Radio column: The problem with comedy

"And here on 4 we have a comedy coming up," said the BBC continuity announcer. Oh God, I thought. Really? Must you? Must we? Isn't it time to give up? To admit defeat? To say to your listeners "Look guys, we've given comedy our best shot, we've brought in the big guns, we've maxed out the budget, but it's just not working." And, let’s be honest, it rarely has. The glory days of Steve Coogan and Chris Morris are long gone. With the exceptions of Just a Minute and anything involving David Sedaris, comedy and radio simply do not mix. In fact, they are sworn enemies.  Radio is where comedy goes to die.

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How We Met: Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell

'She told me she had an extra ticket; I went the next day and stayed for seven years.'

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Radio column: Tony Harrison's V

In the summer of 1972 Alice Cooper, the fright-wigged shock-rocker, sent Mary Whitehouse, the blue-rinsed umbrage-taker, a bunch of flowers along with a note of thanks. Through the latter's vociferous campaigning to have Cooper's single "School's Out" banned from Top of the Pops, she inadvertently propelled it to the top of the charts. 
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Radio column: Confessions of a castaway

My plan this week was to write about science. Honestly, it was. The World Service was running a series of solemn-sounding talks called Exchanges at the Frontier, each delivered by leading epidemiologists, physiologists and other miscellaneous ologists whose job titles were very possibly made up. However bleak their message, I felt it my duty to hear them out. And listening on Sunday morning, for a while I was genuinely concerned about the plight of humankind in the face of horrible mutating viruses that could knock out much of population and possibly leave pigs and poultry to run things.
But that was before my brain started to ache, my eyeballs began rolling into the back of my head and, just for a second or two, I switched channels and happened upon the writer Julie Burchill on Desert Island Discs squeaking: "I'd been up for three nights taking cocaine, so when Morrissey called I didn't want to see anybody. I was quite rude to him and he left." At which point there was really no going back.
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Radio column - Hitting the right notes

I'll admit it, the title of Radio 2's latest mega-series, The People's Songs, had me worried. Surely even the BBC has worked out that when it comes to music "the people" cannot be trusted. Remember when Radio 2 listeners deemed Robbie Williams' "Angels" the best song of the past 25 years at the Brits? I was there and, I can tell you, the sight of inebriated industry nobs trying to wipe the WTF expressions off their faces as the cameras swooped in for close-ups was very special indeed.
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Book review: Bedsit Disco Queen, by Tracey Thorn

If Tracey Thorn were starting out in music today, she wouldn't stand a chance. This isn't meant as an insult. It's simply that, despite having maintained a career for the best part of 30 years, and enjoyed a fistful of hits as the singer of Everything But the Girl alongside her boyfriend and musical partner Ben Watt, Thorn doesn't really do the pop star thing. As she says in her memoir: "It (has) always been a strange thing for me to be doing, a job I wasn't really cut out for."
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Radio column: Animal magic

What did George Orwell ever do for us? I mean besides giving us TV's Big Brother, in which fame-hungry nobodies lie around on designer furniture picking their toenails, and Room 101, in which fame-hungry nearly-nobodies prattle on about stuff that gets on their wick. We're probably only a commissioning meeting away from a reality series in which the cast of TOWIE are dressed up as four-legged creatures and sent to work on a farm, under the über-strict gaze of Sir Alan Sugar's Napoleon.
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Radio column: The big chill

How badly are you feeling the chill? Have goose pimples lent your skin the texture of a cheese-grater? Have your eyeballs frozen over and your nipples retreated inwards? Are you wearing so many layers of clothing that the only thing that separates you from the crazy bird lady in Mary Poppins is, well, the birds? 
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Radio column: Grief encounter

Death weighed heavily on the radio this week. Well, why wouldn't it? It's January, it's cold out, the boiler's packed up, train fares have rocketed, pensions are being slashed, the Coalition's still in charge and next Monday is, we're told, the most depressing day of the year. Life bloody sucks.
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Radio column: Saturday morning fever

"In another life I would have been out on the road DJing and dragging a record box around in the middle of the night in some shady club," remarked Mary Anne Hobbs at the start of her new weekend breakfast show on BBC6 Music.

Hobbs was referring to her last job as a club DJ, one of her many working incarnations that have also included Sounds journalist, Radio 1 Breezeblock stalwart and presenter on XFM. In recent years, when most people her age are putting the kettle on and warming up the telly in readiness for Saturday Kitchen, Hobbs has been packing up the decks, waving goodbye to the boggle-eyed masses and crawling home to her bed.

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Radio column: Firecrackers and fur coats

"Are you looking for a job?" James Naughtie asked Dame Ann Leslie on Radio 4's Today, a note of panic in his voice. Now there's an idea. As one of the programme's guest editors, Leslie, the veteran foreign correspondent who famously went to war in a fur coat, arrived like a blast of cold air in a sticky sauna. You can imagine plenty of previous guests proffering feature ideas cobbled together by their agents, but not Leslie. She was first in the office, her sleeves rolled up and ready to kick some serious butt.
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Radio column: Lifting the spirits

At the tail end of Christmas Day many of you, like me, will have found yourself reflecting on life’s big questions.

Can my backside, which has been welded to an armchair since lunchtime, withstand two whole hours of Downtown Abbey?  Is it possible to retrieve the Malteser that rolled under the sofa in the middle of the Queen’s speech?  Can a person die from eating too many Mini Cheddars?

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Radio column: Seasonal sounds

Don't you love this time of year? The heady waft of mince pies, the sweet smiles of small children, the gentle sound of... Noddy Holder screaming "IT'S CHRIIIIIISTMAAAAAAAAAS" at the top of his lungs. When Noddy starts yelling on "Merry Xmas Everybody", even dogs smother their ears.
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Radio column: Strictly out of step

"It’s Saturday morning and it’s just gone 10 o’clock,” bellowed Vernon Kay, “and we are here! We are here! We are live!” Where, Vernon? I bellowed back from my kitchen.

Where are you? Admiring the sunrise from the top of mount Kilimanjaro? Hanging with the Rolling Stones at their mammoth 48-hour post-gig party? Hammering out a Middle East peace plan with Ban Ki-moon?

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Radio column: Learning to let go

"This is my life, I can't just throw it away," said an elderly woman in Radio 3's Between the Ears, the panic rising in her voice. She was in process of moving into sheltered housing, and the prospect of reducing her worldly goods was making her ill. She had, she explained, just spent three days in hospital.

It's just stuff, of course, this clutter that spills from our shelves and our cupboards and piles up on furniture and the floor. The day will come to us all when everything we have amassed in the course of our existence will be loaded into a skip, crushed to the size of a shoebox and become worm food in a landfill. I sincerely hope, when that day comes, to be worm food myself.

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