There is something here I evidently don’t understand. The Upside-down Sailor is a very good title. You could help to sell it with, I should think, a brightly coloured drawing, or, since it refers to an actual sailor (the yachtsman Tony Bullimore) a photograph of him. Or as the events recounted were widely reported in the world press in 1997, there could be a collage of newspaper headlines.

The narrator is Richard Stilgoe, a popular British television entertainer, whose bearded, genial face might gain interested recognition; moreover, if anybody’s, it is his record, as he plays a prominent part in all three pieces. In other words, there is no shortage of apt headings, titles and selling-points. Why, therefore, is it the (admittedly pretty) face of the composer of what most listeners will think of as ‘the background music’ to just one of the three items in the programme that adorns the front cover? And why is the disc headed, in large letters (repeated on the label and spine) ‘Roxanna Panufnik’?

The Upside-down Sailor tells the story, semi-dramatised, of the disaster which struck Bullimore on New Year’s Eve – when his ocean-going yacht capsized and he was trapped in a pocket of air beneath it – and of his rescue some five days later. It adds a few thoughts-for-the-day and encapsulates a week’s-good-cause reminder about lifeboats. Then comes Roald Dahl’s rhymed trilogy, Dirty Beasts, with a musical score by Martin Butler (b1960). Another of Dahl’s cautionary tales follows, an amusingly revised version of Cinderella; and this has music by Rory Boyle (b1951).

Both Boyle and Butler write wittily and well. One might like to know more about them, but the booklet, which finds a page and a-half for Ms Panufnik, gives them no more than formal copyright mention; nor are their names on spine or label. The booklet is one of those designer-jobs, made to look different but not to be read (small print, white on a sort of pea-soup background). Despite all this, David Campbell and the Soundwind Ensemble deserve a success with the record, as does Richard Stilgoe. Like the mangle-boy in Dickens, ‘he do the police in different voices’ and very well too.