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I love Radio 4 and possibly want to marry it.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

06:34 / 30.04.02

Woke up this morning, the radio was on. It was the "Today" programme, one of the UK's most respected current affairs programmes. AND THEY HAD A 10-MINUTE PATTI SMITH INTERVIEW!!!!!
Me? Very happy.
Sorry. Just had to share that.

_pin

07:22 / 30.04.02

Gah! Missed that! But did anyone hear last week when the put thew man organising the Kissenger War Crimes protest on the jokey interview slot and just "pfft But it's Kissenger!" and ignored everything the man was actually saying?

Shortfatdyke

07:26 / 30.04.02

wow. i really, really need to learn how to tune a radio. i'm stuck on l.b.c. because i don't know how to find anything else.

lentil

09:15 / 30.04.02

93.5 fm or thereabouts. As I remember it's only been a few weeks since the praises of the greatest broadcasting channel in any medium were sung from the Towers of Barbelith, and rightly so.

Not Here Still

18:04 / 30.04.02

I know, I know - I almost crashed the car I was in when Patti Smith came on the radio this morning - and I wasn't even driving it.

If you get your ass over to the website now you can listen to the interview. This link's the programme homepage, but someone with a bit more tech-know how might be able to link it direct.

I fuckin' love the Today programme's rare rock moments.

One of the best was hearing Gruff Rhys getting interviewed, and he clearly didn't want anything to do with the programme and hardly said a word. It's on the site here

Fengs for the Memory

08:15 / 01.05.02

Kenton is a liar. Don't listen to him.

Mourne Kransky

10:07 / 01.05.02

La Smith's Today interview was tons better than the embarrassing attempt by Jools Holland the other night. How the radicals of yore have mellowed and succumbed to the meeja...

But, yes, an auld sang amid these threads but Radio 4 is the dogs's luminous dong. And Dead Ringers is back...

Bed Head

16:57 / 05.01.04

Again, let us sing the praises of Radio 4. Because ‘Just a Minute’ is on, and it utterly rocks.

And because ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue’ generally rocks even harder. And ‘The Archers’ is the greatest soap opera, like, ever, okay? As well as being quite educational about farming and, y’know, the country life. And ‘The Today Programme’ was edited by Thom Yorke last week and that made for a surreal half-awake slumber of a morning. And, bloody ‘Veg Talk’ is surely without doubt the greatest vegetable-related ½ hour in broadcasting history, and ‘Round Britain Quiz’ is sweet as fuck, clever and stupid at the same time. And a day just isn’t a day without being bookended by the ‘UK theme’ and ‘Sailing By’. I want to live in my radio and cuddle Nicholas Parsons.

rizla mission

19:57 / 05.01.04

I've been becoming increasingly addicted to Radio 4 in recent months..

Not so much for regularly tuning into specific programmes, but just for occasionally hearing something unbelievably amazing whilst making a sandwich at 11am or something..

Recent examples include a documentary about hipster guru/spoken word artiste Lord Buckley, which was just utterly crazed genius, and, er, a series they're running in tribute to Bob Monkhouse, in which he talks about old 40s-50s kids magazines.. which isn't all that great in it's own right obviously, but it features absolutely hilarious 'dramatisations' of old comic strips..

That programme where they play extracts from notable radio broadcasts from around the world is always great too..

Lilly Nowhere Late

20:29 / 05.01.04

Radio 4 is the single most redeeming thing about the UK.
I could not live without it.
If I ever get out of this bear trap, I shall have to have R4 streamed
directly into my head, Sam Delaney style.

Linus Dunce

22:13 / 05.01.04

The News Quiz is the only thing that gives meaning to my life. I'm almost serious.

Bed Head

22:35 / 05.01.04

And I'm in completely love with Kenton Archer. I hope he gets together with Adam, just to hear how posh it sounds when they both talk at once. Kenton's so foolish and irresponsible, he needs someone like Adam to keep him on the straight and narrow, he just hasn’t realised it yet.

