"All-in-one idiot suit"

I am no fashion expert. Hence I am normally confined to the ranting, shouting opinionated regions known as the comment or debate section. But onesies, come on! Even I, with my middle-of-the-road Primark attire, can feel safe to condemn these as the worst fashion statement since Ug boots. For those not familiar with these ludicrous garments, a onesie is essentially a unisex romper suit or babygrow, the only difference being they are aimed at a slightly less mature clientele, us students. Having perused the wastelands of the Internet, I found many companies selling these all- in- one idiot suits and soon spotted a pattern. The more these companies seemed to be targeting students, the more expensive the onesie became. One site was selling them from between £90- £110!!!

I’m pretty sure fashion designers systematically try one daft idea after another in the hope that one will catch on. In a flamboyant act of desperation somebody, has struck it lucky with the onesie. We are now so highly evolved as a race. We will now pay vast amounts of money simply to look ridiculous. There are so many cost-effective ways of looking a numpty, the cheapest being to turn up at lectures nude. This is bound to work, unless you’re in the art department. To achieve comparative weirdness there, simply don’t dye your hair crimson and just wear jeans and a t-shirt. Then, life will imitate art and the Art student’s eyes will follow you around the campus, with a Mona Lisa gaze.

So much of our time seems to be spent looking back on previous fashion fads and scoffing. “Denim jackets, Lycra, camouflage, animal print, chainmail armour, the 90s were ridiculous!” But look how far we’ve come. We’ve advanced so much; we’ve gone backwards to what we used to wear before we could speak. It makes me wonder what is going to be fashionable next, nappys? Mind you I could have done with a nappy the first time I witnessed an army of students sized babies marching through town. I find these garments quite sinister. They remind me of the film version of George Orwell’s 1984, in which citizens go about their drab business clad in identical boiler suits. Some of you reading this will be thinking, “What right does this sanctimonious son of a sausage have to judge my fashion sense and bludgeon my freedom of expression? If I want to wear a onesie, I will, SO THERE!” Fair point. Yet I feel when you look back at photographs of yourself, romping in your expensive play suit, you’ll wonder why you didn’t listen to the sound advice from the pages of Spark*.

Do you agree or disagree with me? Either way post a comment below.

Nightclubs are ridiculous. Imagine nightclubs are yet to be invented.  You’re sitting in the Board Room of “Bright Ideas Inc”. Some suit wearing bozo enters, flipchart under one arm and a smug look on his face, as if to say, “I’ve got a good one, guys!”.

The pitch begins “Basically, right, we’re going to get a load of very drunk people in one room. Before allowing them in, we make them stand outside in the rain, eventually let them in two by two, kind of like Noah’s Ark meets airport security. We then get them even more drunk at various bars around the room. Next, we’ll flash lights at them and play very loud music so any hope of rational conversation goes out of the window, not that there are any. The loud music should provoke some sort of movement reflex, encouraged by yet more drinks. After letting them writhe round for a bit, we end the night with them all being thrown out of the door”. Essentially, what is being proposed is a drunk factory.

Mind you, when you step back and detach yourself in this manner, everything seems ridiculous. A nice walk in the country degenerates into, “Well, I walked round and round some fields for two hours, got in the car and went home.” I’m going to bed is another good example. In reality “good night” equates to “I’m off to lie unconscious for eight hours on a piece of furniture specially designed for this purpose”. At least with sleeping, there is a medical/ scientific excuse for why it is not as daft as I’ve just described. However, when describing leisure activities, such as clubbing, we reach a new level of bonkers. Skiing- “I’m going to strap two fibreglass planks on my feet and go down a steep slippery mountain”, reducing a serious, respectable pastime to a frivolous act of silliness. In such a world, football can be held in no greater esteem than tiddlywinks.

We are hurtling around alone in the universe with no purpose or direction. So what do we do? We invent the pogo stick. This I consider wonderful. The pogo stick has to be the most impractical mode of transport since First Great Western. It must, therefore, only be good in itself, as a frivolous tool of enjoyment, a toy. Many an attempt has been made to give purpose to our existence, and I’m not going to dive too deeply into this debate, for fear of drowning. I find it refreshing that we engage in things purely for the enjoyment they give us, not because they bring in some higher end. The point of being pointless is, simple, for enjoyment. I mean, wouldn’t the pogo stick be boring if it saved electricity!

