Radio review: The Call

The Call (Radio 4) is a brilliant sliver of radio. Through its focus on moments where a phone call is life-changing or deeply affecting, we are quickly immersed in a dramatic scenario with its characters and ramifications. Yesterday's programme took a novel twist on the theme, as Dominic Arkwright spoke to Mark Craig about his 20-year collection of answerphone messages. We heard some of these, funny and banal in turn – there were birthday greetings and a couple of goldfish dying – and you realised you were listening to a modern relic. "People just phoned you up," Craig recalled, thinking back to days before mobile phones and social networking. What Craig is left with, in the boxes of labelled and numbered tapes, is a record of his life in other people's voices. "It's almost like a diary of my life at the time," he said. Most moving were the messages from his father, who had died by the time Craig listened to the archived tapes again. Hearing his father casually talk about his hospital appointments ("They're sending me for a biopsy, blah, blah, blah.") was too much at times. "I had to go for a walk and cry a bit and laugh a bit," Craig said. These voices carried so much warmth, life and feeling, and unselfconscious emotion.