Podcasting Too

The internet is great for doing quite a few things.  It’s very good for social media, where you can like pictures of kittens, or retweet angry and ill-informed comments originating from GRU bots, for fun.  It allows you to order your shopping to get delivered to you, or to research stuff like string theory or episode summaries of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Best of all, it allows you to reach out and share your opinions with others, secure in the knowledge that your views are important and will be embraced and appreciated by others, especially if you turn comments to ‘off’ so you never have to read any negative criticism, or indeed any criticism at all, of your forthright views about the casting of a woman as a female Doctor Who, or your controversial views about race and intelligence.

On the up side, for every bigot there are hundreds of passionate and positive people who want to share their knowledge, or even just their experience, about something dear to them.  Or just want to try to entertain.  And for each of these people who knock out a podcast, there are many more who engage in a positive way.

Podcasting is something special.  Technology has developed smartphones that mean we can download podcasts and take them with us, meaning that we can listen to podcasts at home, or on the move.

But the really special thing about podcasts is that the podcasts created by enthusiasts are better than the podcasts produced by professional broadcasters.

This doesn’t happen anywhere else.  A blog is very unlikely to be as good as, say, a novel or a published collection of essays from the ‘New Yorker’, because a blogger is unlikely to have the resources available to a remunerated writer, like an editor.  There are exceptions but the dross to quality ratio is high.  Likewise vlogs.  These only really succeed where they cover niche subjects and have a charismatic host.

Bringing us to podcasting.

The beauty of a podcast is that it can be high concept with a low budget, and a real labour of love.  Do you like Jane Austen?  So do I.  Do I want to hear you talk about Jane Austen for two hours?  Probably not, but I bet you can talk about her life, her literature, adaptations and legacy in fifteen minute chunks for a few episodes?  How about getting your friends involved?  How about asking listeners to contribute.  Holy shit, as Jane Austen never wrote, ‘Talkin’ Bonnets’ is number five in the podcast download charts.

The enthusiast is able to outperform the professional broadcaster for the very same reasons the blogger cannot.  They don’t have an editor and they don’t have to worry about producing to deadline to get paid.  They can craft a labour of love.  They can also interact with their community.

I love a literary podcast, two presenters knocking views about their favourite stories back and forth, it’s almost what the media was invented for.  Because while there is nothing quite like a single voice speaking directly to you, eavesdropping on a conversation is tremendous fun too.

They also provide the perfect platform for original drama.  Anyone with a bit of writing talent and some actor friends who are keen to perform, and are there any other kind of actor friends? can create an episodic drama that builds and audience and a reputation.  This is the stuff that would never have been produced by a broadcaster with a finite amount of airtime.

And of course there are the documentary podcasters.

While genre fiction may have found a more mainstream audience thanks to the Game of Thrones TV series and the MCU, podcasts are, to an extent, the fanzines of the twenty first century, produced with love by people who care about the subject for an audience who are consuming this stuff because they have a passion for it and, rather pleasingly, come to it by way of subscription, just like back in the day.

Maybe somebody should make a documentary podcast about fanzines.  Most likely, somebody already has.  So what about a drama about a fanzine, a fanzine about Jane Austen.  Now that, I’d subscribe to.

Podcasting

Arguably the greatest radio programme ever broadcast on the wireless was ‘Letter from America’.  Every week, the veteran broadcaster and journalist Alistair Cooke would speak for a quarter of an hour about an aspect of Americana.  It had that magical combination that only radio can provide, the intimacy of a single voice, broadcast to millions and speaking only to you, with a charismatic and talented speaker saying something meaningful.  Letter from America was broadcast on the BBC, to a British audience and was, as the name suggests, about life in the US.  It was on air for as long as I can remember but the episode that means the most to me, and I guess to many millions of others, was an anecdote about JFK’s rocking chair.

I heard that broadcast driving along the motorway on a wintry night, and recall Cooke’s supremely soft voice and the rattle of grit bouncing from the bonnet of my car as I passed a gritter lorry.  It seemed to me, driving through that darkness on that night that Cooke, speaking about a night-firing exercise by the US Navy being observed by the then President, was speaking directly to me.

The internet has, for good or ill, revolutionised communication.  Now, anyone who has the means and the inclination can record their thoughts on any subject and, within the bounds of anti-extremism legislation and good taste, make it available to anyone who chooses to read, watch or listen.

This revolution has grown with the bandwidth available to folk, and the sophistication of the tools at their disposal.

Back in the day when you had to plug your computer into a telephone socket and dial up the internet, text downloaded a lot more quickly than images and so the blog, or weblog, became popular.  There was a time when to have one’s diary made public would mean social mortification, but the first internet privacy shift began when people began recording what they were up to, and in some case who they were up, for public consumption.  Book deals were done as a result, legitimising the blog as the gateway to a writing career with those who had the talent and saucy content to interest a wide enough audience.

Youtube has, of course, given us the video blog, essentially a talking head or heads discussing a subject dear to them and, they hope, to others.  This can range from arguing about Star Trek, to arguing about Doctor Who, to arguing about the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Of course, it could be that there are other sorts of vlogs out there, but I know what I like and I am buggered if I am going to waste my time getting professional make-up tips that I am unlikely ever to use.

Want to make believe that you are the handsome and popular host of a television programme, trusted by millions to come into their homes every night and give your opinions about cultural matters, or talk about vegan stuff, then the vlog is the vehicle for you, and you can do it all from your smartphone.

But it is the podcast that has emerged as the greatest beneficiary of the internet’s merging with media.

Anyone of a certain age will have had the shared experience of trying to make their own radio programme, on cassette.  This was slightly different to recording the charts, where the editing process consisted of trying to press record to minimise any sound of a DJ talking over the track, or your family bickering in the background.  Rather, you would use a cassette and record and record your own links.  This would be done in a state of feverish excitement that lasted until the first time you heard your own voice played back to you.  Surely the technology must be defective, as the tinny whine emanating from the speakers was the voice of a little kid, not the smooth tones of a superstar DJ.