The dream team?

10 o’clock live was supposed to be Channel 4′s answer to the satire drought on British television and followed on from the success of their alternative election programme. Somewhere in the basement of Channell 4, the ingredients were prepared:  one rapidfire joke machine, namely Jimmy Carr, a razor sharp and adorably middle-class David Mitchell and a ranting, bag eyed TV critic named Charlie Brooker. Oh, and I almost forgot, a pinch of Lauren Laverne. Some of the funniest people in television, the perfect show, right? Wrong! Brave as it is, there are few things not quite right with this show. In reality, putting the three comic heavyweights together is just like putting three class clowns together in a maths lesson. They all show off, with the teacher substitute,  Ms Laverne  trying to keep order. No sooner has one vaguely topical punch line been blurted out, another one is thrown at us, with no pause to laugh. The show goes out live gives it a frantic pace.  To continue the classroom simile, it’s like starting a lesson five minutes before playtime.

As for Lauren Laverne, having listened to her radio show on 6Music for some time, I know she is a good presenter. I just don’t feel she quite sues the show and her talent is wasted. Not being a comic, she is the odd one out and I think the programme would have benefitted more from the likes of Jenny  Eclair or Jo Brand, both very funny and astute comediennes.

Funky new Brooker and the ghost of Brooker past

I am a huge fan of Charlie Brooker. As I write this review, his sharp grumpy features glare at me from the cover of his book, perched awkwardly on my shelf. His show Screen Wipe was great. He would sit on a sofa in front of the TV swearing, judging and generally pouring venom over every programme in sight.  His role on 10 o’clock Live is very similar. He simply does short roundups of the week’s news but they are not as polished or as funny as his previous work. The most frustrating aspect about his role on News wipe is while he effectively performs a series of shorted versions of his TV show,when his segment comes to a close and the camera flings itself across the studio to land on the huge face of Jimmy Carr, I’m left wanting more. Now Brooker is part of mainstream TV, it would be interesting to go back in time and show 10 o’clockLlive to past Brooker and hear him scream, “What the hell have I done to my hair”. Jimmy Carr is also not at his best. Usually he travels at the rate of 30 laughs second but on 10 o’clock he has put on the brakes and churns out some rather obvious Ed Balls jokes.

This program is also let down by its own its split personality as it alternates  between flippant satire show and hard-hitting news night cast off.  Jimmy Carr stops cracking one-liners and Mark Corrigan is interviewing top politicians, the notable guests included Caroline Lucas, David Willetts and Alistair Campbell.   The interviews also made me uncomfortable.  Both David Mitchell and the interviewees are so intent on making the audience “woop” that  an opportunity for making any serious point is lost. Surely, while satire aims to make us laugh, the whole point about is to make us think, too.  The programme is aimed mainly at the younger generation who Channel 4 must deem to have very short attention spans, judging by the length of the interviews. If you were to jump into any of the discussions they would be so shallow you would break your ankle. I can see what Channel 4 trying to do but it’s incredibly hard to leap from comedy to serious current affairs and we are left with a peculiar mixture of Live at the Apollo and Question Time.

Overall, I think 10 o’clock Live is a very brave attempt to produce a new kind of programme but it doesn’t quite work. I really hope that with some perseverance it will develop and realise its true potential.

Have I been fair? Do you agree? Please post a comment below.

Rhodders has a Podcast down load it HERE

Thanks to MP3 players, we now live in an age when almost everybody carries around a personal radio station worth of music in their pocket. With this in mind, is there really any place for radio? Why bother switching on the radio in the vague hope something you like might be playing when, with a few clicks you can have all the songs you could possibly desire? In order to survive radio, has to be different to an ipod or spotify. First, radio needs to be presented by a personality.  This is why I listen to Chris Moyle, even though I hate most of the music he plays, but it does not matter, as I find what he has to say interesting and funny. If radio is to offer something unique and different could the key to this be interactivity?   The audience is no longer a collection of passive listeners sitting on some remote island called Listener land.  The listeners are an integral part of your programme and in many respects they are the show.

