I've been writing about Iain on DS since I discovered him on LBC in 2006 and he used to read DS quite a lot back then. I met him at a TV shoot in west London at the time and introduced myself as "radamfi from Digital Spy". I used to call him up talking about what was written on here and he would occasionally remark about certain posts or posters. I eventually became quite well known in the Iain Lee community as someone who knew a lot about the show.

As it turned out, he had already answered my "understudy" question on last Monday's podcast, but I only noticed that at the weekend.

Grrr again the periscope download is screwed. I'll try again later as sometimes it improves.

I wonder if one of the people on DS he talked to you about was me Rada?, lol, we did have a few words back in time on the talkSPORT thread regarding Matt Forde, not just me I hasten to add I seem to remember he had words with quite a few people on DS, someone told me later he got banned for posting something unsavoury but I never found out if that was true or not.

Anyway I've now found his show and moved on [hope he has] I love his show and that's all that matters to me.

In my view never in a million years is Nigel just putting on an act when he's on the wireless. I don't know the bloke personally but having listened to him for years on the radio, having seen dozens of his videos some I'm sure not originally intended for going online and having read what someone who actually knows him has said about him I'm convinced Nigel is really like he is on the airwaves.

The people criticising JHB seems to have very short memories. When there were non--sport phone-ins on TalkSport at the same time LBC was covering current affairs, those phone-ins were usually current affairs discussions and the phone lines were busy. I'm not convinced Iain Lee would get many more callers than JHB if he was on at that time and he had never been heard of by anybody before.


You seriously think the lack of listeners is due to the radio station not being on the television? How many people listen to TalkSport or LBC on the television instead of the radio? Do you seriously think that if TalkRadio joined all the television platforms tomorrow the phone lines would then be busy?


I wonder why that is? Do they have more listeners, or is it their more personable style of presenting? Their show is one in which you can participate even if you don't have a view on the most serious news item, and where the serious news items are approached at a level that is not too high and not too low. Jonny and Ash aren't very divisive when they cover serious news and that may make some people feel more able to express their views on their show.

I'm not entirely convinced. Something about the way he plays on his naivety isn't quite right. I'd be willing to accept that he is 50% oddball and 50% acting

Here's something that is bugging me: rubbish adverts. There are a couple in particular that drive me up the wall.

#1 is the horribly butchered Open University ad which has obviously been chopped and edited with zero regard for the backing music. #2 is Dulux "I could kiss my decorator". It makes me cringe.

It's partly made up for by Chicken Madras. You drive me CRAZY...! She sounds like a sort

I'm sure I'll remember some others after I've posted this.

Excuse me 3rd post in a row.

Listening now to Uri Gellar telling Super Gould Bros how David Guest had a "feeling" that Michael Jackson wasn't well.

Oh God now he's backing it up with Einsteins general relativity.

First time listening to TalkRADIO that I've actually felt like punching my radio.

On Jon Holmes this afternoon they played out a fake Steve Wright Factoid with the words mixed up, but it sounded almost normal. I almost forgot I wasn't listening to Radio 2.

I wonder if the management know or care about him talking and making noises over the sports news?


When I heard that first I originally thought that there was a break in the stream.

He's done the factoids for a while, the tromboning one he has is full of inuendo and utterly brillaint. It reminds me very much of 90's Chris Morris on Radio 1 with obviosuly edited sound clips butchered together to make people say stuff they hadn't.

I totally agree with you Steve they really should of put into place a system that attracts the most calls i.e. a free phone number. Effectively going one better than LBC's 0345 would of got the ball rolling and at least if would of certainly separated the good presenters apart from the bad. It does help Iain Lee's show to have a decent amount of calls when he tells the listeners they will call back. If the other presenters are not allowed to do this practice they will always be fighting against the extortionate phone charges for callers.

It's where the trade go.

I wonder whether that's a mini protest at it either being pre recorded, or perhaps he feels it is unneeded? Either way, the farmyard bit made me chuckle!

