Melvyn! Melvyn! Melvyn!

True story: I had a telephone conversation with my 82-year old dad soon after I got in from work tonight.

During it he got onto one of his hobby-horses: He thinks Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time is the most boring programme ever put out by the BBC.

I'll roughly translate what he said from broad Lancashire into 'RB' (Received Bloggerspeak), for the benefit of any soft southerners out there:

Who's that one you like? Er, the boring one, the one who comes from the Lakes? He was going on this morning about someone no-one's ever heard of, who was born in 30 AD! Who in their right mind would want to listen to that?

I rang back later to say I was looking forward to listening to it.

I mean, honestly, who wouldn't want to listen to Melvyn Bragg and three academics talking for 45 minutes about a historian from the first century AD? It's surely most normal people's idea of radio heaven. (Well, it's certainly mine.)

Even the ratings for Jeremy Kyle's eponymous TV show drop on Thursdays as viewers switch in their millions to Radio 4 for a spot of Melvyn & Co.

We all know what they're hoping for: the inevitable moment when Melvyn gets the hump with one of his academics for going off at a tangent or failing to do justice to something juicy which appears in his notes.

And then we all know what comes next: Melvyn starts throwing chairs at them, the Radio 4 audience begins chanting in unison, "Melvyn! Melvyn! Melvyn!" and Dame Jenni Murray has to rush in, with back-up from Jane Garvey, to break it all up.

Yes, it's all shameless sensationalism, of course, but that's what we In Our Time fans love about the programme.

Today's programme was about Josephus, author of The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews.

Josephus was apparently born to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry. Melvyn did a DNA test to try to prove or disprove the matter before bringing out a lie-detector to see which parts of The Jewish War were and weren't true. 

All four of Josephus's wives were invited onto the show. They began screaming and pulling each others' hair. Dame Jenni and Jane had to rush into the studio but, oddly, instead of breaking up the fight, they began restraining Professor Alexander and Professor Goodman (the two male academics) instead (typical bloody Woman's Hour!).

Towards the end a live bear (called Evan) was brought into the studio and ate Professor Alexander. A psychotherapist came on to console poor Professor Tessa Rajak.

Oh, I do love In Our Time!