Since I was nine years old, I have been fascinated with radio. I started out playing with tape recorders (remember those things?) but thanks to the Internet it has became possible for practically anyone to broadcast a radio show or make  a podcast, even from their bedroom. For the last three years I’ve been doing just that with a show called “Thank Rhod It’s Friday” (www.rhoddersfm.rhodders.com), a two-hour radio extravaganza with interactivity as the main aim.  I have web cams setup around my bedroom studio, a chat room and e-mail address. I also take lots of phone calls. I devise quizzes for my callers and have developed various features, a favourite being “Mystic Malcolm” who is really me with a Birmingham accident, to tell callers their fortune!  I always try to give the show an interactive feel and a good way of doing this is having a co-host who can act as a surrogate audience, asking questions of the host the audience would be likely to ask. This helps listeners feel engaged and valued. It can be a risky strategy as there needs to be chemistry between the presenters.  Just putting two people together in a studio does not automatically produce great radio. Far too often on commercial radio, the breakfast show team seem to be just flung together with very little in common, resulting in stilted and awkward sounding radio. On the other hand, there is also a risk, if you know your co-host too well, of the show becoming an insular conversation between two mates which would alienate the audience with too many “in jokes”.

Over the past three years, I have been presenting Hospital Radio Reading’s Saturday lunchtime. Hospital Radio is a very different environment to internet radio. The brilliance of Hospital Radio is you can actually meet your audience, face-to-face through ward visiting.  I really enjoy on-air quizzes but patients rarely call in. If listeners won’t come to your show, then you have to take the show to them. I now visit the wards before the show to record patients doing a quiz and play it back on the show. The patients can then hear themselves on the radio and both adult and children alike find this very exciting.

Recently, I have taken my experience of Hospital Radio into my Student Radio at Junction11. I am on Thursday’s between 4pm-5pm. As the station is played out in Mojo’s and 360 before my show I go and ask people in the bars if they would like any request played. Visiting boozy students in a bar is a lot different from ward visiting sick patients! You never know what’s going to happen when you visit Mojo’s one visit led to the Ladies Rugby Team invading the studio! If you play people in the bars a few requests the radio becomes more than background noise as they will be listening for their “shout out” and song. Audiences need to be engaged; otherwise you could end up talking to yourself!

A fire extinguisher hurtles to the ground, glinting past the windows of Millbank Tower. Like soldier-ants, police stand in uneasy groups. A metre from an oblivious policeman, the extinguisher lets out a musical peal as it bounces on the concrete. This will be the most famous fire extinguisher in history. Fast forward a few months and Edward Woollard, the protestor responsible for throwing the extinguisher, is sent to prison for two years and eight months.

I do not support the violence which took place during the university fees protest.  I am, however, arguing against Edward’s imprisonment. With regards to this case, there is a complete lack of sensible, balanced opinion in the press and on-line. One cohort brandishes pitchforks screaming, “Throw away the key!” At the other end of the spectrum, Wollard is a hero who should have “killed a copper”. This latter opinion, I do not need to debunk as an underprepared police force had an arduous task that day.

Does the punishment fit the crime? When child abusers have been sentenced to nine months, it seems bizarre that a sixth former with no history of bad behaviour/violence, received such a harsh sentence. Wollard’s defence described his action as a “moment of madness”. Let’s not forget the strange psychological effects crowds have on people. Imagine standing in a football stadium, cheering your team, part of the crowd. If trouble starts, responsibility feels collective, not personal. In herd-like situations, we happily swear at players, whereas if I met a player, I wouldn’t dare behave like this. The wayward Woolard was swept along on a tide of adrenaline, to the roof of Millbank Tower, there to commit an act of stupidity. I can imagine many of my friends, or even myself, being carried away in the heat of the moment. I’m shocked by the unsympathetic, judgemental attitude of those who want him locked up for longer because, “He could have killed a policeman!” But he didn’t.  This isn’t Minority Report.  We can’t charge people for crimes they haven’t committed, or in his case, didn’t plan to commit. Drunk drivers could, in theory, kill someone just by driving a car but we do not imprison them as potential murderers.

