In a week of slim audio pickings, I spent time reacquainting myself with some of the BBC classics and can confirm that, yes, More or Less still warrants a place in that category. Like Thinking Allowed, which also drew me back, the programme works wonders with data and statistics, and benefits from having a calm and unobtrusive presenter.

While most of the questions put to the stoical Tim Harford are delightfully pedantic, some have that special quality of convincing you that, while you’ve never given the topic a second thought, you are in fact deeply invested in it, and absolutely must know whether or not the thing that’s been alleged is correct.

One such question recently came in from a chap called Ian who was surprised by a claim made on Springwatch on BBC2. Is it really true, he asked, that the area of private gardens in Newcastle combined is larger than the total acreage of the UK’s national parks? The team on More or Less threw the question straight back to the young TV presenter. She replied that it was a slip of the tongue and that what she’d really meant to say was that the area of private gardens in the UK is larger than that of the parks. This only made matters worse.

It turns out that you can calculate the total acreage of gardens. There’s a pretty doughty set of researchers in the More or Less phone book, and one had little trouble in pulling up data from the ONS, ordinance survey and latest census to perform a calculation. To the astonishment of this Londoner, at least, the proportion of households in the UK with a garden is roughly 85 per cent, and the average garden measures 185 square metres. Multiplying the figures gives a total of about 4,400 square kilometres – far short of the area enclosed by the parks, which can more profitably be compared to the size of Wales.

We may be a small island but we do have a lot of sea. In fact, British waters cover an area 28 times the size of Britain itself. An academic from Soas recently made a strong case on Thinking Allowed for doing away with this allocation and reviving the system by which the oceans are classified as ‘global commons’. The sea was effectively privatised in 1982 and since then, he argued, we landlubbers have been losing out. It’s difficult to enjoy our beaches now that they’re swamped with raw sewage. It’s difficult to enjoy our fish, too, knowing that more than two thirds of our allotted quota are limited to the nets of just 25 powerful companies. The professor’s message came through loud and clear. Free the sea!

Consider another issue tackled on Thinking Allowed: gentrification. The term was first coined in 1964 in reference to the ‘tiptoeing’ of the middle class into Islington, north London, and since then it’s spread as quickly as sourdough. A lady came on to talk to Laurie Taylor – he of the lovely voice – about the effect it has had on Bellenden Road in Peckham. The Caribbean cafés have gone, she sighed, as has the barbershop from Desmond’s. The new organic butcher’s bin their chicken wings saying there’s no demand for them and long-term locals shun the shops with their unfamiliar stock.

One of the many virtues of Thinking Allowed is that it does indeed encourage you to think. Few, perhaps, will have considered just how easy it is for gentrifiers to move in, then move out again, leaving no real legacy behind them. Taylor clearly empathised, though some of the discussion around the problem became repetitive and ought to have been edited down. The situation was summed up more snappily in a little-known song of 2018, ‘The Hipsters Are Coming’, of which he played a short clip: ‘I was in the corner shop buying beans for my breakfast/ When I saw something that I thought was kinda freaky/ A shelf I’d never seen with something on it called “Tahini”.’