If you were wise, you destroyed that tape kid.

Now, we have a whole recording studio on our smartphones, our voices have broken, and we have something to say.

It’s not a radio broadcast, it’s not a cassette narrowcast, it’s a podcast.

Who won the Ashes, really?

Who won the 2017/2018 Ashes series?

(The Ashes, for those who don’t know, is possibly the most famous sporting contest on the planet.  It is a competition taking place every two years between England and Australia.  The game in question is cricket.  For those unfamiliar with cricket, please press the backspace icon a few times and Google ‘Kardashians’, this will be a far better use of your time than reading the following).

Of course, there are those that will say that Australia won the Ashes.  There are those also that will say that England lost the Ashes.  There is, after all, an important difference between the two matters.

What is undoubtedly true is that England’s tour Down Under was trouble-prone.  There were players that could not join because they had got into a spot of bother back home (famous sports stars get into ‘a spot of bother’ rather than being ‘charged for assault’ just like middle class students involved in vandalism are involved in ‘high spirits’ or if you go to a decent public school; ‘japes’.) and the performance on the pitch was not great.  Hovering over all of this was the unique cricket pastime of ‘sledging’ or as non-cricketing types call it ‘abuse’.  Any cricket fan will recognise the title of this Blog (although it is named G&P for quite different reasons) and will have drawn their own conclusions about which category certain Aussie and English players.

So, Australia retained the Ashes.

But BBC Radio 5 Live won the Ashes.

Here’s why.

The coverage was magnificent.  There is nothing like Test Match Special.  Arguably, the best thing to ever happen to TMS was for the BBC to lose the rights to televise cricket and then for digital radio to come along.  This meant live and uninterrupted coverage of play in Australia throughout the night, bookended by anticipation and analysis.

The BBC rightly committed programming time to exploring the phenomenon of nocturnal radio.  But it boils down to this:

If you are watching television through the night there will come a point about three in the morning when your entire body craves sleep and you feel as if somebody has replaced certain parts of you with grit.  You trek up to bed late/early and get up a few hours later feeling shocking.

Not so with radio.  One places the radio by the bed, turned down low because distractions are falling away as the midnight hour advances, and then you listen throughout the night.

Of course you don’t.  You are soundly asleep by 12:05 but occasionally stir as you subconsciously process the fall of wickets and any streakers.

You awake refreshed and ready for the day.

Radio coverage is far, far better than television coverage because the quality of the commentary is so much better.  TMS is an institution and can afford to only accept the greatest talents.  Ideally, one should apprentice until one is about 80, and then one may consider oneself a TMS fixture.

The thing about TMS is it knows that it is shepherding souls through the darkness half a world away, and it takes this privilege and responsibility seriously.

On this tour, with the performance of the England team, there was an element of pastoral care to be considered, as the commentary team did not want to wreak untold psychic damage to the unconscious subconscious attentive minds.

Moreover, this was happening over the Christmas period.  The best Christmas present that the TMS team gave the listening public back in England at the commencement of the Boxing Day test was hope.

Que the music...and the inevitable pop-up radio station

It used to be that if you wanted to set up your own radio station, far from the corrosive influence of The Man, so that you could play the records that you wanted to play, you needed a ship floating in international waters and a bloody big transmitter mast.  This got you beyond the reach of broadcast licensing (and, some might say, the reach of any law enforcement agencies that might want to take a close look at the activities of the crew of ‘The Singing Nonce’).  Obviously, when the BBC was looking to crew its, appropriately as we now know, youth orientated radio, it took DJs from the pirate stations, a sort of reverse press-ganging.

Radio 1 torpedoed Caroline and others, and the next shift in pirate radio was when even commercial radio refused to play endless twelve inch acid house mixes.  Pirate stations popped up, playing music and telling people what fields they may want to gather in that weekend to either dance in, or make crop circles in, or both.  This still required you to tune in to the crackly end of the dial.

Then came the podcast and the true meaning of pirate radio was revealed.  It certainly wasn’t to allow you to listen to music that nobody else was listening to, that had been happening for years thanks to C30, C60 and C90 (Go!) cassette tapes circulated in schools, you know, the things that were supposed to kill the music industry instead of, as they actually did, generate interest in bands and allow people to share there enthusiams.

This, and the fanzine, was analogue social media.

What the podcast does is allow a radio show to be produced without any of that tedious music to prevent the presenter stoking their ego by talking about their favourite subject for thirty minutes.  Podcasts are now like the magazine shelves of WH Smiths, there is a podcast for every hobby and pastime, no matter how obscure.  There are probably podcasts about how to knit presentational jackets for wine bottles.  If there isn’t there bloody well should be.

And that should have been it for the pirate radio station.  Killed off by being legalised and available everywhere.

However.

Small, temporary stations are starting to become something of a vogue once again.  In the village every Easter, the local Christians run a radio station for a couple of weeks, and jolly good fun it is too.  Who gives a flying frick what the traffic is like over some bridge many miles away, I want an update on what the queue is like a) at the crossroads and b) at the check-out at Threshers, both of which are visible from the front of the café the Christians broadcast from.

But, say the hipsters, how can we make this even cooler?  I know, let’s appropriate the idea, put the word ‘pop-up’ in front of it, and pass off the idea as our own.

Hence, festivals now come with their own pop-up radio stations.  Nothing new there, but the twist is that these ones are being run by national broadcasters.  For instance, Radio 2 and their recent ‘Eurovision’ pop-up.

Don’t get me wrong, I think pop-ups are a great idea.  Pop-ups make things more fun, ‘book’ and ‘penis’ are just two of the tings that can be improved by having the words ‘pop-up’ in front of them.  But radio station?

