Radio kills my street cred stone dead.

I heard Terry Wogan on the radio this morning. He was describing a poster that had gone on sale over the web featuring his good self. They had shifted a grand total of 7 copies. He described them as selling like cold cakes. I laughed out loud.

Then he related a listener’s story of finding a long lost cousin via Friends Reunited after a gap of 35 years. The cousin was invited for tea and biscuits with her and her elderly parents. He had been 14 when they last saw him. Conversation did not exactly flow. When the cousin departed, no doubt intending to make him self long lost once again the listener’s 83 year old father took out his pipe and observed – “Bloody hell, our Clive has aged. I never would have known him.” Even better told in Terry’s wonderful Irish accent. I laughed some more. Then I got worried that laughing along to Radio 2 of a morning means I really AM getting old. I was going to say in my defence that I was listening to The Jam before I left for work but then I thought about how many years it is since they split up and decided not to mention that after all.

Digression – I LOVED (still love) The Jam. I saw them loads of times and in all sorts of venues. I even saw them play Skegness once which was more than a little unusual for Skegness. Skegness was more used to the likes of Val Doonican although I do remember that Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band played the Fabulous Sands Showbar on a very regular basis. Maybe they lived locally? I never knew. I am placing a digression upon a digression here. To return to the original digression. I was in a pizza restaurant in Soho. There was a bloke sitting at the next table to me and I had that ‘I know you’ feeling, but I just could not place him. I stared and stared throughout the meal. It was only as he got up to leave, no doubt by that time thoroughly fed up with being stared at by the woman at the next table, that I realised it was in fact my absolute hero Paul Weller. I was embarrassed that I had been staring at him. If I had known it was him I would deliberately not have looked at him, even though I would have wanted to have been looking at him. I have always wondered how, in view if the fact that he was my absolute hero, I failed to put a name to the face of that bloke I thought I knew, but I am at heart a country girl who does not expect to be sitting next to her absolute hero in a pizza restaurant.

To return to radio issues. I don’t have a CD player in my car. I do have a tape player which would be fine it worked, only it doesn’t work. It is the radio or nothing for me whilst I am driving. Usually I have Radio 5 on, but today they have a severe case of Ryder Cupitis. I’m not really in to golf on the radio. (I’m not really into golf full stop). Anyway, that was how I came to be listening to Radio 2.

last bank holiday I was driving back from staying with Reidski and I had a London based station on - Radio XFM. They play mostly the indie-type music which would be my listening of choice. They were having some sort of run down of listeners Fifty Best Records Ever and it made for great listening. I got to Luton and number 17 when the reception cut out. Trendy radio is not permitted north of Luton. I got Radio 2 instead where they were also doing a rundown but in their case it was the Top Twenty Best Number One Albums Ever. One minute I was singing away* to the Charlatans, the next I was trying to pretend I do not know all the words plus the running order to Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ although obviously I do. I can tell you that ‘Hotel California’ was in the top 5 as was 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' and ‘Thriller’. I didn’t hear the Number 1 Best Album Ever as voted for by Radio 2 listeners but am making an educated guess that it would have been ‘Sergeant Pepper’s’ seeing as how every other Beatles album had already had a mention.

* I will only ever sing along to a car radio if I am on my own following my ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ incident. I was with Reidski – he was driving, when suddenly he stalled the car and stared open mouthed in my direction. I realised I had been singing along, very loudly, to Bon Jovi. I stopped and apologised for singing such a corny record. He replied it wasn’t what I had been singing that had caused him to nearly crash, but the way I had been singing it. As he so gently put it – ‘That was the worst rendition I have EVER heard.’ His impersonation of how exactly I was murdering that song has since become his party piece. What a good job I am not sensitive about these matters.

However - if you should read this before tomorrow Reidski - I am VERY sensitive when it comes to seeing my football team lose. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear......