A great face for radio ... Jimmy Savile in a radio studio, 1981. Photograph: Dezo Hoffmann / Rex
Listening to a hotly contested round of PopMaster the other day, I heard a couple of radio phrases I thought had long since vanished from all but the most terrifyingly naff corners of local radio. The losing contestant said "can I have a signed photo?" to Ken Bruce, adding that he wanted one of Lynn Bowles who does the traffic too, and then gave a mention to his nearest and dearest, "and anyone else who knows me". I'd like to say I had a warm rush of radio nostalgia, but in fact I just felt mildly queasy and a bit claustrophobic.
There was a time, not so long ago, when almost every presenter-caller conversation featured at least one of these stalwarts. Hearing them again made me wonder anew quite what people do with the signed photos when they get them - especially if they have quite a collection, as I think this chap did by the sounds of things - and also reminded me that I have never been in the "anyone else who knows me" category.
Nobody I know has ever called up a radio show for a competition or a heated phone-in debate, or a request - or at least, nobody I know has ever admitted to doing so. I've never heard a soppy dedication on Steve Wright's Sunday Love Songs and thought, ooh, I know those lovebirds, or listened to a friend's dazzling contribution to Any Answers. It may simply be that I know the wrong (or right) people, of course. These days radio is thoroughly, passionately, thrillingly interactive, which I enjoy hugely. But my own interaction with radio shows extends only to once having sent Charlie Gillett a postcard from Turkey in 1988, recommending some music we'd heard on holiday.
Am I alone in this? Or have you called radio programmes and chatted away live on air? How did it go? Have you ever requested, or been sent, a signed photograph of a radio presenter (come on, own up)? If so, what did you do with it? And have you ever won anything gloriously rubbish in a radio competition?
My favourite competition winner, not least because she sounded so enormously gutted, was a bewildered woman who called Al Murray's old show on Virgin Radio thinking the prize was a pair of flights somewhere warm and fancy. It wasn't. She won some meat. A big load of meat. Enough, in fact, for her and anyone else who knows her.
