It doesn’t seem fair that radio has to pay for the rights to cover football matches. Whatever financial benefit the broadcasters get from their coverage has to be outweighed by the value the game derives from the fuss that rolling-news radio makes of what Premier League bosses like to call their “product”. The matches may be the steak but the sizzle is provided by the ribbon of pointless but absorbing speculation occupying the hours and days between matches. Who’s in, who’s out, who’s next and who just sank his teeth into whom?
By its very nature 24-hour rolling news tends to throw up an increasing number of depressing stories, particularly in these days of televised terrorism and child abuse inquiries. Football stories, on the other hand, simply concern the public pratfalls of men who are paid so handsomely we never have to feel bad about them. Where the national game is concerned, programme directors are quite happy to just clear a block of their schedules, gather a bunch of former pros and pundits around a microphone, and give the presenter no further direction than “football chat”. That’s the basis upon which shows such as The Monday Night Club (Monday, 7pm, 5 Live) work and, thanks to presenters such as the smooth, playful Mark Chapman and contributors including John Motson – he of the most strangled laugh since Edward Heath – and the rarely less than high-pitched former player Steve Claridge, work is what it generally does.
The two builders working on our house are in their early 20s and just the kind of young clubbers that stations such as Kiss and Radio 1 are straining every sinew to reach. These two prefer listening to Magic FM. “It’s very calming while you work,” explains Sam, as the sound of the Beatles’ Something, Annie Lennox’s Why, and Charles & Eddie’s Would I Lie To You? drifts through the dust and hammering on Magic In The Morning (Weekdays, 6am, Magic FM) with Nick Snaith. What’s more, he says, all the other stations play the same records over and over again. Of course, one of the reasons they play them over and over is that, unlike Sam, most of their listeners are only listening for half an hour and therefore have to be assured of hearing the same three hits and the same three ads. I would propose the eclectic sounds of Fip (fipradio.fr) as an alternative but it might be just too relaxing to be heard above Sam’s hammer. Word reaches me from France that the future of Fip is in doubt. If so, that’s sad. I’ve sung its praises here in the past. I think it’s my favourite music station in the whole world.
As a nation, we flatter ourselves that we banish taboos when all we really do is swap new ones for old. Flick on Radio 4 in the middle of the morning any day of the week and you’ll find the subject of gender reassignment being batted around as airily as knitting once was. But there’s one subject that still has the power to stop us in our tracks, a subject the Victorians were far more comfortable with than we are, and that’s death. In Pushing Up The Daisies (Monday, 11am, Radio 4) the chipper Penelope Simpson decides to mark her 80th year by painting her own coffin and inviting her nearest and dearest to add their own elements to the design. The undertaker pops round to fit her up and Penelope actually climbs in the box to try it; she pronounces it comfy if a tad snug-fitting. Hence she vows to lay off the cakes between now and the big day. Dieting takes the fun out of everything.
