RT�?'s arts programme, The Eleventh Hour, on Tuesday reviewed Bob Dylan's radio programme, Theme Time Radio Hour, which began on XM Satellite Radio in the US in May last year and now has an enormous following. For 60 minutes or so, an unexpectedly friendly Dylan plays a choice of music on a given theme (such as weather, cars and prison), shares some of his overwhelming knowledge of the past 80 years or so of popular music, and chats a little bit in a peculiarly dramatic nasal drawl. The fact is it would be a convivial, unorthodox and enlightening programme even if its host wasn't a legend; the fact that it's Bob Dylan just gives it panache - and gets it noticed.

The show finally made it to this side of the Atlantic late last year. Six episodes were broadcast on BBC Radio 2 over Christmas, and the series is now going out on BBC 6 Music every Friday night at 9pm. (You can listen live online. If you want fresher episodes, you could also listen online on the XM Radio website on Wednesday afternoons, but there's a subscription fee of $7.99 a month; BBC is free. ) Anyway, on The Eleventh Hour, Paraic Breathnach pinned his colours to the mast at the outset by saying the show was "one of the best things to hit the radio in recent years". His guests were Barry Devlin, writer, film-maker and Horslip, and Richard Brown, reader of modern literature at Leeds University. They are also fans, needless to say. You can't not be a fan of Bob Dylan any more.

With three enthusiasts in conversation, all that remained was for Paraic Breathnach to find a way for his guests to articulate why they think Theme Time is as good as it is. But Breathnach's failing is that he tends to ask a question and leave it at that - he doesn't steer people into an exchange of ideas.

There was at least one discussion-that-should-havebeen on the show. Devlin observed that Bob Dylan was resuscitating an idea that has been lost, of "what an extraordinary medium radio can be". You could sing that if you had an air to it. "It is a world that radio at its best can imagine for you, " he said. Brown pointed out that Dylan, for younger listeners, represents the cultural establishment, which raised an unanswered question about whether it's just us wrinklies who like this sort of thing, and whether old-style, unselfconsciously purposeful radio is about to die out altogether.

Just one final word about eclectic, freewheeling music programmes hosted by people who really are in a position to judge: Philip King is back at last with The South Wind Blows on Saturday nights on Radio 1.

RT�? bills this show, criminally, as "music, song and chat from the west Kerry Gaeltacht", which makes it sound like Donncha �? Dúlaing. With no disrespect to �? Dúlaing, it's anything but that. Admittedly, King does seem to be playing a lot more trad this time, but he does balance it out. He also seems to be presenting more of the programme in Irish, but it's simple Irish - anyone with a school-level grasp of the language should be able to understand him. Anyway it's worth the effort: the programme will reward you.