I have become something of a BBC Radio Leeds regular. After my gig in Bradford, we rushed back to Leeds to appear on the Martin Kelner show. It was in the same studio as the classic election debate and it felt slightly bizarre to be back here again so soon, but this was an altogether more pleasurable experience. Martin and his side-kick Edouard (a man who speaks in an outrageous French accent, laced with
double entendres, whilst on air, but who appeared to be from Bradford when we chatted whilst the records played - I hope I haven't spoilt the magical illusion for any regular listeners to that show) bantered back and forth and it was a delightfully silly and fun show. The pair have been working together for over 20 years and the ease with which they chatted and joked made this plainly evident. I spent most of the show giggling at them and their silly and endearingly incompetent ways.
At some point you should be able to hear it archived on this website. In the meantime why not play a virtual Martin Kelner at paper, scissors, stone.
I always like these kind of radio shows where you are having as much fun chatting whilst the records are playing as you are for the actual broadcast. It's just natural and spontaneous and with the conversation ever running you often forget which discussions the listeners have actually heard. At no point did they bring up a broad subject and tell me to be funny about it, nor ignore me for thirty to forty minutes. So we must not judge BBC Radio Leeds by last night's presenter, whoever he was (can you play paper, scissors,stone with a virtual version of him on-line? I don't think so).
We talked about such diverse subjects as
On The Hour, the Pope selling his car (I managed to save Benedict's reputation by revealing that he was not himself cashing in on his notoriety, but it was the person who bought the car after he'd had it who was making the money. Benedict might have been a Nazi, but he has a strong sense of morality) and how a woman in America is marketing sperm as a face-cream. You don't get that on every radio show.
It was fun to be a part of this special and semi-secret little bundle of half-arsed nonsense. And it's better to be 50% secret and 50% arsed than fully secret and fully arsed or not at all secret and not at all arsed, in my opinion.
