by the state or self-appointed custodians of public enlightenment. One purpose of this programme is to enfranchise audiences and encourage them to spit back the stuff they are spoon-fed. Another is to give the genteel norms of cultural discourse a jolly good shaking. My show will not involve host and guests but disputants, dispensing with the conventions of courtesy in the interests of clarity.
Reputations are up for the rumbling.
The ascendance of star presenter over stubborn creator will be dissected in the coming weeks, along with the sacred cows of public subsidy and the education industry. The risks of setting free the bugbears are considerable. They are borne partly by the show's presenter but primarily by the Radio 3 controller, Roger Wright. When Wright took command two years ago, after a spell in the disintegrating record industry, he asked me one morning over breakfast whether the polemical and investigative edge of this weekly column could be transferred to radio. My response was that it would be possible only if the BBC could guarantee the same freedoms of speech as The Telegraph did, and if listeners could be turned into live participants rather than passive patients on a programmed drip.