Radio Valerie Grove

Waking up and tuning in to hear American voices giving the latest on Trump or Weinstein, in the insistent timbre deployed in US news programmes, punctuated our otherwise idyllic retreat in a New England forest this fall.

I know there are grating voices on Old England’s airwaves – there’s an insulting assumption that any woman saying something idiotic in a Scottish or Geordie accent must be hilarious – but, on our home service in general, the aim is to edify us in a tone of calm.

Then I found myself sitting next to Anthony Brooks, political correspondent on Boston’s WBUR station, and we talked about long-running radio programmes.

He knew the BBC’S Today and had loved the late My Word. I should listen out for WBUR’S Car Talk, he said, which started in Boston in 1977 and went nationwide; it was considered funny, warm, interactive radio, despite its unlikely formula. It featured two laughing car-mechanic brothers, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, who ran a car repair shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Listeners would phone in about their problems with spark plugs, fuel pumps etc.

I did listen – online – because it had just ended its 40-year run last month. First came a Bonnie and Clyde- style signature tune; then callers, including ‘Glen, who is looking for a cheap VW Cabrio after his girlfriend Fluffy dumped him for a guy named Thor and took her car with her’; and ‘Hi!