People grow into Radio 4, like sitting in deckchairs, or being glad you're not going out on a Saturday night
?The BBC Trust has produced a report on Radio 4 which is largely favourable, but which says that the channel should try to appeal to people outside its main listenership, which apparently is middle-aged white people who live in the south-east of England. It also wonders why so many political and international stories emanate from London.
Well, guys, that is because most political stories are set in London. That's where MPs go from all over the country to do politics. I suppose you could cover events in Egypt from, say, Barnstaple, but it might be tricky. And there is this unspoken notion that because people who live outside London are sometimes resentful of "metrocentric" coverage, they are interested in everywhere else.
Yes, man bites dog might be interesting wherever it happens, but there's little reason to suppose that people in Sandwich are going to be excited by dog bites man in Keswick or Llandaff.
People grow into Radio 4, like sitting in deckchairs, or being glad you're not going out on Saturday night. Do they really imagine that young people might start listening to Front Row if it were introduced by a potty-mouthed yoof like Chris Moyles?
And why is it always this way round? Nobody ever says: "We're worried that too many young people are listening to Radio 1, so we're going to bring back the Cliff Adams Singers in the breakfast slot."
Can you imagine some BBC suit saying that too many ethnic minorities are listening to 6 Music? "We need some more white bread material to even up the numbers. Why don't we hear more public school voices?" Of course not.
There are quislings there too. Years ago I did Pick of the Week with a producer who told me that he saw his job as "waking Radio 4 listeners out of their smug complacency". What rubbish. From all those news reports about libraries and old people's homes closing down, Fergal Keane in the world's horror spots, Costing the Earth telling us the planet is near its end, plus "challenging" dramas, it may be the world's least smug and complacent radio station.
BBC radio should have one aim: to produce a wide variety of top-class programmes aimed at people who enjoy top-class programmes. If people want to listen they will. It would be ghastly if they started to dismantle the whole superb edifice in order to attract unspecified people who won't listen anyway.
?Amazing that Arianna Stassinopoulos has just sold her Huffington Post website for more than $300m (�188m). It was my colleague Michael White who first called her "the most upwardly mobile Greek since Icarus". Then she was very rightwing, walked out with John Gummer, a Tory MP, and later with Bernard Levin, a pretty rightwing columnist. Then she married Michael Huffington, a rightwing congressman, announced she was going to be the first Greek-born first lady of the United States, failed, and turned ? apparently overnight ? into a liberal. I heard her speak in Colorado once; it was wonderfully vague, like listening to fog.
Alan Bennett famously said: "Arianna Stassinopoulos is so boring, you fall asleep halfway through her name." When she added Huffington to the end, you could drop into a coma just one-third of the way through.
?The Spacey family of Coventry loathe Virgin Trains. They paid �95 for five of them to travel to London, but accidentally got on the wrong train 20 minutes early. A bullying inspector demanded �270 and when they refused to pay this grotesque sum, he arranged for them to be met by two coppers at Euston. They were kept there for 90 minutes, and later were warned that if they did not pay they faced a massive fine and imprisonment.
What I found most touching, even pathetic, about this tale was the remark by Mrs Spacey: "I can't believe Richard Branson ? who is a family man ? allows this kind of thing to happen." How sweet. The fact is that "Sir" Richard can pose as a lovely, cuddly, family man because he employs hatchet-faced jobsworths to extort the money that makes him a multi-millionaire.
?More mad labels: George Chisholm bought a pack of Go-Cat containing "tuna, herring and vegetables ? 10% less cardboard". "Our cat seems to appreciate the difference," Mr Chisholm finds. Jane McKears bought four fruity hot cross buns from Sainsbury's "made by bakers with 170 years of experience". Time for retirement, she suggests. Derek Neil also shops at Sainsbury's, where their basic line of toilet paper is marked "for every day use". I love the idea that some people keep special hand-quilted toilet paper for Christmas and birthdays.
?I got an email suggesting romantic Valentine's gifts from the Easylife website. As well as roses and chocolates, it proposes a pack of gel bunion guards, a dual action knee strap, and a "deluxe toilet safety support". Whose heart could fail to skip a beat?
?Christina Aguilera's rendition of the US national anthem before the Super Bowl was certainly gruesome. She appeared to hit random notes at a level roughly the same as an orphaned bat amplified a thousand times. And she got the words wrong.
The tune ? an old English drinking song with words by Francis Scott Key ? is difficult, covering one and a half octaves. Very few unskilled and untrained people can sing it. So there are suggestions that the anthem should be replaced by its sort-of deputy, My Country 'tis of Thee. The trouble is that it has the same tune as the terrible dirge God Save the Queen.
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