All change at Radio 2...but not for the better, radio review Why was I away so long? Thanks for asking. I wasn't ill. I was getting ready for the builder. It took all that time because of the way dishes in cupboards and books on shelves multiply unnoticed over the years. Recent excavations revealed cups that haven't been used since John Arlott was on Test Match Special and David Jacobs was chairing Any Questions? Now David Jacobs will do his final Radio 2 show this coming Sunday and James Alexander Gordon, for 40 years the Saturday evening voice of football results, won't be back on Radio 5 Live for the new season. But what's this? Russell Davies is to leave Radio 2 as well. He's not ill. He's not old. I don't think he'll want to go. His show is being dropped in October and that's that. I shall miss him. In fact, I missed him last Sunday when I turned on for Davies and there was Mark Radcliffe, umming away in his idiosyncratic fashion at the Cambridge Folk Festival. A one-off special, Radcliffe said. The music was good but it wasn't the music I was expecting and, as anyone can tell you, expectation is the bedrock of listener loyalty. Maybe Radio 2 has other plans for Davies. After all, he wrote the scripts for their multi-award winning Sinatra series and many other Radio 2 documentaries since. He's also a first-rate broadcaster of unusual intellectual range who talks to us intimately but with well-mannered humour. Can Radio 2 afford to lose a presenter who understands his audience so well? The new series of What's the Point of...? (Radio 4, Wednesdays) found Quentin Letts on best pert form, jauntily assuming an against posture while letting the evidence for gently accumulate. At least, that was the case last week with the Chief Rabbi. The incumbent, Lord Sacks (former Reith lecturer, unmissable Thought for the Day contributor) is retiring after 22 years. Letts's brightly inquisitive tone made the facts fairly trot along: only 300,000 Jews in the UK; the office of Chief Rabbi dates from the 18th century; Chief Rabbis don't recognise Liberal or Reform Jews (and vice versa); a Chief Rabbi is chosen by fellow Orthodox Jews. Baroness Warsi said she thought an equivalent Muslim Grand Mufti "would be a good idea." Top marks to producer Rosie Dawson for assembling such a range of expert, entertaining opinion and to Letts for such brilliantly argumentative sleight of hand. Let's hear if he does the trick again with Tate Modern this morning. Pomp, Pageantry and Parade (Radio 4, Saturday) was promoted as a programme that would seriously question the cost and value of military bands. The trouble was they could only find one firm opponent, Simon Jenkins, and he admitted early on that even if the case for them is indefensible their very existence validates them. But as the rest of the programme was mostly about why presenter Courtney Pine chose his own band over a military one, the attractions of the job (to many a university graduate), where military bands came from and what they still add to state occasions (and the tourist business), it made the issue of the £100 million annual cost to the Ministry of Defence rather slip by. The Bottom Line (Radio 4, Saturday) discussed shareholder power without much emphasis on how little each of us (even the Archbishop of Canterbury) knows about where our funds are invested. While it was good to hear that Legal & General have a "high level of engagement" in the corporate governance of firms they invest in, there wasn't much about actual effect. The Bishop and the Bankers (Radio 4, Monday) had the soon-to-retire Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, searching for moral responsibility in the City. It proved elusive. Reflections (Radio 4, Thursday) was the hidden treasure of the week, Peter Hennessy interviewing Norman Tebbit. They now sit on opposite sides of the House of Lords, Tebbit a politician, Hennessy a political historian. There would seem to be some ideological distance between them. That, as became evident, does not prevent mutual respect. Lord Hennessy's questions were thoughtful, his tone affectionate. Lord Tebbit's answers were frank, often wry, sometimes passionate. They covered many issues, society in general, politics in particular, Northern Ireland, the Conservative Party, the fate of Mrs Thatcher ("I left her to the mercy of her friends"), the perils of office and how, the longer any occupant looks through the big windows of Downing Street, the smaller the windows will get. I learned a lot.