Dazmids73, (Darren I presume) you've made a couple of absolutely spot on posts here today.
Firstly, and I haven't checked but am going from my own memory, but I thought that Talk Radio UK officially became branded as TalkSport back in mid January 2000?
You have to say, sport? What bloody sport? It's incessant 99% football, droaning on and on and on and on about the most banal stuff imaginable, surely even to seasoned fans of that sport. That station comes across as the most narrow minded place inhabited by a bunch of male dinosaurs who would surely be pub bores to anyone unlucky enough to have to listen to their opinions. The same old chatter, around and around it goes. I enjoy many sports to watch and pay attention to, so I'm not coming to this as a simple sporting hater all round, and am a keen mountain biker myself and have loved cycling all my life. But the football virus has never infected me thankfully. From my own perspective many of the male presenters on TalkSport in recent years have been nothing more than awful caricatures of what some people think most men are in this country. Well the vast majority are not, and there are actually huge numbers of males who can't abide chasing a bag of air on grass, the whole football culture that pervades and the obscenity of mainly dim youngsters getting paid insane amounts in comparison to people in this country that actually do things that really count every day. I hope the whole edifice collapses sooner rather than later. Why would anyone idolise much of that and those people? False idols the lot of them.
TalkRadio has been like a much needed breath of fresh air these past couple of weeks. Iain Lee has been rather better than I thought he would. He seemed on form from the off. We've even had the return of many of the old regulars, even Nigel from Maidstone who I caught, same as ever. I am already looking forward to sticking the headphones on and listening to Howard Hughes Unexplained this evening as I unwind late in the evening. I haven't listened to Sunday evening radio in a long time until last weekend with Howard.
I posted previously that I didn't see anything worth a listen from when Iain Lee finished on Friday night until Howard tonight, but I was actually wrong. Going out in the sunshine yesterday afternoon to give the garden its first post winter spruce up and cut, I stuck my portable DAB Pure 1500 in my pocket and headphones on and was expecting to listen to Pick Of The Pops on Radio 2, but my setting was already on TalkRadio when I switched it on, and the chatter caught my attention and I kept with it. Some chap called Alexis who seemed very personable was having a great hour of chat about technology and spam emails. I listened to the lot and found it really rather good and informative as I casually mowed. Afterwards at 3pm there was a kind of motoring show, which I expected to turn off pretty fast but ended up listening until 5.30pm and enjoying as I was going about the garden. Again, it had another personable presenter who came over rather well, Jay somebody. I also seemed to recognise his sidekick called Flash, who sounded to me like the chap who was on that late night Quizmania on ITV a decade ago. He's good fun. Almost certain it was the same Flash.
So far it's been a positive impression. I know they are both part of the same company and from the same premises but I hope that slowly but surely TalkRadio can grind TalkSport and the narrow minded fools on that station to dust.