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| September | 24 |
| 2006 |
There have been a few reviews this week of the new Fi Glover programme on Saturday mornings on Radio 4. They've all said the same thing: she's a terrific broadcaster but the programme isn't a patch on John Peel's Home Truths.
Just for the record, I thought Home Truths was cringeworthily awful, and sounded to me like a piss-take of supposed British eccentricity. And I didn't get the whole fuss when John Peel died. I take on trust that he was a good DJ - his pop music was not my cup of tea at all - but why that qualified him for cultural icon status was beyond me.
I think Fi Glover is indeed a very good radio brodacaster, but the one thing that has always grated with me is that her programmes tend to sound like she's letting you have a listen in to a rather smug Notting Hill dinner party.
The presenter who has taken over her old late night FiveLive slot, Anita Anand, is much better than Fi Glover. I don't understand why she doesn't get the praise she deserves. She's got an equally quick wit, always sounds curious, lets people speak, and lacks any of that 'pleased with herself' tone which mars Fi Glover's programmes.
MessageSpace
Totally agree about Anita Anand. Go on, Beeb, sack Humphrys, Sturton and MacNaughty. Give her a break. You know it makes sense. Can I tempt you with a bit of PC? I found this about her:
"First of all allow me to come clean. I am a bit of a hybrid – an oestrogen-fuelled soup of so many different cultures. My parents were Hindus from India but before partition they came from the Muslim dominated North West Frontier Province – and therefore were no doubt influenced by the same culture which pervades that area and its neighbouring Afghanistan to this day. They had an arranged marriage and settled in Britain where I was born. Very soon I was shipped off to a predominantly Catholic School where the greatest influence of my life was a bonkers nun called Sister Francesca, and now I watch Sex in the city in between considering the injustices of patriarchal brutality for a speech on gender and modernity."
http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith-europe_islam/article_400.jsp
That'll stifle the middle-aged white male nonsense, eh!
"I take on trust that he was a good DJ - his pop music was not my cup of tea at all - but why that qualified him for cultural icon status was beyond me."
Huh? For a man who is preternaturally insightful in so many areas, sometimes I really do have to wonder about you. I suspect you always know exactly why but simply get a kick out of provoking people. No doubt you used to stick pins into your female relatives when you were young (between the ages of 2 and 17).