About a week ago I was driving in to work when I passed a pick up truck belonging to the new Kerrang radio station. I decided to ditch the Today programme and tune in. They were about to do an outside broadcast that involved reading out the number in a phone box and the first person to ring it won a prize. It didn’t quite go according to plan, as they managed to read out the number for wrong phone box. As he stood there waiting for the call, you could hear another phone box ringing in the distance. Not a very impressive start.
Nevertheless I stuck with it for a few days and found that if I just listened to the music and not the DJ’ing inbetween it was a good station that played some great tracks.
Yesterday, I got in the car at about 7:30am, turned on the radio and listened as their roving reporter described how he was stood in Wolverhampton city centre dressed in lederhosen. Apparently it was International Lederhosen Day. He was just about to explain what his plan was when he was suddenly cut off mid-sentence.
There was a scuffling noise.
A pause.
Heavy breathing.
Someone was running.
More heavy breathing, footsteps darting quickly over concrete.
In the background was a voice, ‘Oi! Stop!’.
He was running down the street chasing the kid who’d just stole his phone live on air.
In lederhosen.
Back in the studio they were as stunned as everyone else. They managed to get through to the second reporter, who confirmed, breathlessly, that they’d been running through the streets of Wolverhampton after a kid in a gray hooded top, but they couldn’t catch him. The rest of the show was devoted to the story of the two of them searching the city for the mugger. They even managed to get him to answer the phone, whereupon he proceeded to grunt a few times in an effort to claim innocence and say that his name was ‘D’.
It was great radio. For once, the bits in between the music were more compelling than the music. There may be something of great importance to be learnt from this story, but for the moment it seems that the most obvious moral to this tale is not to make a phone call from Wolverhampton at 7:30 in the morning when you’re wearing lederhosen.