The Glorious BBC

Some of my earliest memories are of listening to the ‘wireless’, and I continue, when I can to listen to Radio 4 and Radio 3. Every now and then, one hears an absolute gem. Who can forget Jim Naughtie announcing to the nation immediately before the Eight O’ Clock News, that he would be interviewing ‘Jeremy C*nt’, at ten past eight (of course, Jeremy Hunt, a minister of something or another in Her Majesty’s Government). First prize for the world’s most apposite Freudian slip. How Naughtie managed to read the news after that, with everyone in the Radio 4 control room almost certainly doubled up in terminal hysteria, is a miracle of radio broadcasting.
 
Then there was the famous occasion when the normally unflappable and patrician Charlotte Green had a fit of the giggles – also reading the news – following the playing of the world’s first sound recording.
 
And today, there was another treat. Paddy O’Connell, a most witty and amusing presenter, chairs Broadcasting House, Radio 4, 9 – 10 am on a Sunday Morning. Among his guests today was Kirsty Wark, an ‘elder stateswoman’ BBC person, broadcasting, I think, from Edinburgh. She was reading from a newspaper interview with Lord John Kerr – author of the infamous Article 50 – who was criticising Theresa May for appointing Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary, since she didn’t trust him; Kirsty added, ‘No shit, Sherlock!’