RADIO / Things Chris said to mike

REVELATION] BBC employee exposed] Hear all about it] No, not the man in the Armani suit. The Durham man in twinset and pearls. 'You must give this a listen,' urged Radio 4's publicity officer. 'It really is something.'

But there's a perversity about our desire to know. The trouble with 'The Making of Christine', a long and subdued Soundtrack (R4), was the too obvious desire of Christine, or was it Chris, to tell us about herself, or himself.

'The making of Christine took place long before I was born . . .' intoned the flat, confessional, still-male voice - clearly addressing a microphone - and we felt we could guess the rest. We were wrong, though. It was discomfiting to hear Chris sitting up in his hospital bed, musing on the pounds 5,000 surgery that would enable him to 'fulfil his destiny'. It was weirder still to hear his chatty, grown-up daughter enthusing. Sanity resurfaced in the bewilderment of Chris's elderly mother - 'I gave birth to a baby boy. He can't change that'.

The rest was tabloid cliche: Christine fingering velvet skirts in a boutique ('Mmmm, that's lovely') and tut-tutting over botched mascara in the mirror. Christine had already talked 550 acquaintances through her decision to be 'a full-time woman'; she'd counted. So what was another few hundred thousand? This one wished her well, but wondered whether this exorcism on the air had done much for the audience.

Oddly, it was an old story that supplied Radio 4's genuine coup of the week: Michael Fagan, Famous for 15 Minutes as the Palace prowler who sat on the end of the Queen's bed. He'd sat coolly discussing the ills of the world with Ma'am, hadn't he? Well, no. Here was the unembroidered version, told with the delightful shrug of a bloke who still doesn't know precisely how or why he did it.

There were two Palace visits. The first emerged as sheer scallywag opportunism. Fagan had just happened to be in St James's Park, 'and I just 'opped over the wall, up the drainpipe and in'. The Palace, to his disappointment and our delight, was 'very ordinary . . . very dusty, with creaky floorboards. I don't think they spend much on decoration. Maybe it was due a re-dec.' His second visit, at 5am, was scarcely less spontaneous, but he had in mind to see Her Majesty.

'Don't ask me how I found her bedroom out of all those rooms, but I did.' Fagan described winningly how 'she was looking very small in 'er bed - too small to be the Queen. So I go over and draw the curtain back, just to make sure.' When HM woke up, he confessed, he was dumbstruck. Couldn't think of a thing to say.

The rest was much as history had it: footman enters and says to Fagan, 'You look as though you need a drink', and later he appears at Number One Court, Old Bailey, accused of stealing half a bottle of wine. Here the interviewer helpfully asked what we have wanted to know since 1982. Was he trying to get caught? 'Yeah.' Long pause. 'Just to make that statement: I am. I am.'

Elsewhere on Radio 4 it was the questioners who were exposed. Last weekend saw the return of Ad Lib, in which the masterly Robert Robinson made a fine job of teasing cutting-room tales from the tailors of Savile Row. But in last night's programme the arch interlocutor was unaccountably subdued with a group of nannies. His quips seemed edgy and patronising, and he lost the reins when the girls fell to bitching about their employers. He perked up, however, when a starchy Mrs Parrish told her story. You suddenly twigged. In all those decades of quizzes, even eight-year-olds were addressed as 'Master So-and-So'. Now here was Mr Robinson, faced with a bevy of opinionated young women calling themselves Nicky and Caroline. He wasn't happy.

Sue Lawley wobbled too when Bob Geldof, on a refreshingly frank Desert Island Discs (R4), disclosed his luxury. 'A packet of three.' For an uneasy second you wondered if steady Sue had got his drift, but she rallied like the pro she is. 'That sounds rather practical.' 'Yes, Sue,' said Sir Bob with more than a hint of mischief. 'But you can never be too safe.'