@WomenObeyUKIP

Until a few days ago all I knew about Jonathan was his calls to Iain on talkRADIO and I think I heard him calling Iain on 3CR or WM. So I just knew him as a bit of a conspiracy theorist and an articulate and passionate caller. I don't spend that much time on Twitter so I missed his controversial Tweets. Now I know about them, it's hard to forget about them when he phones in. But it adds an extra dimension to his calls. It really is quite bizarre how he is quite happy to continue the conversation as if nothing as happened now that Iain regularly describes him as a racist, misogynist etc.

I felt it was necessary to make this montage of last night's show.
Enjoy
https://soundcloud.com/noy2222/iain-lee-240616-montage

What happened here? I thought I saw Iain apologising about the interview on Twitter.

Glad to see my taxes are being well spent keeping Alan in pints.. But then again listening to him snooring after a hard day at the office while the sound of a ZX81 loading a game from cassette was probably worth it.

Iain has had some grief on here about not talking about Brexit. He led us to believe that he wasn't that bothered about it and his vote was decided by what his young son said. But judging by the last two shows and what he's written on Twitter, he sounds a bit gutted about the result. That's a great testament to how he's managed to keep the show a largely Brexit-free show. Given that he was actually somewhat partial to one side, he still kept quiet about it.

That's why i always liked Iain, even if something big happened you could count on him for light hearted talk.

I would have been surprised if Iain said he voted to leave.

But did you believe him when he said he was indifferent?

No. Claims of indifference can be made to avoid arguments. It's like the term "just saying".

That's right. He was basically ending the topic before it could ignite. I'll say the same when England go out of the Euros, even though I'll be seething inside

Very briefly, there's a small but passionate organised skepticism movement in this country and worldwide, and we have different local groups. Two groups, liverpool and manchester, organise a conference called QEDCon every year where we get together from all around the world for interesting science and skepticism talks, all about data and evidence. We get quite a lot of famousy scientists/broadcasters there.

Will Storr came to the first or second one, and my friends who ran the conference welcomed him with open arms, thought he was doing a story about them etc. Looked after him all weekend. Then when his book came out he basically rubbished skepticism as a collection of angry men who want to in a sense trample on people's rights. EG, what's the harm of homeopathy if it doesn't do anything? (Lots, actually).

He massaged some details about what happened at the weekend, criticised my friend for (i kid you not) having an ironed shirt as if he was all very PR-esque and whatnot, and outright lied about one particular incident.

Basically, Will thinks of himself as a kind of science Hunter S. Thompson. He's going for the gonzo journalism thing while not realising that you still have to actually be accurate in your reporting.

Essentially he based his entire view on skepticism from one conference that he attended years ago, with a bit of lying thrown in, and has tarred everyone with the same brush. Years ago there was a bit of what he suggests but these days there's a more compassionate streak in skepticism. We do it to help people, to warn people, etc.

Have a look here: https://skeptoid.com/skeptic.php

Did anyone see this particular Twitter conversation

https://twitter.com/rayflute/status/747390218349780993

I don't know Jonathan's Twitter Handle, was it him ?

Yup..

Thanks for the information, just goes to show not to take things you read/hear on the radio as gospel.

Nor should you take things you read on internet forums as gospel... 😉

Nor on forums

ETA: oops! Didn't see your post. Wow, I thought it hadn't been that long since I opened the page. What have I been doing for the last 2½ hours? Time to hit the hay. A-hey-hey.

The last hour of last night's show is not to be missed. A drunk caller called Dave phoned up, first of all sucking up to Boris Johnson but then went onto a weird tangent about Ricky Gervais. He then called up every few minutes. It is always amusing when callers talk to Iain and Iain pretends to be the phone operator and last night was one of the best examples of that. There were three dumps, including a double dump, which I think was Iain's third double dump.

Also Iain and Dennis had a short but unusually heated row with Iain cutting him off for talking bollocks.

For quite a while last night, Iain and Kath were discussing the how the show is going. Iain seemed to think he was plateauing a bit and wondering if he needed a kick up the backside. Kath, always the sensible and calm one, said that Iain was overthinking it.

Iain sounded a bit concerned by a drop off in calls in recent days. I wonder if the negative thinking was triggered by Galloway getting quite a few calls earlier in the evening? At around 10.30 Iain mentioned the fact that Galloway got a lot of calls around and joked that George was now the listeners' favourite.

Some callers have been concerned that they had made a poor call and feel bad afterwards when in reality their call was perfectly good, notably "Anna" and Russ. We need nice, "normal" people phoning up and I want to hear them as much as the more overtly comedic callers like Barry and Rob Burnett.

On the optimistic side, Iain predicted he would be at talkRADIO for 6 years, so he seems to have some faith that the station will survive.

Mike Mendoza posted this on Facebook about an hour ago, in response to the thread where Russ announced that he would stop calling

Kath and Ed are on holiday on Friday and Monday.

I listened to most of the show last night, I thought it was tired & stale in most parts

Dont no wot the bloke Barry bring to the table, just another stooge,padding out the show ?

And for after midnight straight to air, I only heard one caller about 00.25 & as for Ian & Kath talking for most of the last hour was for me boring, he really needs to up his game!!!

I agree with BIB. Things that attract some listeners will put off others, and one of those things can be the feeling that you're intruding on a 'private' show, built around a clique of listeners, whilst others find that very same thing makes them feel part of a wider listener family.

I think Iain walks a fine line between the two. My personal preference is for him to stay left-field, but not so much that he's in another field entirely, if my analogy holds...! I don't think every caller should feel they have to 'perform' and I wouldn't want to hear that anyway. At the same time, I don't want to lose Barry et al.

As it stands, and it's only my opinion, I think Iain would benefit from playing it a tiny bit straighter a bit more often and having more topics for the shows. These don't have to be serious or political, but along the lines of what Danny Baker used to do, asking people for unusual anecdotes, etc.

I think that you need a hook in each show to encourage new listeners to call in.

Iain has generally introduced topics at the start of the show on each station he's been on, and he has been doing that on talkRADIO too. However he recently said that people didn't phone in about them.

He is now kind of doing what Clive Bull did on LBC before the station was trashed by Globotech in 2007, with the "first caller of the night". The idea is that the listener is more likely to come up with an interesting topic than the presenter. Clive used to play a bit of music at the beginning of the show, inviting people to be first caller of the night and the first caller would be on at the end of the music. Although Clive insisted you had to have something to say. Here's a clip from 2007:

http://pc.cd/8RtctalK

It seems to have been prompted from the "Straight to Air" when last night's seemed to comprise just one person playing different music. I suspect he'll reduce that to maybe one night a week