Television & radio: It was the fans wot won it

the week in radio

Ina week in which every successful football club seems to be there for the takeover - lock, stock and crock of digital gold - Back to the Valley (R5) reminded us what football, or football clubs, are supposed to be about. Narrated by life-long fan Steve Ryder, it told the remarkable story of Charlton Athletic who, in the last 14 years, have travelled "from the brink of bankruptcy to a place in the Premiership". "Fairy tale" was a recurring term - but this footballing fantasy had nothing to do with a media mogul coming off the bench. It was due to the fans.

The tale had a predictable beginning: in the early 1980s, the club came under the control of what long-time fan Michael Grade called "a bunch of amateurs". Within a few years, debts were mounting and, in 1985, fans only found out about the move to ground-share with Crystal Palace when public-transport directions appeared in the programme. Tears were shed, red-and-white wreaths were strewn on the pitch and Charlton moved across south London, losing a generation of fans on the way. But, despite being housed in Portakabins, the club were promoted to the old First Division. Then a new chairman pledged to take the faithful back home.

Sensibly, the fans didn't just take him at his word. The "Valley Party" took their cause to the 1990 Greenwich council elections, winning 14,800 votes and ousting the planning officer who had vetoed plans for rebuilding the Valley. When these were finally approved, fans stumped up much of the pounds 1m needed for their completion and, in 1992, more tears were shed as Charlton ran out on home turf for the first time in seven years.

The club has since gone from strength to strength - though beating my own team, QPR, last week was unnecessary, and frankly uncharitable - and, for a giddy week last month, Charlton topped the Premiership. But Back to the Valley wasn't about success on the pitch. It was about those who enabled it, the fans who refused to let their club disappear, not just from their locality but from the footballing map. Sports reports from momentous matches expressed sympathy for their plight and astonishment at their commitment. Individual reminiscences revealed the zeal of believers and the pride of war heroes. Most telling was the outcome of a request for help to clear the overgrown ground before the new pitch was laid. Six thousand fans - plus the board - took up shears for a mass weeding session.

"The fans actually feel like they run the club," said one of them - and the players know it. For all their team's current success and future prospects, no fan of Man Utd can say that. Maybe that's why only 1,000 of them turned up for last week's protest meeting against the Murdoch takeover and why, for them, direct action means boycotting the club megastore.

Fergal Keane began a new series, Resigning Issues (R4), by talking to the former South African president, FW de Klerk. Since 1996, he has notched up a hat-trick of resignations: as deputy president of the power- sharing government; as leader of the opposition National Party; and from his marriage. Keane's questions revealed a proud, obstinate but disillusioned politician, one who had made history but was now left behind by it, unable to function in opposition.

Keane asked de Klerk how much he had known about deaths of black South Africans at the hands of his Security Services. De Klerk evaded admitting direct responsibility by referring him to the current president's failure to reduce interfactional violence. Keane interjected, with a softly spoken but steely insistence: "Oh, come on, let's be honest ... without apartheid you wouldn't have had that violence, and you and others are part of that system." Later, de Klerk apologised for apartheid's wrongs, though asserting that it was "not Nazism". But, when he listed developmental progress - universities, hospitals, housing - in his defence, Keane was incredulous. "Do I hear the sound of history being rewritten as you speak? That is not apartheid as the majority of black people would recognise it."

De Klerk insisted that whatever injustices were perpetrated by the system he formerly served, he deserves to be remembered for its abolition. And, though he was sceptical about prospects for a fully democratic government in the new South Africa, he described his response to pro-reform Afrikaaners who now feel betrayed by him: "You must ask what South Africa would have looked like if you didn't vote 'Yes' ... The country would have stood in flames."

Turn On, Turn Off - Drugs that Changed the World (R4) began with "mind- benders", and Susan Greenfield, Gresham Professor of Physic at Oxford and top popular scientist, offered an informative analysis of what LSD does. As informative as such analysis can be, that is, when the effects take place in such a complex system as the human brain. A psychopharmacologist confirmed that LSD released serotonin. But: "How does that translate into hallucinations? No one has any idea."

The speculation was pepped up with drug- induced literature, testimonies from mystical hippies - "Krishna is in the room with you, Buddha is as available as the toilet" - and a discussion of Ecstasy. However, the programme acknowledged a critical conundrum. Hallucinogens can offer fascinating clues about the workings of human perception. But intrigued scientists can't tell users what the psychological damage might be ... until those guinea pigs prove it.

Sue Gaisford is on the Danube; see page 3.