The music on Radio 3 ends and the show comes to an end. Who gets in a bath just before the end of the hour? I’ve taken an extraordinary risk here.
A well spoken chap tells me some news stories. Even though it is essentially what someone nearer my own age and class would tell me on a local radio station I listen to it as though I will be tested on it later. Like the newsreader will know I am not listening and have a word with my parents. Michael Schumacher is still not dead it seems, I hope that him not being dead stops being news soon – and not so it is replaced with the larger story of the two available options. That’s right: I hope a man doesn’t die. Nominate me for a Pride of Britain award.
After the current affairs briefing I am told coming up next is a Film Music Prom. I imagine it’s going to be the best music from this year’s film. The first song (??) is from a 1945 documentary. Radio 3!
It is OK because it doesn’t have words. If I’m reading then I don’t like music to be accompanied by words. When I have finished reading I like there to be words, and preferably not music – I am specifically talking about being in a bath here. I am generally fine with music and words being combined.
Now you may not want to visualise this next moment. I briefly rise from the bath and flick onto Radio 4. It is the Front Row Quiz of the Year. A playwright is laughing because he nearly hasn’t answered a question. The question is which three Dr Whos have appeared at the Royal National Theatre. The answer he is laughing about, who he nearly didn’t get, appeared in the RNT in a play he wrote.
Radio 4 and Radio 3 are brilliant at not minding being a bit above going for mainstream appeal.
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I would like to point out that the above is not an attack on either Radio 3 or Radio 4. I was LISTENING to Radio 3 in the bath. I wasn’t listening to either under duress. I was just observing that they’re a bit posh. I have no problem with posh. Fucking hell I would love to be able to do posh. I like intellectual elitism. I aspire to be a part of an intellectual elite. Unfortunately aspirations are where it ends.