Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales

When Chris’s local radio station gets it wrong, it REALLY gets it wrong!

There’s a great award-winning stage show, entitled The Play That Goes Wrong, which spawned a radio show of similar name. The theme was exactly as per the title – everything that can go wrong, does go wrong, and hilariously so.

I mention this simply because our local radio station seems to be attempting to recreate this theme on a daily basis, albeit unintentionally. I heard everything I’m about to relate in the course of two hours on a recent Saturday afternoon. I’m writing this from memory so exact wording will be different, but the context is all correct, I promise!

Upon switching my car radio on, I heard two commentators at a local cricket match discussing an umpiring error:

“I really think it’s about time cricket introduced goal-line technology.”

Hmm, that would be a great idea if cricket actually had goal-lines. Or even goals.

A few minutes later, following a player injury came the astounding observation,

“By the way he’s walking on it, I’d say he’s sprained his wrist.”

What? He’s walking on his wrists? Is our cricket team manned by orangutans? I made a note to tell Lorraine – as a frequent visitor to Monkey world in Dorset, she’d absolutely love to go and watch them play cricket.

Perhaps in desperation, the commentary team turned their attention to football.

“Well, it’s obviously a huge game there today – it kicked off 10 minutes ago and the score’s still 0-0 at the moment. We’ll keep you bang up to date throughout the afternoon. Actually, I think we can go over to that right now... no?... no? Ah, it appears we can’t? No we can’t, because that game is actually tomorrow.”

Marvellous, absolutely marvellous. And what was really astounding was that he was able to give us a report on a match that wouldn’t be kicking off for another 23 hours and 50 minutes.

During the course of the sports show, listeners were invited to “guess the year”.

“In this year Manchester United were relegated thanks to a goal by a neighbouring city.” I knew what the presenter was talking about, but Manchester United were actually relegated not by a neighbouring city, but by Manchester City.

We were then treated to one of the most precise traffic reports I’ve ever heard:

“What’s the High Street like John?” “I don’t know.” “I thought you just drove in that way?” “No… I walked today.” “Oh, well we can assume the High Street is fine.”

“You can’t just assume that mate.”

And finally, back over to the cricket

“Well, I think they should probably bat defensively for a few balls now, just to get the s**t back on rocky waves.” I’m assuming he intended to say “ship!”