Saturday Radio; Pick of the Day

THE SATURDAY offering from Opera on 3 (6.30pm R3) is the New York Metropolitan Opera's production of Puccini's Tosca - with Carol Vaness as the gravity-embracing heroine; the first interval is filled with peppery observations about Manhattan life from the British journalist Christopher Hitchens (right).

Later, the experimental series Between the Ears (9.35pm and 9.55pm R3) ends with a double-bill by Jocelyn Pook. "Grosse Fuge" samples the century's most famous political speeches and speakers, while "Portraits in Absentia" is truly delightful. It's an intelligent and humorous weave of answerphone messages overlaid with such oddities as a chorus of Arsenal fans chanting "You fat bastard".