No place like home from homeCraig and Susan live in the country. They traded in a wee one-bedroom flat in the city for a big rambling house with gardens and a view over hills and dales. And they couldn't be happier. However, ever
y now and again business brings them up to town and my spare bedroom. And I couldn't be happier to have them around. Their house is currently being renovated, so coming to mine was a welcome relief for the pair.
Susan had been overdoing it so a hot bath and a whisky mac were in order. Craig drank Guinness and ate chocolate and we had a lovely evening. They were both well prepared to tackle their respective mornings ahead before heading back out to the country. They now lovingly refer to their time in the city as a Hardeep holiday. All I need to do now is organise some duty free for them.
Wonders of wireless are on my wavelength I've spent the past few days travelling from one British town or city to another. And while the hotel rooms were clean and functional they lacked a single must-have item for me. They were without radios. They were trannie-free. Wireless-less.
I live for and love the radio and have done for most of my adult life. I first started working in radio when I was but 20 years old (and yes, I am more than aware that I have a great face for radio). I was fortunate to work alongside brilliant broadcasters like Eddie Mair, Armando Iannucci and Kirsty Young. BBC Radio Scotland was a hive of creativity in the late 1980s and I, for a short while, was part of it.
But I had long before been beguiled by the broadcasting beauty of words without images, music without pictures. It may well be a cliché to suggest that the best pictures are on the radio, that we are the ones furnishing the speech with our own images, but there is more than a little truth in that observation.
I remember as a wee boy being left in the car by my dad as he wandered off to speak to some man about some bit of business while drinking the West End of Glasgow dry of tea and consuming his own body weight in biscuits. (In those days it was de rigueur to leave kids in cars.) I would flagrantly disobey the instruction not to turn the radio on, for fear of it draining the battery, and I would turn the dial searching through scratchiness for songs I might recognise.
One afternoon on Byres Road the dial left music behind and the car was filled with speech, with sounds. I can remember with astonishing clarity the story of dolphins off the west coast of Scotland. I listened transfixed to the programme, finding myself drawn physically and metaphorically closer to the speakers. All too soon it was over. But my love affair had begun.
There's something about a brilliant piece of radio that hooks you in, keeps you listening in a way that TV rarely does. The number of times I have found myself in the car for half an hour outside my own front door unable to tear myself away from one radio show or another, fearing that in the mad dash across the pavement, through the door and up the stairs to my lavender Roberts radio I might miss a few bon mots, some crucial information or the insightful incident in the narrative.
There's a beautiful intimacy to radio, the comforting voice of a familiar friend in an otherwise lonely world. Some nights I lie in bed lulled to sleep by the shipping forecast, sleeping through the World Service and wakening to Today. Radio is reliable, dependable and constant. And radio feels like its mine.
And yes, the pictures are much better on the wireless.
Admire Gordon for get-up-and- won't-goI have to confess there is a big part of me that wants Gordon Brown to resign. There is no great political reason for this – my sympathies are very much with the SNP. I just think the endgame of this particular scenario is fairly self-evident in its Shakespearean scope. No, the reason I want him to resign is because I'm not sure how much more of a battering the big fella can take. I don't think he has handled himself that well as Prime Minister but I do believe him to be an honourable man (and we all know what happens to honourable men, particularly in the hands of Shakespeare).
Having said all that though, I can't help but have a deep sense of admiration for him. He hasn't quit. It would have been easier to walk, but he has stayed put. He has stuck at it, through times tougher than most of us could imagine.
Why? Because he genuinely believes that is what he must do, that it's the correct thing, for the country and for the economy. Whatever else you may think about him, one ought really to give him credit for some degree of integrity. I'm not sure I would have the strength of character to slug it out.
What a funny fellow thinking I was the punchlineI don't claim to be a comedian; never have. But very occasionally I have a curious reaction from people who, thinking I am funny, feel compelled to be funny with me. It's the cocktail party equivalent of a dentist being shown damaged teeth, an accountant being asked for Capital Gains Tax avoidance advice or a taxidermist being… well, being asked to get something stuffed.
I encountered one such man the other night. He managed to joke about my clothes (which he thought were hilarious), my journey (which he thought was hilarious) and my career (which he thought was hilarious); all this in the first five minutes of meeting. There is nothing that makes me feel more like being serious than someone trying hard to be funny.
After half an hour I was forced to tell him that I didn't think it was particularly appropriate for him to be so forward with me. Of course, most normal people would have heard what I had said and taken on board my opinion. This chap thought it was the funniest thing he had ever heard and congratulated me on being such a funny comedian. I tried to explain that I wasn't a comedian but he was too busy laughing.
