Miles Kington: Where have all the radio programmes gone?

'The idea, presumably, was not to risk upsetting anyone with any reference to anything'

After the suicide attacks in America last Tuesday, the decks of the world press were cleared for action, and I was cleared along with them. The Independent was converted for war action, rather like a cruise liner suddenly sailing off to the Falklands war, and like a game of deck quoits I found myself packed away for some other happier time.

I wasn't the only one, not by a long chalk. Every time I switched on Radio 4 to find some solace in non-World Trade Centre programming, I would find that the programme I wanted to hear had also been axed, especially if it smelled of comedy at all. The In Crowd, a fetching new comic programme from Manchester, had gone. The rerun of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, being done as a tribute to the late Douglas Adams, vanished. Even the brilliant Jeremy Hardy with his new series of lectures to the nation had gone. Anything smacking at all of jolly cheerfulness, like the second half of the Proms, had bitten the dust.

It wasn't as bad, this last week on Radio 4, as what happened when Princess Diana died – nothing could begin to approach that BBC orgy of self-pity and plastic tears – but it was grim enough, and in the last seven days I have grown to dread the phrase, "And now, in a change to the advertised programme...", which has replaced "And now, another chance to hear..." as the BBC's current catchphrase.

Almost without exception, the programmes which replaced the advertised programmes were deliberately so harmless and uncontroversial as to make you shriek. There was a programme on the history of Edward Thomas's poem "Adlestrop". There was a programme on the way different people have interpreted the Moonlight Sonata over the years. There was a brief history of the "Ode to Joy". There was – but you get the idea.

The idea, presumably, was to not risk upsetting anyone with any reference to anything. They weren't bad programmes, actually, as I knew from having recently heard them when they first went out, but I do resent being treated like a child, being told when I can and can't be upset by a programme. When the whole world is saying, "What can we do to declare war on the assassins?", I am not sure it helps much to crystallise our minds on the time of the actual train Edward Thomas was in when he stopped in Adlestrop.

Actually, the best comment about what "we" can do about avenging the war on America was to be heard on Radio 4, and it came from the very same Jeremy Hardy. This is what he said:

"What do you mean by this word 'we'? you're not going to go to war, are you? It's like watching the football and saying, 'We beat Germany 5-1!" No, you didn't! you watched it on the telly!

"People support a war by saying, 'I for one cannot sit idly by...' Oh, yes, you can! You're a newspaper columnist! Sitting idly by is all you ever do! You want thousands of people to die to make you feel better. So do I, but I've got a list, and most of the people on it are journalists..."

Enormous cheers from the audience. After that Jeremy Hardy said that maybe we have always had armchair militarists, and went off into a very good sketch in which a medieval knight and his wife discussed the Crusades in terms of "Something has to be done!" and "We must teach Saladin a lesson now!"

Now, I did mention that Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation was cancelled last week by people at Radio 4 trying not to offend anyone, so how on earth did that little gem get through the blanket?

Simply by being broadcast the week before last, that's how. What Jeremy Hardy was saying about wars of revenge went out four days before the attacks in America. Indeed, by the time they took place, the extract had already been repeated on Pick of the Week by Christopher Cook, who commented: "Jeremy Hardy, you have been away far too long..."

Little did he know that Jeremy Hardy was going to be axed once again by Radio 4 five days later.

And now. what can I, as a mere newspaper columnist, do? Well, let me just say this. I for one, am not going to sit idly by.

I am going to go out for a walk with the dog.

Goodbye.