I listen to the BBC World Service for two reasons. It goes out overnight on Radio 4, providing comfort in the dark hours, and it opens a wider window. I do not listen to it for any particular show. This is not “an appointment to listen” network, unlike, say, Radio 4. This week, however, it offers a definite appointment to listen Out of the Ghetto, to be broadcast on Friday at 10.05am, 1.05pm and 8.05pm, updates a programme that electrified the USA. It also gives a specific example of the hapless Americans so skilfully persuaded to take out mortgages they would never be able to repay, thus precipitating the economic crisis. The programme it updates, Ghetto Life 101, went out in 1993 on NPR, a network run by white liberals and funded mainly by subscriptions and rich foundations. In it, two 13-year-old black boys, LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman, taped their experiences in and around their homes on the grimmest council estate in Chicago, where drugs moved in when work dried up. They spoke about gunfire at night, throwing rocks at cars for fun, gangs, danger and crack.

LeAlan’s name derives from his two uncles, who were murdered: he never knew his father and his mother suffers from mental illness. Like many boys, he was close to his grandmother. It was she who took out a mortgage to refurbish the house, which has now been repossessed by the bank and is boarded up. Lloyd’s mother was dead by 1993; his father later died of alcoholism and his sister of sickle-cell anaemia. Their audio diary moved, shocked and outraged much of America. It won international awards, was widely translated and put the boys on the map. Two years later, they made another programme, Remorse, about a five-year-old boy murdered by two older boys. Then came a book Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago, which became a film. Bush House decided to revisit LeAlan and Lloyd, now 29. So it sent the producer Mark Burman to Chicago. Friday’s programme is the result. “Lloyd didn’t want to take part,” he says. “LeAlan had his 15 minutes of fame and found it meaningless. He’s now back in Chicago and is legal guardian to two teenage boys, his nephew and a cousin. He teaches, lectures and is a football coach. He’s strong and has taken on great responsibility, and is hopeful despite everything.”

Audio diaries here have mainly been on Radio 4. Nick Clarke, in 2006, chronicling the amputation of his leg, was especially piercing. Another of note was made by Sue Mitchell in 2004, about the Damilola Taylor murder. Given the knife-crime epidemic, perhaps it is time for another. Burman, fresh from south Chicago, could shed light on our society, too

paul.donovan@sunday-times.co.uk

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