Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales
Chris tunes in to Radio Random and finds the world turned upside down
Italked about a spectacularly inept ten minutes of broadcasting by a regional radio station the other week. Well, I was out that way again over the weekend, and so tuned in to the same show. It hasn’t changed much! Please note that I’ve changed the names of the local organisations concerned to protect the guilty party.
“Well, Gary Barlow will be popping in for a chat later… no, wait, what’s that? Ah sorry, I’m being told we’ll just be playing one of his songs, and Gary Barlow won’t be popping in at all. Instead we’ll be chatting with someone who’s actually interesting and not just a celebrity.” There was then a long pause as he realised what he’d just said. “Sorry, sorry, absolutely no offence to Gary Barlow intended there. Also, we’re focusing on mental illness this morning so we’ll be talking to Southtown Council.”
Why on earth did he just say that about South town Council? I thought. Maybe because of the new road layout? I could only guess.
A little later, when he introduced a member of an organisation named Southtown Counsellors, it all suddenly made sense. Unlike the new road layout.
The strange thing was that when he did eventually get talking to the counsellor, he
The DJ liked to read out un usual facts and disagree with them
didn’t ask him about mental illness, but instead told him what he’d been watching on TV. The bit that really had me listening was: “I watched True Grit again last night. What a great movie that is. My best bit’s when the little girl shouts ‘STAND UP VINCE CABLE,’ then shoots him. I always think though, why get him to go through the bother of standing up if you’re going to put him straight back down again? No wait, actually, he falls backwards off a cliff when she shoots him, so it was worth his while getting up.”
The counsellor didn’t seem to have much of an opinion on any of this, but I’m pretty sure he’d have been making notes to discuss with his colleagues later.
It was then that I suddenly thought… standup Vince Cable. Vince Cable? Why did the little girl in TrueGrit want to go shooting Vince Cable?
I immediately Googled the scene, and happily what she actually shouted was “STAND UP TOM CHEYNEY”. So she shot a member of a notorious outlaw gang, not the leader of the Lib Dems.
All went reasonably well for the rest of the show, although the DJ had a habit of randomly reading out unusual facts then vehemently disagreeing with them. Finally he stumbled on the gem “Ten per cent of people in this country think Australia is further away than the moon.” There followed a long pause before he muttered, ‘That’s a useless fact – it doesn’t even tell you which one’s the right answer.”
I’m hoping he was joking… he must’ve been, but he finished by suggesting that, if we were busy with the housework, we might like to “sing along with the next song.” He then played a 7-minute instrumental.