Just a few words about Tom Wells' likeable new contribution to Radio 4's stalwart Afternoon Play strand,
Great North Run, which takes place in the buildup to the titular Newcastle half-marathon. It also takes place largely in the head of its narrator Will (Andrew Finnigan, who might have overtaken Andy Rush in the "regular Wells collaborator" stakes,) who tells the story in an imagined conversation with best friend Em (Amy Cameron.) Imagined because, as is often the case with these events, it's being run for charity in someone's memory - when she was ill with cancer, Em got Will to promise they'd run together in aid of
Macmillan, and when she died, she left him instructions making it clear she expected him to stick to the plan (she also left him the tutu she expects him to wear.) Will's training coincides with his first year at university, in which he struggles to fit in, and provides a welcome nightly escape.
