Something I've been meaning to have a moan about

I'm prone to filing things away with every intention of moaning about them and one of the draw backs about being sober is that procrastination isn't such an easy option. Stuff bubbles back to the surface and I get all gung-ho and it pours out and before you know where you are you're being bored rigid if you inadvertently land here by my steam of conscious-lite crap.

And in that spirit let me say that the rather low-brow and pedestrian radio station I've been listening to is on the brink of losing me totally as a listener. Just as the phut-brawl season starts and I should be adding a dab of super glue to the tuning knob so no one else in the house can have a say in what we listen to I've found myself switching off, or more precisely switching over.

For me the final straw's been that ghastly Victoria Derbyshire woman back from maternity leave and oozing sanctimoniousness while gently stirring up all kinds of unpleasant strife. She is the Dolores Umbridge of talk back radio. And there's that new sports talk back wanker who'll allow you to have your own opinion only so long as you wind up agreeing that you're wrong and he's right. There were already too many Littlejohn's in British media. And even Alan Green makes a pretence of allowing a multiplicity of points of view to have airtime

Big sigh.

So that's Simon Mayo sometimes and Peter Allen who's nicked Anita which means I don't have her to listen to in the evening. That vile pudgy Northern Irishman can go stick his head in a bucket and right now I can't think of anything else I'd tune in to. The problem is I'm not good at thinking "Oh, it's 3:00 on Friday, must switch over and listen to Simon and Doctor Kermode camping it up over this week's (almost entirely incidental) movie releases".

All of which means that my French language skills will perk up considerably. See, there's a silver lining to every single cloud and cheers to the BBC for continuing to do its bit to fulfill the element of its charter relating to education.