Having said that, there’s a great deal of charm in something that is only in existence for a short time and is dedicated to one particular subject, and if it’s the only way we get to hear what is, essentially, the Eurovision B side, then it’s probably of some cultural significance.  Probably.

But is it as good as being slipped a cassette in the playground, or as thrilling as happening upon a new tune emerging from crackly static at the top of the dial?

Radiohead

Technology is, on the whole, wonderful.  Take alarm clocks.  Once, an alarm clock was a clockwork thing with a couple of chimes and a hammer that, once a day, went off like a Haribo binging ADHD kid.

Then, advances in technology led to the alarm clock that buzzed, then beeped.

Then there was the apex of alarm clock technology, the Teasmaid.  The Teasmaid not only woke you up with a gentle buzz, but commenced boiling a little kettle at the same time, the idea being that you could have that all-important first cup of tea of the day without all the palaver of having to get out of bed.  This was liberation.  For those who sadly lacked butlers, it was a taste of what having staff was like, and for most, that tasted like PG Tips.

The next great leap sideways was the clock radio.  Instead of a bringggg, a buzz, a beep or a scalding jet of steam, you could be woken by a breakfast radio DJ, now probably safely locked up thanks to Yewtree, prattling nonsense in your ear.

Now, you can buy alarm clocks wake you by slowly increasing the level of light in the room whilst playing soothing sounds like the sea, or birdsong.  This is supposed to ease you into your day rather than provoke the natural reaction, which is to sit bolt upright screaming ‘what the fuck am I doing outdoors?’.

My alarm clock is set to Radio 4, because I like to go from peaceful sleep to enraged and in desperate need of tea as quickly as possible.

It is a habit that I am going to have to break, before I break the radio.  Radio 4 at breakfast time means the ‘Today’ programme and, frankly, I’ve reached the end of my tether with that particular show.  The presenters are so adversarial that my mental image of the studio is not some bland studio at Broadcasting House but a gladiatorial arena carpeted with blood soaked sand.

They really do seem to delight in getting their guests on, asking them a question, interrupting them, belittling them and then, just when the guest has managed to get into a full spluttering rage that promises entertainment, end the interview.  All of this before I’ve managed to wrestle myself out from under the duvet.

No more.  The internet has shown that there is a world wide web of listening choices out there.  Because that most modern of communication technologies, the internet, is revealing the true wonder and extent of that most traditional of communication technologies, radio.

Years ago, if you wanted to listen to radio from other countries, there were two ways of doing so.  You could set up a ham radio station in your shed and spend your spare time going up and down the dial, hoping that atmospheric conditions were such that a radio station in Minsk’s signal would bounce in your direction, or you could travel.

Not now.  I have an app that lets me listen to radio over the internet.  So far, so iPlayer.  But this app lets you browse by location.

Foreign radio is fucking brilliant!

By far my favourite is a Parisian station called Allouette.  Even the adverts are cool.  And DJs are so, so much more tolerable when you don’t understand a bloody word they’re saying.

But why stop there.  African radio is a hoot, as is South American.

And bloody hell, do the Americans love a bit of Christian radio.  In a way, it’s a no-brainer that Christians would have radio stations, it’s like being able to do missionary work without ever having to leave the trailer park.

And there’s so much of it.  I’ve decided.  My days of listening to grumpy old men interrupting one another are over.  No wonder the Today programme presenters are all so grumpy, they have to get up at four in the morning.  I’m going to start listening to radio from different time zones, so that when I’m getting up, I can listen to the mellow sounds of the ‘relax hour’ somewhere where it’s getting dark.  Alternatively, just listen to Radio 3, the most relaxed radio station on the planet at any hour.

The obvious joys of Radio 5

The controller of Radio 5 was grilled recently on Radio 5 and defended his station against accusations that it was ‘Radio bloke’ by pointing out that it has a lot of female presenters.  It certainly does, and very pretty they sound too.  The genius of Radio 5 is threefold.  Firstly, where a Radio 4 interview with a politician may last two minutes, on radio 5 they have nothing but time, and so interviews turn into conversations.  It’s fantastic to hear people whose media training means they have developed the skills to put their point in ninety seconds have to discuss matters in depth and, in truth, one gets the sense they actually enjoy it.  Secondly, as mentioned in a previous blog, it keeps middle-aged men off the streets, in this case the sheepskin-swaddled commentators that sit in media boxes at football grounds around the country, reporting into the mother ship back at Broadcasting House.  And of course, thirdly, still with middle aged me, gives purpose to those that call in to share their thoughts with their presenters and, quite incidentally, with the nation.  One thing I have noticed is that Radio 5 sports presenters treat their listeners with respect, and if you mention that you’re a season ticket holder, you can espouse whatever view you want, no matter how unconventional, no matter what subject.
What radio 5 has done is build a community.  If Radio 5 were a village, it would probably be the sort you only stop in long enough to realise you should be getting along, but for the people that live there, they wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
And it’s worth mentioning that Radio 5 Extra is, of course, the home of Test Match Special.  Not for nothing was the original inscription above the door of Broadcasting House intended to be ‘Nation shall speak cricket commentary and remark about cake unto nation’ before somebody realised that wouldn’t fit and that cricket commentary and cake can be summarised simply as ‘peace’.
I am increasingly drawn to Radio 5.  I even occasionally listen to shows about soccer, a sport I know nothing, and care even less, about.  But it’s lovely to hear the presenters and the fans get excited about it, and heartwarming when some poor sod whose team has just had a six nothing thrashing starts by congratulating the opposing team before going on to describe how his team’s manager really does need to be beheaded, ‘Game of Thrones’ stylee, on the centre spot at the start of the next home game.

