Radio Review: 2 September

Holidaying on the Suffolk coast recently, I couldn’t resist listening to my old favourites on local and regional radio from when I lived in the far east. I know I can do it online, but it’s not the same. So I had the joy of hearing Wally Webb reacting to a rogue office chair rolling in front of the BBC Radio Norfolk radio car during Treasure Quest (Sundays, 9am-noon).

I also luxuriated in the sound of Keith ‘Cardboard Shoes’ Skues (BBC Radio Norfolk and affiliated stations, Sundays, 10pm) celebrating the 49th anniversary of offshore radio being made illegal by playing an hour-long interview with himself from Lesley Dolphin’s Radio Suffolk show. From anybody else, this would be appalling arrogance and self-regard. Coming from Skuesy, it’s just amiable eccentricity and long may he continue with his double time checks.

Meanwhile, while waiting to hear how Mark Goodier was faring as stand-in for Steve Wright (answer: much better than Wright), I found myself half-listening to the Jeremy Vine show (R2, weekdays, noon-2pm) on the environmental hazards of plastic microbeads in exfoliating products.

An academic who had done her PhD on this subject gave plenty of good reasons why these tiny bits of synthetic material should be outlawed, not least them getting flushed into the seas and into the digestive systems of aquatic creatures of all sizes, playing merry hell with the food chain.

Then some chap came on, seemingly dismissive of ‘experts’ and saying that, post-Brexit, our lords and masters should canvass public opinion on everything. This wasn’t one of Vine’s usual dimlow callers, though. It was a professor of business studies. I don’t know what amused me more: the fact that a university professor, himself a supposed expert, was saying this, or that he had a voice exactly like Basil Brush.

Louis on Twitter: @LFBarfe or email: wireless@cheeseford.net