An update from the day job:

People don’t always notice Marnie Crawford, and when they do, they tend to underestimate her. She has a Masters in Social Sciences, and was so unobtrusive at university that “the tutor didn’t even know {she} was enrolled until [she} turned up to a viva.” From uni she went on to the police, where criminals duly failed to notice or underestimated her which – given her superior arrest record and solve rate – was extremely unwise.

With their own arrest record in steep decline, the Ministry of Defence has created a new unit within the Military Police. As an experiment they have chosen a civilian to lead it. Enter Marnie, with her expert knowledge of bias theory, a tendency to work out her thinking via voice notes, and an impressive collection of Sister Sledge recordings on vinyl.

DISCO (Radio 4, TX 2 -6 June 2025) takes a bias for each episode (Functional Fixedness; Anchoring Bias; Belief Perseverance; Hot Hand Fallacy and Hostile Intent Bias). Marnie’s knowledge often helps her, but sometimes it creates red herrings. And DISCO itself is something of a red herring. Granted, Marnie likes to escape from her own head into four-to-the-floor music, but the unit she has been asked to head up is called Defence: Serious Case Operations.

And of course, everyone refers to it as “DISCO”.

The series asks two questions. 1. Who killed Adam McTavish, tuba player in a military band? and 2. Who is Marnie sending her voice notes to?

Bryony Hannah is the voice throughout. And the writer is Nick Walker …

* * *

The sixth and last series of Annika Stranded was recorded in the early weeks of the first lockdown in 2020, with producer, sound engineer and coordinator tuning in remotely, and Nicola Walker performing from her newly-configured cupboard/home studio. Working with colleagues and ‘talent’ in three dimensions, in a real studio, is still much better, I think – and unquestionably more fun – but the remote MO has outlasted the pandemic to become an entirely reasonable way to make programmes. It is easy to forget how new and strange it was back then.

Annika has since moored her speedboat in Glasgow, in a reimagined Annikaverse for TV (Alibi/BBC). Her family dynamic is very different but – with Walkers Nick and Nicola still at its heart – the spirit of the original radio shows is never far away.

But this is not a post about Annika. Partly this is catch-up after six years of blog-silence, but principally it’s to remind you what a fine writer Nick is.

In 2021, we collaborated with him on a series of stories called Making Amends. Essentially, this was a La Ronde of human frailty, starting with an alcoholic who tracks down someone to apologise to, only to find that the person they sought was not at home because they were, in turn, seeking to make amends to someone else. Again, we recorded all five readers – Hermione Norris, Stuart McQuarrie, Tracy Wiles, Rosie Cavallero and Tony Gardner – remotely or semi-remotely.

But also, I’d like to remind you of the prodigious talent of Bryony Hannah. We first worked together about twelve years ago. Since then, I’ve tried to work with her as often as is reasonably possible. She has an extraordinary ability to find a character, a life, a backstory in even the most pared-down script.

Last year, thinking about a new Radio 4 slot – described by Nick as “Book at Bedtime without the book” – we asked Nick and Bryony to get together from the very outset. The result is DISCO. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making it. If you want a sneak preview of what to expect, click here.

P.S. Sepsis Confidential: 2 will be available very soon.