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Saturday Diary: Mammon and Mark Thompson

Shelagh Fogarty ponders on religion and the BBC cuts.

By Shelagh Fogarty

8 Oct 2011, 08:00

* It's been a week of God and Mammon for me. Every day this week, straight after my Five Live Radio Show, I've spent time with women from varying religious faiths for a Radio 2 documentary airing this month which asks what religion has done for women. First up Islam. I meet a woman who used to wear the niqab but found it too inhibiting and now opts for the hijab which allows her face to be seen and can be incorporated into very modern, stylish, albeit modest clothes. With her help I don the full black niqab and off we go to the shops. Strangest thing of all was my own very sudden sense of shyness despite total anonymity. Reactions were mixed - from low level hostility to indifference to normal friendly banter over a counter at the post office. In conversation with her it's clear her faith is about much more than clothes and enriches her life enormously. As for equality in worship or spirituality, she firmly believes that for women to ape men is to throw away something unique to them.

* Of the women I've met this week, the one whose experience most educated me is a young Orthodox Jewish woman. I met her at a Mikvah - the bath used by women to prepare for physical contact with their husband after menstruation. During and for around seven days after bleeding, a woman cannot touch her husband or indeed any man at all. So for half of every month effectively no hand holding, no passing affection involving touch. Truthfully I was expecting forbidding medieval atmosphere to greet me on my arrival at the mikvah. In fact my host was a stylish SJP lookalike who welcomed me into what felt like a small scale spa - all white towels and femininity. Her explanation of this bathing ritual after days of restraint was surprisingly beautiful. It reminds both man and wife of the preciousness of touch and gives them the opportunity to enter into their marriage afresh. It's what modern secular couples might call 'time for us'. I'm not suggesting this is for everyone but how many marriages go awry because no framework exists in which couples can navigate what they mean to each other - physically and spiritually.

* So to Mammon. I interviewed Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, shortly after his announcement on cuts of 20% across the whole organisation. Well not quite the whole. Local Radio seems to have taken one of the biggest hits, while admitted cornerstones like Radio 4, Drama, The Proms and investigative journalism, are protected or rebooted. I really hope the consultation period he talks about sees a loud battle cry (6 Music style) for the sheer scale of Local Radio cuts to be reconsidered. I'm no Jarvis Cocker but I'm going to try to have a cup of tea with Mr Thompson and tell him a few tales from my time as a reporter in Radio Merseyside, Bristol, Sheffield, Humberside, Guernsey. It's all about family, companionship, wellbeing - easily as Reithian as education, entertainment, and information. Dear Mark.......