_Boboss

09:27 / 06.01.04

yes fucking the love on radio 4

7.45am today bleary eyes, get the radio on, who is it but iain sinclair talking about the proposed expansion of the m25. fucking brilliant:

is: it's like ballard said with his sf since the sixties - london is a suburb of heathrow and that's how everyone's living now. more ringroads around the ringroads, rings and counter-rings covering the home counties. etc etc. psychedelic transcendence the colonisation of the human by the concrete blah

interviewer: err..

fucking all that before breakfast! what a way to wake up!

lord nuneaton savage

11:33 / 06.01.04

Did anyone hear that section on the 'weekly-round-up-of-news-stories-from-around-the-world-type-thing', ohh, years ago with the news reporter from tobago reporting that several members of a small village had reported being 'Sodomised by ghosts'? Every time I think of that I snort and scare the ponies.

William Sack

11:53 / 06.01.04

A few years ago Mrs. J and I were staying in a country B & B in Wiltshire. The only other guests were a couple in their late 50s, and after talking to them we found out that the woman was an actress. She was incredibly elegant and rather good looking, but most notably she had the most exquisite, conspicuously beautiful voice. It turns out that she was the actress who plays Linda Snell, she of the most grating voice on radio.

gingerbop

13:39 / 06.01.04

Last time I listened to Radio 4, last week, there was a thing about Gilespie High School. There was a reunion, and everyone was saying how great it was, and how proud they were to be Gilespie's girls (cause its a state-funded school, but with an entry exam), and they were always told that they were the creme-de-la-creme and suchlike.

My mum was a Gilespie girl, and fucking hated the place.

Cloned Christ on a HoverDonkey

16:22 / 06.01.04

Radio 4 is simply the singlemost important broadcasting phenomenon ever to grace the airwaves. Mainly because it's great to do the washing up to.

Perfect Tommy

18:58 / 06.01.04

Er... this is one of those threads where we make stuff up that didn't really get on the radio, right?

Bed Head

19:04 / 06.01.04

Poor Tommy, unable to enjoy the delightful whimsey that is Radio 4. It's all true.

Although, come to think of it, the World Service is better for news. During the war I just couldn’t listen to normal radio, and I used to tape the world service news in the middle of the night, if I wasn’t awake to listen in there and then.

OTOH the World Service doesn’t have anything as outrageously good for you as ‘Veg Talk’.

And, I find that the washing-up is best done to the strains of Five Live. That way, you can pretend you’re drowning Peter Allan and Jane Garvey in your sink.

Ariadne

20:20 / 06.01.04

I love radio 4. There's always something amazing. When we were down at my Mum and Dad's for Christmas, my Dad mentioned listening to something. Turned out the whole family had heard it in different places. I need to get set up to tune in from work cause the best stuff is during the day -- though I agree that this morning's discussion of the M25 was brilliant!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:55 / 08.01.04

Yes, the Sinclair thing was absolutely fucking sublime... "Ring roads within ring roads until we achieve a hallucinatory transcendence..." Iain Sinclair AND Radio 4 both at the same time. A true meeting of genius.

Incidentally,I read somewhere a while back that during the 80s, one of the signals to be looked out for by nuclear submarine commanders to prove that nuclear war HAD broken out and it wasn´t just disinformation was if "Today" was off the air three days running.

And "I´m Sorry I Haven´t a Christmas Carol" was a work of sheer genius. Scrumph playing Mornington Crescent with Prince Albert... Barry Cryer as the Ghost of Christmas Pissed... and the joke about "if the sound of coughs and pants around her rankles..."

AND Humphrey Littleton turned down a FUCKING KNIGHTHOOD a few years back! What a guy!

The lack of Radio 4 is the only thing wrong with my current holiday.

sleazenation

10:47 / 08.01.04

stoatie - internet access and a pair of headphones could easily fix that - radio 4 is streamed over the web.

the laowai with the golden arm

17:39 / 09.01.04

Yep. I live abroad and the internet is the only way I can listen to Just A Minute and The News Quiz. Saving graces when you want a little piece of home. Plus I get to hear Today in the afternoon, a far better time for the chronically lazy.

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