The mysterious joy of Radio 3

Digital radios are fantastic.  I remember when I first got one and span up and down the dial (I have yet to adapt to digital terminology) amazed at the sheer number of stations there were out there that programmed soft rock and adverts for air-sprung mattresses. 
Of course, back in the day, one of the most popular stations was ‘test signal’ featuring birdsong, a single track endlessly repeated, which is obviously where ‘Magic FM’ got their programming philosophy from and where Radio 4’s immensely successful ‘tweet of the day’ can trace its genetic heritage to.
The internet, of course, really has opened up the world of radio, allowing one to listen to stations from many nations.  I like to listen to French radio because it makes me feel like I’m on holiday, because hearing Madonna’s hits introduced in French never gets old (unlike Madonna), and because it’s like Eurovision every day.
Given the number of channel choices, presetting presents some difficult decisions.  I like to keep it classic.
1 – Radio 1.  Listening to Radio 1 is a little like visiting a pub that you used to drink at all the time and used to be really great, but has been taken over by a chain, is utterly crap and yet is full of young people drinking stuff you don’t recognise.  You drop by now and again, but leave quickly realising it’s no longer for you, but not before you have picked up enough contemporary cultural references to be able to drop them into conversation with young people to demonstrate that you are still down with the kids.  This is how I learned that ‘Selfie’ was not a new girl band.
2 – Radio 2.  This is where you live now.  Radio 2 used to be as solid and respectable as a granite headstone, but essentially it has gone to hell since Jimmy Young and Wogan left.  Only Ken Bruce remains, like a Tower raven.  Radio 2 is now a life raft for former Radio 1 jocks.
3 – Radio 3. I’ll come back to this.
4 – Radio 4.  Jesus fucking Christ.  Why I even bother I have no idea.  I also have no idea what they put in the tea at Radio 4 but I’m guessing that it is some sort of spin-off of a failed pharmaceutical trial for a confidence-enhancing pill that actually takes the user past ‘cocky’ and buries the needle of the arrogant-o-metre.  A typical ‘Today’ programme interview doesn’t even start with a cordial ‘good morning’ now.  As for ‘Woman’s Hour’ – they’re always talking about their feelings, FFS.  Of course Radio 4 used to be famous for its comedy, but now the rule appears to be ‘who cares if it’s funny as long as it’s clever’.  Once they broadcast the last ever ‘Cabin Pressure’, I’m off.
5 – Radio 5.  Worth the license fee alone.  Without Radio 5 befuddled middle-aged men everywhere would be wandering the streets.  That applies to listeners and presenters both.
6 – Wildcard.  Used to be Radio 4 Extra, before they turned their output to all Hancock, all the time.  Obviously not Radio 6 or 6 Extra, both of which are the radio station equivalent of that kid at school who used to be into music that nobody had ever heard of, because it’s shit.  I suspect that when the BBC eventually set up a national Folk station, that 6 preset will see a little more action.
So, why do I present Radio 3?  No idea, as I like my classical music to have been used in a poignant scene from a movie, or an advert, and interspersed with adverts fro Volvo dealerships in the local area.  In short, broadcast on Classic FM.
The appeal to Radio 3 is obvious to anyone who has listened to it – they broadcast based on the assumption that nobody is listening.  Indeed, sometimes they broadcast stuff that actively makes it hard to listen.  Did you know that a lot of classical music is quite quiet?  The other day I actually thought the radio was off and nearly choked on my mid-morning sherry when I heard the presenter boom ‘and that was Prada’s ‘ode to a nice night in’.’  The music they play is varied to say the least, from jazz to choral to chamber to ‘early’.  (‘Early’ music is not, as I had always presumed, stuff played on the breakfast show, but rather tunes from early on in the development of music, essentially anything after two rocks being banged together up to the formation of the Beatles in, judging from the way Paul MacCartney looks these days, 1762).
But that’s just the stuff I’ve (largely accidentally) heard.  Christ alone knows what else they broadcast.  For all I know Radio 3 is the nation’s premier ambient trip-hop broadcaster and the only radio station where presenters are allowed to n-bomb.
One strongly suspects that the vision statement for radio 3 is ‘niche’.  With such a varied programme it may well be the only station where people tune in for certain programmes, rather than just leave it on all day.  One can imagine that radio 3 listeners listen to their favourite programmes in their shed, that shed being lined with acoustic dampeners and liberally stocked with the better kind of stereo, sherry and beard grooming paraphernalia.
I have Radio 3 on my pre-set for two reasons.  Firstly, because I am massively OCD and numbered presents on radios are an obvious invitation to assign those buttons to the correspondingly named stations (a stroke of marketing genius by the BBC who all those years ago might have been criticised for lack of imagination in naming their first national radio station ‘1’).  Secondly, because I like to think I am the sort of person who has radio 3 on their preset because I live in hope of one day catching an unsuspecting presenter unawares and discovering that ‘The Bach Hour’ is actually used to broadcast the theme tunes of classic children’s telly serials.
‘Oh white horses’ or ‘You’ve got to fight for what you want…’, either way, that’s quality public broadcasting.

No funny. At all.

The coverage of the tragic school shooting in Conneticut, combined with the ongoing coverage of the suicide of the mother and nurse who was the victim of a ‘prank’ call by two tossers who ‘worked’ for an Australian radio station, makes watching the news or reading a paper a fairly depressing activity at the moment.  Essentially, if Angela Merkel pops up and you think ‘thank Christ!’, you know things are grim.

What’s striking about the tossers who made the ‘prank’ call is just how mind-boggingly insensitive they truly are.  When they gave a press conference, their first public appearance following their actions that had led to a woman taking her own life, they talked of how ‘shattered’ they felt.

Let’s be quite clear here, nobody cares how you feel.  Nobody.  After you have driven a woman to her death, you do not go on national telly and talk about how it has affected you.  You go on telly, and you say ‘I am sorry’.  You say that and only that and you keep on saying that until the camera crew have packed up their lights and gear and shit and have left the room, left the building.

