Radio
Vacuous lives
Michael Vestey
0 n Saturday morning, unable to get to the radio in time to switch it off, I heard John Peel telling listeners to stop 'coveting their neighbour's arse'. I thought of my neighbours and with respect to them felt not at all covetous. And then I realised that I had misheard, as is often the way with radio listening. What he actually said in his speed-drill Liverpool whine was house not arse.
It reminded me of the Yorkshireman I once heard on Today calling for more psy- chopaths, as if we don't have enough already. What he really said, though, was cycle paths. Normally, when Peel's Radio Four programme Home Truths is on, I tend to read the newspaper with a cup of coffee in silence, though he likes to think his lis- teners are, as he put it, cleaning their ham- ster cages, checking the temperature of the home brew, resetting the video to watch some footballer scoring a goal against Arsenal or ferrying their children to karate lessons. Although I don't know anyone who does any of these things at 9 o'clock on Sat- urday mornings, or, come to that, at any other time, he obviously does. Home Truths does seem to attract some sad home-brew- ing cases such as the woman still mourning the loss of a silver thimble stolen in a bur- glary nine years ago, the father whose daughter is obsessed by Scunthorpe United and a man who told Peel, 'If you are over 40 then riding a unicycle is the only sure way of getting street cred from teenagers.' What lives of utter vacuity some of Peel's listeners seem to lead. Even worse, it's obvious they don't realise it.
There was also the woman in Felixstowe whose family communicated with each other in Esperanto. 'It has made us stronger as a family unit,' she said mysteri- 'What's wrong with soaps? They're only mindless escapism.' ously. What a remarkably silly language it sounded, too, when she started speaking it. Poor thing, I thought, making a mental note to give Felixstowe a miss. I have tried to avoid Home Truths since it was put there by the outgoing controller of Radio Four, James Boyle, to widen the Radio Four audience, and it sits oddly in the schedule before the more sophisticated Loose Ends at 10 o'clock. I suppose the hamster-clean- ing Scunthorpe United unicyclists are retuning after Home Truths which might explain why in April Loose Ends is shifting to the evening to be replaced by a travel show of some sort. If it's to be anything like the old naff Breakaway it will mean there'll be two hours of silence for me on a Satur- day morning.
To be fair, Home Truths isn't all rubbish. There were two strong items last week: a brother and sister talked of how 30 years ago one of their father's employees on a farm went beserk and turned a shotgun on them. They had forgiven him and the brother had even visited the man in prison. There was the courageous woman facing up to cancer and encouraging her young son to make jokes about it. Her husband had also had cancer and the story of how they were coping was uplifting. There was alsd a moment of enlightenment. The name John O'Byrne can be heard on many programmes that invite the views of listen- ers. It was revealed that he was a Dublin economist who listened to the radio for anything up to 12 hours a day. Last year he clocked up 60 mentions. He was asked which of his contributions to Home Truths he had felt most satisfied with. 'Well, I thought the one about the cat-flap was nice. You remember that, John?' John did but even he didn't seem too thrilled. I'm afraid, though, that Home Truths is summed up for me by the typical and dreaded Peel line, 'Peter Flint from Don- caster is a shed man . . . '
The ubiquitous Charlie Whelan is, I find to my intense irritation, growing on me. Gordon Brown's former spin-doctor has taken up a new career as a radio per- former, appearing on Radio Five Live's engaging Sunday morning programme Sun- day Service, and various other shows across the networks. He was on True Lies last week (Friday), a sort of News Quiz deriva- tive, where a panel of 'celebrities' satirise the week's news. It's not up to much, com- prising the usual repertory company of Labour luwies that appears on most of the other Radio Four quizzes and comedy shows, but Whelan was amusing.
The presenter David Aaronovitch (yes, him again) had played a clip of Paddy Ash- down criticising Budget Day, 'We are kept in the dark for months and then one Tues- day afternoon, hey presto! the Chancellor appears amongst us . ' Whelan, splutter- ing with indignation at this slur, said, 'What's he talking about, they're kept in the dark? We spend months leaking it, don't we?'
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