REVIEW

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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


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