Following the death of Jacintha Saldanha (charmingly described as ‘Kate nurse’ in the media) the tossers who made the ‘prank’ call had to take down their Twitter accounts.  This is probably because being self-absorbed media wankers (question, does working for a radio station in Australia qualify as being a job in the media?) check their Twitter accounts before they take their morning dump, although sitting on the loo is probably a great place to discover that everyone in the world wants to kill you.

There have been a few protestations that the level of abuse heaped upon the tossers was out of proportion, but I’m not so sure.  First of all, it’s not like anyone has actually seriously made any sort of death threat against them, knowing the internet community, it’s more likely that people have been tweeting that the pair should meet an unpleasant fate in an unlikely fashion, like being gored to death by goats, or struck by a hot air balloon making an emergency landing.  Essentially, a non-specific remark that the planet would be better off without you.

Certainly, the world would have been a better place if they had not made that call.  I have to admit that I have never appreciated practical jokes or hoax calls.  Maybe somebody can explain to me the humour in ‘phoning up a hospital to get confidential medical details about somebody and then broadcasting it.  I can’t see the humour but can see that in terms of filling air time this is a lot more economical than paying a writer to sacrifice an entire summer and develop a coffee dependency in order to come up with six half hour radio shows that only receive a luke-warm reception and will never make the jump to television.

Contrasting the tossers with the television footage of Jacintha Saldanha’s daughter giving a statement to the press about how much she will miss her mother was quite revealing.  Composed and dignified, it demonstrated the gulf between those who have something to say that’s worthwhile listening to, and those who want to talk about themselves, without having anything interesting to say.

Without wishing to add to the sum burden of human misery in the world, and without wishing to make a judgement about somebody based upon reading a few words and seeing a few seconds of television, it’s pretty clear that even if the tossers are not terrible people (and I suspect they are, sometimes you don’t need much information about somebody’s actions to make a judgement about them, like if you knew somebody spend their evenings peeing on choirboys and that’s all you knew about them…what more do you need) they are at least terrible broadcasters.

I know this because at a time when dee jays and radio presenters in England were being arrested as sex offenders and more accusations about peados on the radio came out, these were the two people that the internet (for which read: The World) decided to hate.  Says it all.

Postcard from Norfolk - Tune in, drink up

I love local radio.  If you are visiting somewhere, the quickest way to get a handle on the local character is to pick up a local paper and tune into the local radio.  Despite the apparent homogenisation of the UK, it’s still true to say that every postcode has its own qualities.  That is to say, peculiarities.

In North Norfolk, the radio station of choice is North Norfolk radio (surprise!).  There are a number of reasons to tune into this excellent station, and these were all evident in the two hours that I heard this morning.  The first is that they actually do do an island waterways forecast, it’s like the Shipping Forecast for toddlers.  I love the idea that some weekend sailor facing a degree of chop on the Broads gets his forecast, just like some trawler captain with a hold full of mackerel facing the fury of the unforgiving storm and the cruel sea somewhere where the cod have retreated to because they think it’ll be too inhspitable for humans to fish.

The second reason is the limerick competition.  Now, can there be any better way of keeping yourself amused as a deejay for two hours than having people send you filthy verses?  I think not.  Apparently the way they do it is to go with a different letter of the alphabet every week to get a place name, so ‘There was a young man from Stiffkey’ for instance, and just wait for the amusing rhymes to pile in, because if there is anything the great British public are great at, it’s making up names for moist and thankfully normally hidden areas of the body so that they can just about rhyme with anything.  (As it happens, ‘There once was a wreck called the Vera’ was completed in clean and tidy manner, and the challenge here was because there are no places starting with vee in Norfolk, except ‘Very Fucking Expensive’, which is Burnham Market’s post code.

The third reason is the local announcements, both paid and unpaid.  Unpaid come in the form of announcements for local events, like the book and jigsaw sale at Fakenham parish church.  This sounds like a fantastic idea but let’s hope that they remembered to keep the two separate, unlike that time in Bromsgrove when there was uproar after some genius decided to combine books and jigsaws by removing the end pages from a number of whodunits and selling them in kit form.  On the minus side, quite a lot of people were both angry and frustrated, even more so than the Bromsgrove norm.  On the plus side, the auction for the concluding chapters for the mystery thrillers in question the following week raised several hundred pounds for MacMillan nurses.

The paid announcements or, as I believe they are called on commercial radio, adverts, are fantastic.  When I was but a youth, I heard a C60 tape of American radio that a relative had recorded when over in the US.  Just some songs and a DJ and adverts that appeared to have been scripted by the Monty Python team but were actually for real.  Fast forward thirty years and I have the same sense when listening to North Norfolk radio.  This is not, I hasten to add, because the tyre dealerships that advertise on North Norfolk Radio advertise family fun days with ‘free balloons, candy and clowns’.  Around here, the only time that tyres and clowns go together are when they put the former round the neck of the latter and set fire to it and, by extension, Coco.  But the advert that captured my attention was for logs.  Logs delivered free of charge.

That’s right, the good folk of North Norfolk get through so much wood during the winter that not only do they buy it, not only does the supplier offer free delivery but they actually have the money to advertise.  This is like Ocado, for wood!

Have just checked the Ocado web site.  They do not do wood.  Yet.

I’m not sure I like this.  When I’m in Norfolk I like splitting my own wood.  One so rarely gets to swing a huge axe unchallenged at home.  If you can’t chop your own, then the next best bet is to stop by a sign at the roadside that says either ‘logs for sale’ or ‘woods, next left’.  That’s the thing about the countryside, it’s quite acceptable to have a bootliner and an axe in the back of the car.  Still, if one is rushed, I can see the sense in getting logs delivered.  The next step must be the web site and the various packages, from ‘value’ (a tree and a spoon) to ‘luxury’ (organic scented wood chopped for you by the regional X Factor finalist of your choice, safety gear optional).

