Much as I disagree with his politics, I have to concede that Jeremy Hardy was on superb form on The News Quiz this week. He even managed to justify the existence of Alan Coren. The latter seems to have taken up the role of Hardy’s straight man, setting up gags for the Second Funniest Man […]
Read MoreI bought a copy of Kate Fox’s Watching The English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour a few weeks back. I’ve not really had time to read it of course. So far I’ve managed three chapters: “The Weather” (which, appropriately, opens the book), “Linguistic Class Codes”, and “Rules of Sex”. It’s pretty accurate so far—so […]
Read MoreI tune to Radio 2 in the bathroom, having run through the local stations (“all Bedingfield—all the time”), Virgin (“all REM—all the time”), and Radio 1 (“old people pretending to be young, playing music to young people pretending to be old”). Instead of the usual rambling from Terry Wogan, Johnnie Walker is at the mic […]
Read MoreAnd now it’s time for Thought For The Day. Over in our Manchester studio we welcome the Reverend Nimmo Platitude of St Gavin’s Church Of The Lost Apostle, Bamber Bridge: “Thank you, James. “This morning I toasted a bagel for my breakfast and, as I lifted one half of the deliciously warm, crispy-soft bun off […]
Read MoreKirsty Young has been standing in for wrinkly Yorkshireman Michael Parkinson on his Radio 2 show lately. Her voice is pure sex. When she read out the title of a book in her orgulous Scottish husk: “Why The Whales Came“, I listened and could picture both voiceless labio-velar fricatives blossom perfectly. The whales were probably […]
Read MoreThe Smith Lectures had already been back on BBC Radio 2 for two weeks and I didn’t notice until yesterday. There isn’t a “listen again” RealPlayer option on the BBC site either—probably because the programme consists mainly of well chosen archive recordings of stand-up comedy from so many different sources that there would be a […]
Read MoreI’ve just sat through the whole of the first in the new series of BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz and not one of the so-called comedians on the two teams had a go at Simon Hoggart (over this of course). Worse, it was an episode featuring both Armando Unfunnucci and Alan “my offspring shame […]
Read MoreThe Independent Radio News report on 96.9 Chiltern FM at four o’clock: “11 Britons are among the dead.” [Recording of northern Irish bloke recounting his experience] “—journalist Blahdy Blah on the earthquake in south Asia. In [Thailand] alone, eight Britons died. Others are on their way home to emotional reunions.” Don’t the media just love […]
Read MoreI used to have reservations about Ute Lemper as a singer, but on Radio 3 this afternoon, performing with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, she was stunning. I’m sad that I missed the Hebrew and Arabic songs she began her show with. Apart from an abortive attempt to read Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone—I gave […]
Read More[Before I start, I’m just going to say something about my editorial policy. A tiresome Leftie elsewhere in the ‘Blogosphere was taking Norm to task the other day for writing about cricket while Fallujah burned or something like that. This has been a week of Important Events in the World, but a week of froth […]
Read MoreI’ve been in bed for the past couple of days with a nasty little dose of food poisoning. On reflection, it was probably the Stilton, bacon, and red onion baguette that did for me. It tasted wonderful at the time. Because of my illness I’ve been listening to lots of radio. On Friday, as the […]
Read MoreThere was an excellent spoof play on the strange comedy show Radio Nine, earlier this week. In it, a bunch of actors put on period Irish accents to do an historical drama “glorifying organized crime”—a tiny, sharp pin in the romantic bubble of Republican myth (and I’m supposed to be a Catholic). Ignore the misleading […]
Read MoreI’m listening to Radio 4’s classic serial—and they do mean “classic“: it’s an adaptation of Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars. I browse over to the Radio 4 Website to get some details on the programme and my mouth gapes as I read the following: “…was Caligula the eval [sic] man history has painted him?”
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