Hands of time: are the elderly not interested in politics, arts, music, the world? Photograph: Jeffrey Coolidge/Getty Images
So BBC bosses have decided that their target audience for local radio are persons in their early 50s. No squeaky old voices and no one over 65 to be heard on air, thank you very much, because older people are getting younger in their attitudes and interests.
What sort of bollocks is that? Who do they think is sitting at home listening to the radio all day? Persons over 65 who have retired. Not persons in their 50s who are still at work. And what are younger attitudes and interests? Two-minute snippets for the two-minute-attention-span young? Pop music? Big Brother? How do you divide interests into age groups? Are the elderly not interested in politics, arts, music, the world, wars, catastrophes? Are those topics for the young only?
It's not the radio producers who want this. They're as fed up as I am. It's management - that useless section of the population who have squeezed themselves into every possible area of life and paid themselves generously to make a cock-up of everything.
Wait till you grow old, you management wretches, then you'll know what it feels like to have everyone else believe that you think of nothing except your bowels and your cocoa, that your brains disintegrate and you sit dribbling in a chair with a funny voice and nothing interesting to say. I only wish that this will happen to you, to all members of the "focus group" who led the BBC down this mad road, and particularly to Mia Costello, BBC managing editor, who said she "didn't really want to hear elderly voices" on local radio.
All right, Mia. Just you wait. Wait till you're one of us. When you're 65, we'll shut you away and you can stop talking or thinking, because no one will give a toss about what you say anyway. And it will be your own fault for training up the next generation to have no respect for, or interest in, the so-called "elderly".