Away from the radio, it was a beautiful day.  Walking into the Within Hill Cider shop in Wells-next-the-Sea I cautioned Gentleman & Player’s cookery editor ‘don’t say we’re just buying cider to cook with’.  Two things then happened, G&P’s cooker editor piped up ‘we’re just cooking with it, what’s the best one for that?’ and the planet earth neglected to offer up a perfectly timed seismic event to bloody well swallow me up.

Actually, as you would imagine, the chap was very chaming about it, especially after I had back pedalled like a clown on a unicycle faced with a mob holding a tyre and a box of matches and explained that, yes, a small amount of cider would be going in a pan but a large amount would be going down my throat.

There is, perhaps, something of a cultural divide in the town and the city about cider.  In the country, there are, according to the documentary made by Oz Clarke and James May, three types of cider, fighting, singing and sleeping.  In the town, cider is known as ‘trampagne’ and also comes in three varieties, farting, shitting and shouting.

This had been a bad year for cider (I withheld my professional condolences as the owner of a vine) and for apples.  The crop yield was down and the chap explained that he was ready to go to Sandringham to ‘beg, borrow or steal’ from The Queen.

This was, bluntly, fantastic.

The very idea that one would have The Queen’s Apples in your cider press, presuming you could keep her son’s Duchy mitts off them for long enough, would allow you to slap the word ‘jubilee’ on the label and charge an extra 20%.  Moreover, the idea that this might be achieved by scumping made me want to purchase an under the counter bottle of ‘Sandringham scumped’ at once.  Forty quid you say?  Bargain!

Review - Ed Reardon: A writer's burden

A half hour radio show stretched out into an hour-long play. Twice the fun or the same among of fun stretched out over twice the time?

Probably somewhere in between, forty five minutes of fun stretched out over an hour.

It was excellent to see Ed in the flesh. More thrilling somehow to see a radio character doing a live show than seeing a television character appearing on the stage. The reality did not disappoint, Ed was everything one imagined, although the shorts were possibly a surprise.

The audience filled about a third of the large theatre, and was very radio four, lots of beards and sensible anoraks. It might have been better to go for a more intimate venue, as the show usually plays either in a room with a radio in it or a head with headphones in it. The show also suffered a little from recycling material from last year's fringe one-off, the success of which led to a longer run this time round.

But it was, ultimately, very satisfying, like a live action version of a spin off book from a radio or telly series that reveals hitherto unknown aspects of the character. There was also a truly outstanding line about Berkhamstead's transport links with London.

I have a great fondness for Ed Reardon on the radio, and like any fan get a little prickly when anyone takes liberties with the character, even if that character is the character himself. The show served up more of the same Ed and, if it felt a bit over-long that's probably because I expect the show to be half an hour followed by the news and then Front Row.

Review - BBC Festival cafe

It's a live broadcast. You are part of the audience of a live broadcast. It's like the moment of being in the congregation at a wedding when the vicar asks if the is any just reason why these two people should not be wed, sustained for forty five minutes. The urge to shout 'knickers' grips you hugely and the first five minutes are an exercise in self control until you begin to enjoy yourself.

But you never forget that this is a radio show. Firstly, there is the reason why the license fee is so much, the BBC staff are everywhere, they have people in headphones bringing guests on, bringing guests off and standing about with clipboards, and this is just for a radio show! Janice Forsyth, the presenter, is smooth and sexy with one of those fabulous radio voices that should be used at times of crisis to just tell you everything is going to be okay, combining as it does authority and assurance, she makes the perfect ringmaster for an arts crowd magazine programme with over the top, and festival over the top at that, guests.

It's always interesting to see a show recorded, more interesting still when it's a slick BBC job and most interesting of all when it's a live broadcast, there's a real sense of anything can happen. Good guests, great host and unpredictable excitement, what more could one want from a festival show? A bloke in the audience in a leather kilt with two back pockets, one for a mobile and one for an iPod? It had that too!

The guests were Frisky and Mannish, who did their singing pop songs in the style of other sorts of songs act. A bloke who sang funny songs in an operatic voice, a writer and finally a chap who had won the 'so you think you can stand up' or whatever competition the night before, had had about two hours sleep and was doing an interview about overnight success before being returned to a life of obscurity that's probably going to culminate in a job managing an electrical goods warehouse and a fair to medium sized crystal meth habit.

The show was also enlivened with a spectacular thunderstorm and rain drumming on the roof of the temporary pavilion that was the venue.

It was interesting to see this actually take place before you, not simply tumble out of the speaker of the radio in your kitchen while you wrestle with the larger problems of the day, like whether to cook up some bacon that's two days past its best before date. It's like being in one of those adverts for radio where the host is actually sat at the kitchen table with you, although if you found Chris Moyles at your breakfast table your first impulse would be to hide the pies and find the cricket bat.

It did make me think though that his could be a daily treat if you were up there for a while, I think the only uniformity would be that it's consistently good.

A la radio

The internet has brought us many things, social networking, anti-social behaviour organisation platforms, blogs, porn and a seemingly endless succession of pictures of pets dressed up.

It’s also brought us nostalgia. It provides a global platform for the heritage crisp enthusiast who wants to discuss childhood treats with others until the warm rosy glow of nostalgia almost covers the aching desperation of howling emptiness that his once promising life has become (also known as adulthood)…or maybe he just really likes snacks, who can tell?

The internet is becoming a museum of the everyday, with the mundane analysed and discussed with a refreshing curiosity. It’s fun to see a forum brimming with the same sort of enthusiasm for some plastic toy from the seventies that one normally sees exhibited by a professor turning up a roman vomiting pot or something.

