Radio 1 has drawn up one of its tanks on Radio 2’s lawn — only a little one, more a machinegun mounted on a motorcycle sidecar really — with a weekly series of Radio 1’s Stories (Mondays, 9pm). These are documentaries about musical trends, the ones Radio 2 does so well. They pass amiably enough. This week, though, the station attempted something far more grandiose — the start of The Story of the Noughties, in ten weekly parts, nothing less than a comprehensive guide to the events of the decade that we are soon to bid farewell.

And, yes, that is “comprehensive”, as in “failing high school serving a sink estate in Much Dumbingdown, UK”. To judge from the first episode, presented by that eminent contemporary historian Zane Lowe, two events of major socio-political importance occurred at the beginning of the millennium — fears about the Millennium Bug leading to the downfall of civilisation as we know it, and the rise of Big Brother. The TV reality series that is, not the all-seeing, all-powerful, superstate predicted by thingy, you know, what’s his name, oh it’s on the tip of my tongue.

Yes I know that Radio 1 is a music channel, and that Radio 4 — or even Radio 2 — would have done it differently, but at a time when Sir Terry Leahy is complaining that modern yoof is too dim to even get a job shelf-stacking at his corner shop Tesco doesn’t it behove (no, not beehive, Darren, it’s a different word) the BBC’s primary means of access to the young to mix a little substance in with all the pap (yes, Darren, you’re right — I meant “pop”)?

There has always been a conviction at Radio 1 that the best way to tell people things about world events is to underpin it with music. Check out the news: “Barack Obama [chung dicka chung dicka chung] today told the US Senate [pow wow wooow] that the US [blingity blingity pow!] owes a debt to the rest of the world.“Out of which the intended listener hears nothing but the music and the words Barack Obama, rather like Ginger the dog’s experience in the Gary Larson cartoon.

And this was more of the same, only less informative. To give it its due, the bit about Big Brother was pretty good. It was narrated by Marcus Bentley, the Geordie voice of the series (“Eleven pee eyyum, and the hoosemates are in the dinning ree-um” — that was your catchphrase) self-admittedly looking forward to finding a new job once the series finishes next year. His report on the first series in 2000, and its first winner, Craig Phillips, the only one to give all of his prize to charity, actually did the job of summing up, in a few minutes, a global phenomenon.

But the rest — dear God. Perez Hilton, the blogger turned media commentator, spent the first 30 seconds of his hardfeld triboot to Kylie Minogue up-bigging himself, before devoting less time to the whole cancer thing than the shorty shorts the lovely Kylie wore in the video for Spinning Around (a hit in 2000, hence the item). At the end I wept for my children’s generation.

Next Monday the presentation duties are in the hands of Nick Grimshaw, whose major items include, we are promised, “the arrival of the Strokes to the UK and the big comeback of indie guitar bands”. Which puts 9/11 firmly in its place.

On Saturday Archive on 4 (Radio 4, 8 pm) the much-loved trawl through the BBC’s vaults — as distinct from all the other, less-adored trawls with which the station pads out its schedule — indulged in a bit of whimsy in the historian Dominic Sandbrook’s The Anniversary Anniversary. It’s been a top year for anniversaries — Handel, Haydn, Purcell, Charles Darwin, Dr Johnson (the 254th anniversary of the publication of his dictionary, published when he was 46. Do the math), the first landing on the Moon, Woodstock and most recently, the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. So what better time for Sandbrook to consider how things have changed in the way we mark them?

The 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, for example, was given a great deal of airtime — a far cry from the almost cursory favours granted it 10 years after the end of it. But then, in 1955 the war was too close for warm nostalgia. Back then, everyone was trying to forget it. Over the decades, though, and in an increasingly secular society, remembering the gallant dead has taken the place of religious holidays.

But there has to be a tipping point, where flinging anniversary programming at the listener becomes counterproductive. A couple of years ago Radio 4 circulated its producers with a memo warning against “the curse of the anniversary”, as shorthand for lazy thinking and easy research. Sandbrook went to Mark Damazer, the controller of Radio 4, with a brief list of the programmes that subsequently slipped through the net — the first Rolling Stone magazine cover, the anniversary of the first Billy Bunter comic strip, the birth of heavy metal, 100 years of concrete and Mills & Boon, and the 50th anniversary of the hula-hoop. “You’ve done your research,” said Damazer in a “it’s a fair cop sort of voice”. The point had been made.

On the other hand I’d pay good non-existent radio licence money to hear programmes about any of those anniversaries, with the possible exception of the concrete one. Good stories are good whenever you broadcast them — the recent excellent and illuminating tribute to the actor Ira Aldridge (1807-1867: no obvious anniversary there) was proof of that — but where’s the harm in tying it to a number that ends in nought (OK — or 25, or 75, 125, 175 and so on down the aeons)?

The Radio 5 breakfast show presenter Shelagh Fogerty was in dweeb heaven last week, when the programme was broadcast from the set of Coronation Street — or her bit was, at any rate. Fogerty was so overcome by the experience of being There with Her Idols that the listener was left with but two responses — a) gently patronising amusement at her excitement; or b) an increasingly irascible boredom. The immediate question — why was the BBC punting a programme on a rival channel? — sprang to mind, to be swiftly answered with: who cares?

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