|
Radio:
Roland Shite ...Look, even if he is not very good or
accurate, he is at least writing about the
wireless. More than TV Quick is
doing!
| What I
"listened" to last
week Alright? Roland here. I've been writing
this column for a good couple of years. Like the
clipped
writing style? Isn't it shrewdly attempting to be a bit
casual, careless even, as if to convince you, the
readers, that any of you could do it too? Glad to hear
it. It means I can trot out a barely thought-out theory,
or trundle out a fragment of factual content which any
decent research could have fleshed out. I'm matey, me. A
bit like Phil Hogan in The Observer - but
you won't catch me writing about my family, as that would
require information. Anyway, have you read anything by
me in the broadsheets? Not to worry if you can't
remember - such is my level of anonymity that even
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to have done. Ah
well, there's the introduction written,
anyway. So, things on
the radio. What's out there, exactly? Tried to listen to
that Third Junction (Radio 3, nightly - so
big words required here!), but didn't get much further
than a terribly nice girl called Verity introducing
something noisy and difficult that offered the unwitting
listener anything and everything including a sink from
the kitchen. Apart from a decent tune. Still, maybe my
postman may yet prove me wrong - just this morning he
was humming something I vaguely recognised. You know the
one. A
change of pace is required, then. Radio 4 returned to
business this week (so I'll ensure my grammar and punctuation are
up to scratch!) with some programme called Start
The Week. Curiously enough, but also fortunately
enough, that difficult, tuneless noisy kitchen sink of a
noise wasn't seated around the table with Mr. Paxman.
But nor was my postman. (Do you like the back
references?) Whatever, the magazine you are now reading
suggested a guest list of a woman
who liked stuff about history, plus someone who's
interested in Africa to the extent that he's interested
in it for a living, and a writer of some repute. Great
stuff. Hope you heard it - please let me know if you
did, and tell me what it was
like. You may remember a
programme on the radio a few years ago entitled Round
The Horn. Very popular it
was, too. It was a comedy starring a man and some
actors, some of whom may or may not still be alive. Or
dead. People laughed at it in their kitchens, so I'm
told (it's the unmelodious sinks I feel sorry for!). I
was reminded of it while reading the billing for
something on last week which was also a comedy. Some
things never change...
So to a woman
called Sarah HB (Radio 1, Sundays, but I promise
to keep the noise down!). I notice, in order to flesh
out this paragraph, that her surname is a type of
pencil, which means that, by rights, her show should be
followed by a show presented by a woman called Sarah
Pencils, or something like that, only wittier! But it
isn't. It's hosted by Jamie Theakston. Anyway, until
Radio 1 gets more listings space, that'll have to
do... Onwards and downwards, then, to local
radio, that irresistible combination of the cute and
the rubbish. Living in London, I sometimes like to
remind myself of local radio by writing things about it.
It most certainly is unlistenable at times, and reminds
me of that thing Angus Deayton was in. It was about
local radio, oh you know. Anyway, while in a cab in
Gloucester a few weeks ago, I had to listen to a couple
of records broadcast by a local station. It was a bit
boring, and in between, the presenter (they don't call
them DJs on local radio, you see) referred to something
in the papers. I was so bored I started to talk to the
taxi driver about something in the
papers.
Is
CB radio still going? If so, why, for goodness'
sake? After all, there's Any Answers on Radio 4. If it's
still going, that is. One last
thing. A few readers
have kindly written in, but
I've lost the bits of paper. Never mind, helpfully,
they've given me some places where I might be able to
buy a radio. Most popular venue would seem to be shops.
Many thanks, whoever you all were.
Radio Times 6 - 12 January
2001
© 2000 - 2002 the mumbler |