‘There is a lot of sport on the programme today — which is no bad thing,” said Today’s Justin Webb after a lengthy item last Thursday marking the 40th anniversary of Muhammad Ali’s victory over George Foreman in the so-called Rumble in the Jungle.

In fact, from this listener’s point of view the sporting focus was a bad thing. You tune to Radio 5 Live if sport is your bag. Similarly, people with an interest in pop music are well served by the BBC with Radios 1 and 2, not to mention Radio 6 Music.

Why, then, was so much of Today’s precious airtime devoted last week to the Mercury Music Prize? On the day of the award there was a preview introduced by John Humphrys, audibly embarrassed, to his credit, at the programme’s concern with such a triviality. On Thursday, after the surprise success of Scottish band Young Fathers, Today carried an interview with one of its members at London’s Roundhouse. We had heard this the night before, in fact, in an urgent live dispatch slotted into Radio 4’s The World Tonight.

The order had clearly gone out that the Mercury was something to ‘go big on’. I expect trendy bigwigs in the Alan Yentob mode were schmoozing away there, as they do at ‘Glasto’.

I resent the cosy assumptions made by the BBC, especially on Today. “Let’s hear from Evan,” said James Naughtie recently, glibly ignoring those occasional, possibly first-time, listeners who might not have known that his reference was to the tattooed ex-Today presenter Evan Davis.

Worse was Naughtie’s giveaway aside after a sports item featuring one David Conn: “He writes on football for the Guardian, of course.”

In the world of Today we are all assumed to be followers of sport and — of course! — all certain to read the Guardian.