What good will imprisoning Woollard do? Yes, the consensus is he should be punished but our judicial system also aims to reform and rehabilitate. Yet to complet his A levels, Wollard’s academic career and, possibly his whole life, is ruined.  Repentant and with no history of violence, he is not a public threat. The shock of appearing in court would have made Woollard consider the consequences of his actions in future. His imprisonment will achieve, possibly, one of two things. He will either emerge a wreck, incapable of contributing positively to society, or a bitter, resentful individual, fully qualified for a career in crime. Surely a more appropriate sentence would be a lengthy stint of community service, enabling him to undo his crime by serving his community. Violent youths who constantly terrorise society are given ASBOs when our hapless school pupil is locked up for his first offence. On drunken nights out people commit equally stupid acts and get away with them; at least Woollard had the guts to own up to his crime

I also have a hunch his imprisonment is politically motivated. The Judge said, “It is deeply regrettable, indeed a shocking thing, for a court to have to sentence a young man such as you to a substantial term of custody. But the courts have a duty to provide the community with such protection from violence as they can and this means sending out a very clear message to anyone minded to behave in this way.” The police are expending huge resources in tracking down other protestors and Woollard is being made an example and a scapegoat to discourage further protest. Sky News (Martin Brunt)  interpreted the “tough sentence” as designed to send a message to the protest community: “The judge may have made an example of him not just for his own ‘moment of madness, but perhaps for the violence that followed in subsequent student protests, including the attack on Charles and Camilla. And perhaps for any student protest violence to come.”

Is it really fair, to be judged for the rest of your life on one moment of teenage stupidity?

My thoughts on this latest trend to merge stations is mixed. Financially, it seems to make sense. Due to the current state of the economy, advertisers have become even harder to attract to commercial radio stations. Merging stations to create national coverage boosts listening figures for the Capital brand in one move, thus making it more attractive to advertisers. It also saves a station a lot of money.  It is exactly like when other companies decide to centralise. It means far fewer staff to pay and with fewer stations come fewer brands for Global radio to promote. This means they can concentrate their efforts and execute large-scale marketing campaigns. For example, ingenuously Heart have given out open/closed signs to local shops with “listening to Heart” written on them.

What, however, does this for mean people like myself who dream of working in radio?  It means cost-cutting and far fewer jobs in radio.  How very modern! Although weekday breakfast and drive shows will still be broadcast from their regional locations, the rest of the shows will be beamed out from Capital HQ in Leicester Square. This will mean a large number of presenters, producers; newsreaders etc will suddenly become unnecessary.  This greatly worries me as the radio industry is competitive enough without hundreds of jobs vanishing overnight.

We are told constantly by industry bosses that radio audiences no longer identify with their location, instead, they are identifying with brands such as Absolute, Radio1, Heart or Capital.  Is this true? I remember when my local station was magically transformed into Heart, there was genuine outrage. Community radio stations are popping up all over the place and I believe this is a direct reaction to the merger of local radio stations. I’m not disputing the quality of output from commercial radio and some of these newly merged stations are attracting huge numbers of listeners, for example in August Heart 106.2 clocked up 2 million weekly listeners in London*. What concerns me is what will happen to new emerging talent which the industry relies on to remain fresh. The problem with so many new national stations is that an inexperienced radio presenter is hardly likely to suddenly get a job on a national station. Perhaps the industry will turn even more to student, hospital and community radio stations to find talent.

The radio industry has been particularly turbulent of late, so making a prediction is like making a long-term weather forecast. I’m sure we will see more mergers over the coming years but also a rise in the number of community stations. Maybe by this time next year, every station on the planet will have merged and we’ll all be tuned to “Radio Earth” and I might set up a pirate station on the moon.

I would be grateful for any comments and insights any of you readers may have. Please post a comment.