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Tickled

Ken Dodd
  • Posted at 5:46pm
  • 07 November 2007
  • by SarahDempster-RT
  • 3 comments

This week, I have decided to abandon my usual approach to the blogging process (ie reviewing programmes that have been broadcast over the past seven days) in favour of sharing/offloading some of the random radio-related thoughts that have been fogging up the windscreen of my consciousness.

There will be no binding theme, no attempt to link each thought with a pithy observation, or even a drawn-out and wildly misjudged observation. Instead, it will be a wholly free-form blogulatory experience. It will be organic. Non-linear. Spontaneous. A bit like jazz, then, but with more references to Ken Dodd*.

To assist in creating the right sort of atmosphere, it might help if, before reading on, you imagine yourself either a) sitting next to Cleo Laine on a bumpy bus journey or b) lying in a bath containing approximately 650 tiny plastic trumpets. Thus, with the resulting racket ringing in our ears (roughly: skee-bee-bee-DOO-DOO-BOO! Bippety-bee-bip-DOO!), let’s bash on, jazzily.

*Have you ever met anyone who finds Ken Dodd remotely amusing? I haven’t. All that talk of “Diddy Men”, that cobwebby feather duster, those horizontal teeth and that tellingjokesunbelievablyfast are redolent of a different era, the era of black and white, boredom and biscuits that didn’t taste of anything.

Listening to BBC Radio 4’s reverent special on the man (The Archive Hour: Ken Dodd - How Tickled I’ve Been, Saturday 3 November) it was also clear that this was the era of When Things That Were Supposed to Be Funny Were Not Actually Funny. Clearly, there is a skill to being able to do things really, really quickly while making bits of stuff fly everywhere. But you could say the same of a food processor in a wig. And you wouldn’t go around calling that a national treasure, would you?

----

Why is Alan Titchmarsh so popular? Is it the cardigans? The trowels? After extensive research (ie staring out of my kitchen window and thinking about it for a few minutes), I’ve come up with the answer. It’s the accent. Britain loves a northern accent. It makes us think of cobblestones and tubas and men in flat caps eating t’coal sandwiches down t’ Suitably Oppressed Working Men Who Smell Faintly of Batter Club and, as a result, it makes us feel we’re not being patronised by someone with a better education.

Basically, it engenders a sense of camaraderie while ensuring that we don’t start thinking about The Empire, like we do whenever we hear the voice of BBC Radio 4’s Edward Stourton, and thus start reflecting on the loss of kedgeree, and oppression from the national curriculum, and getting a bit upset on account of all the jodhpurs and whatnot.

Titchmarsh’s accent is the equivalent of burying yourself up to your neck on Ilkley Moor and pretending you’re John Noakes. It’s none more northern. Titchmarsh simply wouldn’t work if he were from, say, Chalfont St Peter. Can you imagine him saying on his BBC Radio 2 show, “Ooh, I do love a bit of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Talking of which, here’s What’s the Buzz? from the wonderful Jesus Christ Superstar” in the voice of Jeremy Irons? No. You can’t. And for good reason. It would be wrong.

----

I’ve discovered a startling link between the width of a DJ’s face and the quality of his/her show. Almost without exception, the broader the broadcaster’s face, the better the broadcaster’s broadcasts tend to be**. Behold: the perfectly wonderful Danny Baker, whose face is the size of a large corn circle, and the unimpeachable Sir Terry Wogan, whose face is as vast, globular and purple as a vast, globular and purple hot-air balloon.

Conversely, there is BBC 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq, whose phizog resembles that of an emaciated bushbaby and whose afternoon “new music” show is, as a clear and direct consequence, rubbish. Ditto: Tim “Startlingly Narrow Skull” Westwood. Proof, perhaps, of some hitherto hushed-up scientific relationship between facial adipose bulk and natural excellence behind the mic? Yes.

**Not including Chris Moyles. Obviously.

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Simon Bates’s Classic FM breakfast show. It’s like being woken up by a headmaster who wants to know why there’s some wee in his shoes. Only Bates can make the phrase “And now here’s Beethoven’s Symphony No 9 in D minor, Opus 125” sound like a threat to impound your knees because you haven’t paid your TV licence since 1992. Unnerving isn’t the word. Actually, it is. With big, passive-aggressive bells on.

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And in a final parp of bloggy, jazz-trumpety irrelevance: what’s the correct term for having written a blog and then made it go online? Seriously, I’m flummoxed. Is it “left a blog”? Or “released a blog”? Or is it “dropped a blog”? And how does one shoehorn this into polite conversation without causing a mushroom cloud of hot, horrible embarrassment? Let’s face it, “Can you pass the napkins, Miriam? I’ve just done a blog” isn’t going to go down too well at your next dinner party, is it?

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Danny Baker is on Monday-Friday, 3:00pm, on BBC London 94.9.

Wake Up to Wogan is on Monday-Friday, 7:30am, on BBC Radio 2.

Steve Lamacq is on Monday-Friday at 4:00pm on BBC 6 Music.

Westwood is on Saturdays at 9:00pm on BBC Radio 1.

Alan Titchmarsh is on Sundays at 6:30pm on BBC Radio 2.

Simon Bates is on Monday-Friday at 8:00am on Classic FM.

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Comments

  • Posted on 09 December 2007
  • at 12:33pm
  • by robfoster

I very much enjoy reading your 'witty insights'[sic].

Reading your blog gives me the comfortable feeling of 'not being patronised by someone with a better education'.

  • Posted on 11 November 2007
  • at 5:14pm
  • by robfoster

> It’s the accent. Britain loves a northern accent. It > makes us think of cobblestones and tubas and men in > flat caps eating t’coal sandwiches down t’ Suitably > Oppressed Working Men Who Smell Faintly of Batter > Club and, as a result, it makes us feel we’re not > being patronised by someone with a better education.

When it comes to ridiculous sweeping generalisations I'd like to think Britain doesn't take too kindly to sneering bigoted morons. But, then again, maybe that only applies to those of us in t'north.

  • Posted on 08 November 2007
  • at 11:44am
  • by Ionaclio
Yes, I agree about Alan Titchmarsh's accent making him so likeable. With Alan we are in a safe pair of hands. He is not likely to upset his audience with a sudden burst of expletives. He has done extremely well in broadcasting but has remained grounded - is happily married with family, who keep out of the limelight. For me, you could put as many faces of Alan an RT cover would cope with and it would fly off the shelves, such is his popularity. Terry Wogan shares this being totally grounded as Alan does. Happy family life being kept a background thing. Wogan's programmes are unscripted, that being supplied by Togs and Tygs each day. They delight in fantastic nom de plumes which Terry has to vet very quickly. Names like Heidi Vodka,Helen Bach,Chuffer Dandridge the old actor/manager etc. All contibute wonderful ramblings which are so comical and I bet none has spent 3 years doing a creative writing degree either. Poems are supplied by The Crooked Man of Old Bangor Town and Baz of Wilts who also reports on traffic jams he encounters! Many like EdinaCloud are responsible for giving of their time to organise the merchandising of goods all in aid of Children in Need. We listeners adore Terry and his Newsbroadcasters including Lyn the Travel Totty, all adding to the cheery banter which eases us in to the day. Sorry, can't hack Simon Bates in the morning. I am a PM Classic FM devotee!

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