Thank God for the Beeb's longest runner

What is the longestrunning programme on the BBC? The Archers? It is 50 years old. Letter from America? It began in 1946. Desert Island Discs? Sixty next year. Surely The Week in Westminster, first broadcast in 1929?

No, it is none of these: today, BBC Radio's Choral Evensong celebrates 75 years of weekly broadcasts with a special programme on Radio 3 from Southwark Cathedral. And the programme, which is nearly as old as God, has, like God, never taken a holiday or been off the air.

In the early days, Choral Evensong came every week from Westminster Abbey. By 1935, St Paul's Cathedral and York Minster were participating. Then, during the war, when it was considered expedient to avoid the bombed metropolises, chapel choirs at Oxford and Cambridge joined the circuit. Ever since, the routine has been to broadcast from a different venue each week.

Choral Evensong has twice been threatened. In the Sixties, it switched from Radio 4 to 3 and immediately met with resistance from controller William Glock who, as a secular modernist, was opposed to fusty and unfashionable religious programmes. Its untrendiness, of course, is its charm. Evensong itself has not changed since 1549.

In the late 1980s, Radio 3 controller John Drummond also sought to abolish it but met with immovable resistance. "The audience varies between 250,000 and 500,000 each week, which is pretty good for a Radio 3 programme," says current producer Stephen Shipley, who is also an Anglican priest. "It is a spiritual oasis in the lives of many. One hardly needs to add that in times of world tension like the present, the value of such beacons of solace increases immeasurably."

The programme even has its own following of "groupies". "Two devotees fell in love as a result of their weekly rendezvous," says Shipley. "They became engaged and asked me to marry them. Who'd have thought Choral Evensong would be part of the mating game?"