It’s also provided a window on the world, as we can now see and hear instantly what others half a planet away are seeing and hearing. A part of this is internet radio, which allows you to listen to stations in far flung countries. And this cutting edge technology is somewhat nostalgic also.

Clicking your way through the international stations is a little like being a radio ham decades ago, sitting hunched over a machine, slowly turning the dial and occasionally through the static hearing a haunting song sung in a strange language as the signal bounces off of the ionosphere – only later do you discover you are listening to Radio Cardiff (you thought it was Viking).

Now you can wander the world one click at a time. My favourite station remains Allouette, the French radio station. They play a lot of pop and, even when they break for the news its not too bad, as I don’t understand French and so don’t know what they are talking about. Initially I thought from the way they were talking that there was a riot in Paris every night, then I worked out that it’s just that they are very excitable, then I worked out that there is a riot in Paris every night.

Other stations worth a visit are the Japanese and Caribbean ones. The benefit of visiting something in a very different time zone is that while all the domestic stations are trying to keep everyone calm and sane at drive time, it”s night time or even the wee small hours elsewhere in the world, and you can kick back to the soothing sounds of Caribbean Breeze – as soothing as a nice big cup of rum.

Today's photography

'Today' is a cornerstone of BBC Radio Four's morning programming. Billed as a news and current events programme it would also be fair to describe it as a retirement home for a certain type of irritable old journalist who, if they were a member of your family, would be the uncle who lives on his own, ruins Christmas every year by being so bloody miserable and only brings you joy at the moment when you realise that he is not in fact cumodgney yet loveable like some character in a Disney family feature, but is in fact a proper pain in the arse and hey, you don't have to invite him round again, ever.

The presenters on today have a reputation for being 'fierce'. This is because you cannot call broadcasters 'rude', even if that's what they are. In my house, they are referred to as 'the breakfast nutters' because of their amazing ability to get upset about inconsequential things, usually technology stories that are about making life easier for pets.

Because I'm a rational type I now restrain myself to simply turning the radio off in disgust about once a week, rather than tossing the thing out the window, which is probably a more proportionate response to some of the asinine opinions expressed.

It's not just news and interviews though, the show has a couple of hours to fill every morning and you can't do that just by being rude to politicians, although you can tell that the presenters would like to give it a damn good try. No, the show also seems to report on an alarming number of new surveys that reveal something or other about the spam buying habits of the great British public or something equally important, and medical stories about new cures for the sort of maladies that affect their listeners, like irritability and bouts of depression.

The behaviour of the presenters does perform the essential service of getting the heart rate of the listener up to anaerobic levels first thing in the morning, the way that usually only a really good alarm clock or an earthquake can. Carefully maintained, one can be in a simmering rage all day, lasting until it's time to uncork dinner.

One of the stories that caught my attention the other morning was an apparent growing trend in funeral photography.

Now, I thought that the only people that took photographs at funerals were either the police, looking to get some pictures of family villains for the files, or intrusive press photographers who know that grief sells, especially when it's somebody else's.

My first reaction was one of mystified spluttering indignation. What sort of person hires a photographer for a funeral? Obviously, I thought, this is an effect of celebrity culture. People see grieving celebs in magazines and, just like the red carpet, want to 'get the look'. But apparently not so. It's all down to people wanting to remember a day that, for most of them, passes in something of a blur. So the funeral photographer.


Even as I tee'd up a 'the world has gone mad' rant, they wheeled on some history professor from a provincial poly to explain that this is, in fact, simply a revival of a Victorian practice. That the Victorians used to have funereal photographs is not really that much of a surprise, they loved black, and plumes, and heavy wooden furniture and so were a natural society for really liking death. Somewhat like goths, but with rickets, a work ethic and a shocking taste for gin.

Indeed there was a gathering of goths in Whitby not long ago that had, as one of the events, a Victorian funeral. God knows I was a moody a teen as anyone but at least I had the good manners to confine myself to my bedroom and not hang around graveyards looking glum.

So funeral photography is nothing new, although the photos are now in colour. Problem is though, as everyone is dressed in black, who's going to know?

Radio daze

There’s a very good chance that this entry will contain even more eccentricities of spelling, grammar and reason than is normally the case. This is because I have been decorating, painting the kitchen to be precise and this has involved gloss paint. Not the new, environmentally friendly gloss paint that is water based and is, essentially, skimmed milk, no; I’m using oil based gloss that I’m pretty sure is the thing they paint on tanks to make them bomb proof. Painting with this stuff is the closest you can get to solvent abuse without getting a bag of glue stuck to your nose.

But while the fumes are strong enough to make you hallucinate vapour-trails being left by your finger when you wave it in front of your own face, it’s not enough to offset the horror of listening to the radio.

Listening to the radio is essential while decorating, and a good tune can really up the tempo of the swish of the roller and gloop of the brush being dipped in the paint pot. However, there’s only so much commercial radio one can listen to – the problem being the commercials. I’m not sure what the demographic of commercial radio is, but whoever listens appears to need a lot of adverts about debt consolidation services.

In an attempt to find some fresh toons, I tuned into Radio 1. Luckily, using gloss paint means that I had plenty of white spirit to hand to clean the brushes with. Highly flammable, it was most useful for dousing the radio with before setting it on fire and hurling it out of the window. Over reaction? Then you haven’t heard Jo Wiley’s show. Now I know that DJs are hardly likely to land weekend jobs at CERN, but are they not supposed to make up for the lack of smarts with personality? And if all fails, can they at least not pick some good tunes? It would appear that air play at the moment is granted to a song that starts normally, then has an angry man shouting over the top of the lyrics. Unfortunately, he’s not shouting ‘turn that down’.

Did you know that somebody has sampled the guitar lick from ‘need you tonight’ by INXS? They then shout over the top of it. I suspect it is somebody from an energy starved part of the world intent on using Michael Hutchins spinning in his grave at 8,000 rps as some sort of grotesque turbine.

