NOBODY KNOWS OR UNDERSTANDS

The big talk this week has been about 2Day. This as you are probably aware is where we celebrate the breadth and variety of the stuff we do here on Radio 2 and its also an opportunity to boast about what we do.

As is normal with these events the big guns are brought out and paraded up and down our TV screens and newspapers.


This is the way the business works.


So on the show we have long since stopped worrying about competing for column inches as we know that the average Fleet Street journalist or TeeVee type wouldn't recognise the Best Time of the Day Show if it sat on their knee in a gorilla outfit and farted in their face!

So we, with your help plough our own furrow.



You have been very helpful in this regard over the years first with letter writing. Then faxes and over the last decade email the texts and now Facebook.



It also means we can interact with you so much more freely than we were able to before.



Back in the early days I could throw out an idea or ask a question and three days letter a letter would arrive saying:



"Rubbish"!



By then I'd have forgotten what I was talking about anyway.



Now however communication is instant and we can do all sorts of things on top of the usual playing records and fooling about. Instant is good as due to advancing age unless the response is instant I've probably forgotten what I was talking about anyway.

We now do radio with pictures. We also do it when the show is not on the air. With iPlayer and the Oddcast we also do the show 24/7. We are always there which is terrific. Unless of course you are not a fan in that case it's like embarrassing personal itching!


With the creative input and IT skills of Producer Dr Strangelove who oversees the whole thing and his glamorous assistant Jade the Unnatural who studio produces three of the five shows per week......hang on Jade 3 Strangelove 2. That may make it Jade the Unnatural and her glamorous assistant Dr Strangelove......well they both bring stuff to the party. We are always thinking of new and dumber ideas to keep you on board.


So when the 2Day musical gauntlet was thrown down the team immediately set to work thinking of new ways to get us noticed. Knowing full well in me they have a man with no shame. For whom the word "dignity" is just that a word. Just as garbure. glitch and froghood are words.

Something to do with music obviously. It was only a short hop from that thought to a One man band. The acme of music for fun. It is pure showbiz. You get the tunes and you get the spectacle. Also and perhaps most importantly you get the ludicrousness of it all.



A delightful East Ender called Jake kindly volunteered to take me through through process. He is a very accomplished performer and is a regular feature when foreign language students arrive in London. He greets them off the coach with a song a solo and a cry of "ave a banana"!

It's a lot harder than you think.

Akin to patting the top of your head and rubbing your stomach whilst at the dentist due to your mouth being crammed with metallurgy. With drums and cymbals laced to your shoes if you are not co-ordinated it just sounds like someone throwing a music shop downstairs.



I was surprised to learn that this quintessentially British pastime was in fact huge in Canada. With books being written on the subject as well as there being more one man bands per square foot than anywhere else on earth. (I think). Quite a boast (I think)!



They are possibly used as bear scarers.



So how did I get on? Alex Lester Putting the number 2 in 2Day. Judge for yourself with the following link