...In fact there's a long tradition of absurd humour in England. Shakespeare included comic asides in his plays. I particularly recall as a schoolboy enjoying Act 5, Scene 3, of Macbeth. Imagine the scene as the English forces begin their approach to Dunsinane. Someone has to break the bad news to Macbeth... Enter a SERVANT … Continue reading Listening to the radio is just absurd… →

...because if you look down all the time the tops of the buildings will start to dissolve and disappear. Good journalists – and academic researchers – always ask 'why?' To do any less is to commit sacrilege to both professions. When I was about ten years old my parents gave me one particular book that … Continue reading Just look up… →

…I've established that it's the microphone which defines exactly what radio is. That's because notions of 'broadcast', transmitters', 'wireless' and 'transistor radio' have, I think – over the past three decades – become either confused, redundant, or both. Pic: (c) Martin Cooper The microphone is the instrument which captures the human voice. Through the mixing … Continue reading Mic it up… →

...it's a blog. Even this recording of me reading this blog - I reckon - isn't radio: (Audio Credit: Martin Cooper (c)) But out in the far reaches of the Internet (I'm not convinced it needs a capital letter) there's a forum where the meaning of the word 'radio' is still being thrashed out. The … Continue reading This is not radio… →

...Pre-Fade Listen. What you see behind me here is the Studer OnAir 1500 digital mixing desk for radio broadcasting (installed by Oxford Sound & Media). (Video credit: Claire Woodhead) It's a great desk: clean lines, easy faders, and relatively simple intuitive controls for on- and off-air monitoring. The surrounding woodworking is by a carpenter and … Continue reading On the button… →

...and I never will” is a quote attributed to the English footballer Paul Gascoigne, who clearly knew the philosophy behind our natural desire as human beings to have a go at guessing what things will be like in the future. Most of the time we fail, which is why now is a good moment to … Continue reading “I never make predictions… →

The musings of Marvin the Paranoid Android seem to sum up neatly some of the trickier bits of the lives we ourselves lead. (The quote is from Life, the Universe and Everything (1982), London:Pan Books, p. 45). Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide, created a genre-busting cross-platform cultural epic in the late 1970s … Continue reading “…Ha, but my life is but a box of wormgears.” →