Things

BBC radio and the British Museum (could there be a more thoroughly proper combination of bodies? you can practically taste the tea) have combined to bring the listener 'the history of the world in 100 objects'. Essentially this does exactly what it says on the tin (object 74) and attempts to link the evolution of humanity from two million years ago to now to the objects that man has created and used to help this evolution.

This achieves three essential functions, it finally confirms my theory that things are important and can make you happy - geeks everywhere can celebrate that they might not have a girlfriend but they do have an XBox and the latter is more likely to be featured in this series than the object of their impotent lust: the girl who works behind the counter at the newsagents, resulting in a frequency of visits that is borderline stalking and leads to the accumulation of a vast number of unwanted magazines about, for instance, carp fishing (panic buy in desperate attempt to kick start conversation after eighth visit of the weekend).

Secondly, it is one in the eye for creationists. The British Museum is home to a two million year old hand axe, the earliest tool known to man (not counting the ones that do the breakfast show on local radio), excavated from deserts and so on by scientist types. Creationist museums are, if I recall correctly, home to lots of waxworks of bible scenes and pop-eyed loons.

Finally, it delivers the cheery message that we are still evolving. This is not immediately obvious. There's a pretty compelling argument that human regulation peaked in 1974, with space travel and supersonic passenger flight. People in 1974 were actually living in our future (this explains why the sweets were so brightly coloured, now thanks to nanny-knows-best laws about food colouring chemicals, sweets are essentially the same colour as dung. Well, compared to the arrhythmia inducing pallet of the 70s they are).

The objects chosen so far have been a stone cutting tool and a hand axe (described as the Swiss army knife of the stone age and something of an exaggeration, as there is no corkscrew on it) and one of the modern objects later in the series is an Arab credit card. So, essentially, we have evolved from using a rock to chop up antelope meat to using a plastic wafer to chop up lines of coke in a Knightsbridge night club.

The one hundredth object is the subject of a public search and I have no doubt that there will be plenty of nominations. You'll get your environmentalists (or just mentalists) suggesting things that will take forever to decompose in a landfill, like plastic bags, styrofoam burger cartons or Jordan. You'll get organised campaigns to elect some sort of joke object (inevitably, this will involve a facebook campaign. The inventors of facebook must be the most conflicted people on the planet, on the one hand their invention is hugely successful, on the other hand, all the users appear to be enormous gits with too much time on their hands), like anal beads...only to discover these are not a modern invention and were first discovered up some pharaoh (known as 'the smiling mummy') buried three thousand years ago.

There will be many worthy suggestions and I've no doubt that the trend will be modern; somebody will have that 'hey, who could live without one of these' moments and nominate the hat, or the lawnmower or the cricket bail or something.

Me? I'm nominating the ex. In particular the ex you broke up with because, until you found out the meaning of 'passive/aggressive', you simply thought they were immensely irritating. Maybe not an object, but bloody objectionable. And the best thing is, you just know that two million years ago, in a cave in Africa, this conversation took place:
'You're not eating your antelope?'
'I'm not hungry.'
'Oh, OK.'
'OK? OK? That's all you've got so say. You don't care about me at all do you? You don't care about my feelings, what I want.
(Confused) 'I thought you wanted antelope for tea?'
'Oh shut up.'
Thinks: the sooner we evolve beyond this, the better.

Or maybe I'll just nominate the lawnmower.

In praise of...J.K.Rowling

The sad death of Alaistair Cook some years ago deprived Britain of a fine diplomat, the world of a fine communicator and the BBC of not just a fine broadcaster but the presenter of a programme that was as much a fixture of Radio 4’s Friday night schedule as the Shipping Forecast – ‘letter from America’.

Cook’s distinctive style and voice have been replaced with the same sort of opinion pieces from others – last night it was the turn of Clive James, the amiable Aussie semi-professional fattie to talk to the nation. I only heard the last five minutes of his show but it was gripping – a discussion about how the deserved success of J.K. Rowling was a slap in the face to any aspiring writer who complained that they did not have success. The point, I think, was that inspiration and talent and hard work will out – so stop winging about the perceived success of what are considered to be pot-boiler authors and get writing, or stop moaning.

He was, of course, right.

Spoilers – go no further if you have not read the Harry Potter books and want to one day.

I’ve just finished ‘Deathly Hallows’ and thought it was a great book – it gave the fans what they wanted and it gave this fan EXACTLY what he wanted – Snape redeemed, Hogwarts finally used as a castle in the true sense and, best of all, Neville Longbottom revealed as the truly kick-arse superpowerful magician that he was hinted to be in the earlier books. And the epilogue is a fine touch.

Spoilers end

I thought the writing was great. I know that the cycle of books is finished, but think that there are still stories to be told about Harry Potter at Hogwarts – for me, the magic of the early books especially was the introduction of the wizarding world. It would be good to see some short stories from J.K., dipping into different years at Hogwarts, with Harry as the central or even tangential character – a stylistic trick pulled off with some panache by Terry Practchett in the books where Sam Vimes of Ahnk-Morpork city watch is not the main protagonist as in the early books but is seen through the eyes of others.

I’ve seen J.K. interviewed a couple of times and she always struck me as a serious woman. I guess that creative people are serious, and defensive about their art – their creations, as others are about their children.

Artists, writers and some musicians have this approach – those that are inspired and conjure something from nothing. Few actors do I think, relying as they do on everyone from the writer to tell them what to say to sound good, through the director to tell them how to feel so that can appear normal and finally, possibly most importantly, the lighting guy so they can look ten years younger and not quite so addicted to crack, fags and late nights shagging groupies in dingy night-clubs.

The latest Harry Potter book was, to understate, much anticipated – I think fans are already starting to anticipate J.K.s next book. I think the question is not will she write one, I think the question is, when?