From a former radio operator: Yes indeed, that was one of my jobs in the army but I have been a radio fan since I was about five! Of course, prior to TV, radio was the most immediate mass media available and the habit of listening to it became ingrained. I have remained a radio fan even to the extent of going to bed with an ear-piece shoved in one ear tuned either to 'TOOOOORKSPOOOOORT' or BBC Five Live. The former frequently bores me which helps me to drop off, and the second frequently infuriates me (well, it's the BBC, isn't it?) but either way I just like to hear speaking voices. In the last few days the annual radio ratings figures came out and both of my favorite stations lost listeners. Is it anything to do with me being a regular, I ask myself? Gillian Reynolds in The Telegraph comments on the statistics and offers some shrewd commentary, not the least of which is that most regular radio listeners are small 'c' conservatives who do not like sudden, wholesale changes to schedules they have grown used to. Keen, young, whipper-snapper radio-controllers please take note!
Vive Marine! Well, if not three cheers for the lady likely to be the next president of France then let's give her one and a half based on the report of her speech to the Oxford Union a few days ago by young Miss Carola Binney for The Coffee House. Mde. le Pen seems eminently sensible in much of what she says even if she might have difficulty spelling the word 'economics'! Also, I can't help feeling that "she should have gone to Specsavers" given that she lives in a disaster area brought about by government control of trade and industry and yet she wants more of it. Incroyable!
Jack bananas: Actually, I refer to Mr. Jack White and no, me neither! Apparently he is a pop singer who recently appeared at the University of Oklahoma, a state where-in, I am reliably informed, "the grass is as high as an elephant's eye" ... now where was I? Oh yes, the student body of Oklahoma University are all 'very naughty boys' - and girls, I assume - because they laid hands on a copy of Mr. White's demands prior to his concert performance in which he insisted that a dish of guacamole be made to his own special recipe. In addition, he insisted on a contractual proviso that there be absolutely no bananas anywhere in the building. The man is obviously a raving 'banana-ist' of the very worst sort. I mean, what have bananas ever done to him? The Daily Mail has the details if you're not sleeping well!
More rumbles later . . .
