BBC Four, Friday November 7
I have never really sat down and listened to Randy Newman before. I don't really know why except that he has always been my uncle's favourite singer-songwriter, so I suppose I always filed him under artists that people's uncles might like.
I have been missing out. The BBC Four Sessions is a simple concept - get a great musician, stick him or her in a church with an orchestra and let the music play. It really works.
Newman is charismatic in a nicely understated way. As he ages, he looks more and more like a bespectacled accountant and sounds more and more like Louis Armstrong. In other words, he looks Jewish and sounds black - an interesting combination and one that rarely occurs the other way around.
His lyrics are a delight. They are often written from the point of view of an unsympathetic character, the kind of guy who reckons short people have "no reason to live" ("Boy, that sounds really nasty tonight," said Newman in the middle of the song called, Short People), or who, in Political Science - an impassioned plea for intolerance - utters the phrase: "They all hate us anyhow, so let's drop the big one now."
Then there's the sentimental melancholy, as in I Miss You, which, Newman told the audience, he wrote about his first wife while he was with his second wife.
The banter between the songs is as entertaining as the music itself. Introducing God's Song, he explained to the audience that God had chosen to speak through him, a strange decision when Paul McCartney or Leonard Cohen was available. The song itself, which cleverly questions the wisdom of religious belief, contains God's killer line: "You must be crazy to put your faith in me - that's why I love mankind."
Introducing a song on the subject of parenting, Newman again referred to having been married twice. "Surprisingly," he declared provocatively, "my second wife is younger than the first one."
Newman was concerned, he told us, not wanting to waste the song, The World Isn't Fair, on trivial matters, "so I include within it the reason for the failure of Marxism."
It has to be said that this was one of the easier nights out for the BBC Concert Orchestra - a little light orchestration which allowed them to sit chuckling through Randy N's wittier numbers.
Newman himself relished their company. He said: "I'm aware that I am with people which have spent 12 to 14 years alone in a room getting really good at what they do - much like snipers."
This was preceded by A Few Words in Defence of Our Country, in which he made the valuable point that, while Americans may not be much liked and America's leaders may be the worst the country has ever had, they came out pretty well in comparison with Hitler, Stalin and others. Then there was "the Spanish Inquisition that put people in a terrible position".
For all his humour, there is a suspicion that Randy Newman's wit is employed to help distract him from becoming too depressed both with himself and the state of the world.
Rollin', the number he kicked off with, was all about trying to convince himself not to worry about drinking, gambling and lazing around, while his last track which ended the evening on a deliciously melancholic note was I Think It's Going To Rain Again.
Life may be painfully poignant for Newman sometimes but I confess I felt much better for spending an hour in his company.
In fact, I'm off to find out what else my uncle has been listening to.