Howard Goodall's way is music to my ears One of the banes of the broadcasting of classical music over the last 20-odd years has been the inexorable rise of the cheery, cheesy, chummy presenter - usually either a twentysomething with an estuarine glottal stop or some clueless fugitive from the pop world, engaged in the hope that they will "attract a new and younger audience" by conveying the impression that it isn't only toffee-nosed old farts who listen to Beethoven. I look back with dewy-eyed nostalgia to the measured and unassertive voices of such as Tony Scotland and Patricia Hughes, announcers for whom pronouncing Harmonielehre and Khovanshchina correctly was more important than projecting bright and breezy personality. Even more keenly have I felt the want of someone like Anthony Hopkins, whose Talking about Music, a weekly half-hour of simple yet critical exposition of works on Radio 3, was a turning point in my education. Goodall doesn't seem like some bumptious prat trying to be a groover: his voice, manner and appearance are confident, unaffected and lucid. He is sharply witty and entirely on the ball, but he never acts the smart ass and, most importantly, he obviously has deep knowledge of what he is talking about. Ditching the conventional categories of classical and popular, Baroque and Romantic and so forth, Goodall reviews the field from Palaeolithic flutes to Damon Albarn. He makes fresh connections between, for example, a Lied by Schubert and a chart hit by Adele, without playing to a gallery filled with a rowdy fourth form. An accomplished pianist and decent singer (as well as the composer of the Blackadder theme tune and a terrific underrated musical The Hired Man), he can elucidate arcane points about equal temperament and Picardy thirds without recourse to fancy graphics or gimmicks. If I'd had him as a mentor for A-level music, my career might have taken a completely different path. This imaginatively filmed series is in the very best BBC tradition of using television and radio as an educational medium. It isn't stuffy, but it isn't trendy either. I prophesy that it will not only win prizes but change lives. Do watch it.