That is exactly what my impressions are of the new talkRADIO and Virgin Radio websites. They are not very well designed with badly placed & promoted links for their facebook and twitter pages also no link available for their official youtube channel. There is a lack of information about the station presenters on the website. Might of been nice for each to of had a page with a mini bio and individual links to the presenters facebook, twitter & website if available. The homepage itself looks pretty bare like it's been designed in a hurry and it's not very easy to navigate everything should be simple and straight forward. There is no simple link for ways to listen to the station or how to listen to a show again. There should be plenty of cross links between their social media pages and plenty of information on the website about what's coming up on the shows and the latest news stories. This information should also be mirrored on the twitter and facebook pages as well. I totally agree with what you said about making better use of youtube yes they should post up anything that would get views and give the station some publicity and help them to gain new listeners.

When will the RAJAR survey contain the first listening figures?

They get published 19th May. That's when the you know what hits the fan!

Bang on. If it was me I would be all over that website giving each presenter a dedicated page with maybe a comments section, tweet links, maybe a simple blog if presenter is game for it. Information on upcoming topics to get people involved. Website is pretty crap to be honest and I personally have no interest in it other than having a direct bookmark to the listen again page. As far as YouTube goes, it's currently down to a few station fans (myself included) to upload clips and even whole shows hoping it will prompt the odd new listener.

I really don't get why they didn't just use the Aiir templates TWG use for their local sites.
The current ones are like they've taken the talkSPORT site, stripped it of ALL content and said 'how can we make this looks like a facebook page?'.

That is for Q1 which only covers listening up to April 3rd, so the new TWG stations are unlikely to be included.

Talk's first full survey should be Q2, the results for which are published on August 4th.

Yes that's exactly along the lines of what I was thinking it honestly looks like it was designed in 10 minutes with hardly any information and an awkward to navigate design. The website should be the focal point of the station with a simple, fun and friendly feel to it, but it currently looks very bland with next to no information about presenters or shows. I agree it would be good to have other features on the presenters profile pages a blog would be good also a question and answers section favourite food, film etc. On the homepage you would have items about show's topics being discussed clicking on them takes you to a page giving more information and most importantly options to share on social media. With regard to listen again there should be an option to download the whole show as a single mp3 podcast, which would make things a lot easier for anyone who wants to listen at their own leisure. Lastly the links for the facebook, twitter, android and ios apps should really be at the top of every page you visit not just on the homepage.

Yes you're right Q1 would only have covered the first two weeks of broadcast upto Sunday 3rd April so may well have to wait until the Q2 figures are published.

Iain's trying to phone up talkSPORT and get on the air. That's one way of getting on Freeview, satellite and Digital One.

Out of interest I skimmed through the shows for Monday and counted how many pre-arranged guest calls and how many listener calls each show had got these are my findings:

Paul Ross - Pre-arranged Guest Calls: 11, Listener Phone Calls: 2
JHB - Pre-arranged Guest Calls: 14, Listener Phone Calls: 1
Jon Holmes - Pre-arranged Guest Calls: 2, Listener Phone Calls: 4
Sam Delaney - Pre-arranged Guest Calls: 8, Listener Phone Calls: 3
Johnny & Ash - Pre-arranged Guest Calls: 4, Listener Phone Calls: 2
Iain Lee - Pre-arranged Guest Calls: 1, Listener Phone Calls: 20

The only show with any significant caller participation is Iain Lee's by a long shot!

I'm wondering if their aim is to have a style similar to talkSPORT's where the focus is not so much on listeners phoning the station and getting involved, but merely being a passive observer. The only difference being it is non-sport as opposed to sports talk.

I think that must be it.

I've listened to speech radio long enough to know that there are a hardcore people out there who would ring an empty phone box if they thought they could get on the radio, so I don't believe that folk about not actively ringing the station.

I think your last paragraph sums it up.

The proof is in the number; if they wanted more audience participation, they'd have a 03 or a freephone number, not 08.

I was going to link the bit on the Periscope video where he did the prank call because it was even funnier watching it all but annoyingly it's been omitted from the video recording for some reason so it'll have to be just the audio.

What made it funny for me was Iain knows absolutely nothing about football and doesn't even like it and he had the nerve to ring a live football show.

If he'd have got on air the first time of trying I think it would have been better because what happened for anyone who didn't hear/see it was it took him a second attempt to get on and in between the two attempts some miserable g!ts were tweeting Goldstein about what was about to happen.

I'm not certain whether Goldstein or Cundy saw the tweets but halfway through it does sound a bit like they know what's going off. It was still a good prank and funny, to wind down at the end of the day this show is just the thing.

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