RADIO / What little girls are made of: Robert Hanks on schoolgirl cruelty and schoolboy humour

LISTENING to the opening music of Blood Sports for Girls (Radio 4, Thursday) - a bunch of schoolgirls singing happily about being together forever, one of a kind - your first thought was that somebody had saddled the programme with an unnecessarily vicious title; how jolly and innocent it all sounded. Your second thought was that it was a shame the girls couldn't all sing in even vaguely related keys. As it turned out, this was an appropriate preface to a catalogue of discord; and the title caught the mood of selfish violence and cruelty all too well.

Sara Parker talked to women of all ages about the arcane and sometimes sinister codes and rituals of girls politics. The conversation ranged from present- day schoolgirls rattling on about 'friendship bands' (if you take them off, except for games lessons or in the bath, it means the friendship is broken), to the cooler, more chilling recollections of older women, some of them scarred for life by their experiences. These had been artfully assembled by Tessa Watt, together with readings from women writers, into self-contained sections and sub-sections: bullying, physical and psychological (with special reference to sending to Coventry); best friends - importance thereof, best friends - jealousy regarding, best friends - betrayal by; long-term psychological effects - guilt, inability to form friendships, fear for own children; and so forth.

This all made for highly uncomfortable listening - Lord of the Flies crossed with Angela Brazil. Some women described the cruelty they themselves had practised on other children. One woman told how she and a friend had made a new girl wear a blindfold, and then lured her through patches of stinging nettles; another remembered how her entire class had victimised one girl, screaming with disgust if they touched her - 'Eurgh. Sarah's germs] Sarah's germs]'

There was some comfort to be had from the shame expressed by former bullies, though. The woman involved in the stinging-nettle incident ended by saying, 'I would like to say that I thought it was the other girl's idea, and that I was just a hanger-on as far as that went; but I couldn't be confident of that.' Another contributor tried to explain the attractions of victimisation - 'I was totally powerless in the family, therefore I tried to gain as much power as I could outside, in the group of children.'

This theme recurred, of the victim seeking out a victim of her own, so that the programme seemed for a while to be driving at the lesson that all schoolchildren learn: those to whom evil is done do evil in return. That's an optimistic moral - by offering an explanation of nastiness it implies a possible cure. Hearing all this repentance and retrospective shock, you could come to a still rosier view, that the most vindictive children can grow up into decent people. But the programme seemed finally to plump for the most barren conclusion of all: that even the nicest people can take satisfaction from the meanest acts.

This isn't yet as bleak as the morality of Robbing Hood (Radio 2, Tuesday), though. Norman Hood is a small-time elderly burglar fresh out of jail and determined to give up crime. He has been given a letter of introduction to N Matthews, who may offer him a job. But Matthews turns out to be Natalie, a powerful, self-willed woman who lives in the last house Norman burgled before he was sent down: indeed, that whole crime turns out to have been a set up. Norman is trapped, and far from going straight he is now coerced into committing crimes for Matthews.

This could be a promising piece of noir radio, if it weren't that Norman is played by Norman Wisdom (is it written into his contracts that his character will be called Norman?), and the script is partly the work of Peter Ling, also joint author of Crown House. It's tosh.

Only the title shows any sophistication. You see, Hood is not only the main character's name, but his job. He is, of course, a robbing hood; and (this is the really clever part), he is robbing from the rich to give to the poor, exactly like Robin Hood. Layer upon layer: all the same, a better title would be 'Blood Sports for Critics'.