It wasn't long ago that Evan Davis was the new arrival on the Today programme (Radio 4). But yesterday he was full of praise for another newcomer: guest editor Jarvis Cocker. The musician, said Davis after hearing him interview Lord Stern, "got a clearer answer than I ever have". Stern had described Barack Obama as "like night and day on [climate change] compared to his predecessor".

With Cocker steering, it was a likable, eclectic line-up of stories and features that made you cogitate - and made you smile. Bill Drummond gave us 10 seconds of silence for listeners to think of a sound from their past and future. "I had a stomach rumble which is the sound I was thinking of," Davis chuckled. Cocker nattered with Johnny Wilkinson about quantum physics, with the rugby player explaining Schrödinger's Cat theory ("until it was observed, it was both dead and alive at the same time").

Best of all was a mystery interview, devised because Cocker felt that research and preparation "tampered with reality". Davis chatted amiably to a woman from New Scientist and it all went rather well without direction.

"Is that what I was meant to interview you about?" he asked at the end.

Remarkably, it was.