The last Jeremy Vine Show of 2010 was broadcast on Thursday 23rd December. He will not be on Radio 2 again until early Janurary, and this despite Radio 2's and the BBC Trust's claims that the JV Show is important and essential to the station and stops it sounding like a commercial all-music station. How convenient that news stops while JV is away. Or does it?
I have started writing scripts for JV to use on Ken Bruce's show for some of the stories that I would like to see discussed, but he is yet to use any of them.
Here are my suggestions from the past few days:
Friday 24th December:
No news on Christmas Eve then? Will the country survive? Can Alan Carr cope with the responsibilty of taking Radio 2 through the lunch time period? Oh well, if nobody is there to do it I suppose that I will have to...
Today BBC Radio 4's Today programme featured a radio address by The Pope. We'll discuss his broadcast and ask: Is the The Pope a Catholic?
Monday 27th December:
Still no news? How about this...
We read in the papers today - well, the Daily Mail anyway - that Nick Clegg is struggling to cope with coalition government and may be on the verge of a breakdown. With absolutely no evidence to support this, we'll try and guess the Deputy PM's mental state and perform some kind of totally unjustified character assassination on him, so join us today at 12.
Ref: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1341815/Is-Clegg-cracking-Deputy-Prime-Minister-risks-having-breakdown-says-LibDem.html
Tuesday 28th December:
What? Still no news? I've found some. Here's today's script...
We read in the papers that newspaper circulation is dropping rapidly, with less than one sixth of the UK population now buying a daily newspaper. Most surprising is the Daily Mirror which has lost 1 million readers in the last 10 years, while the Daily Star has managed a small increase in that same time period - I wonder what that says about the newspaper buying public! (Pause for laughter at Ken's witty comment here) We'll discuss whether The Dead Tree Press is still a credible and sensible way of distributing the hype and untruths published in the name of "news" (which is my job!), and ask how much longer will I be able to say "We read in the papers today..." and who the hell is this "we" that I keep referring to.
Ref: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/table/2010/dec/10/abcs-national-newspapers and http://www6.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2010/12/22/its-not-only-the-lib-dems-whose-numbers-are-shrinking/
Wednesday 29th December:
The world is waking up, and the Jeremy Vine show slumbers on in blissful ignorance of the world's news. I'm sure I read somewhere in a charter or some other nonsense that the JV show was essential to Radio 2's repertoire in order to distinguish it from an all-music commericial station. I've either got that wrong, or it is simply not the case. Anyway, on with today's show...
We read in the papers today that the water supply problems caused by cold weather in Northern Ireland are continuing. We won't even be mentioning it today because (a) it does not affect London and the South East of England, (b) it is ABROAD for God's sake, and because of this (c) programme editor Phil will decide it is not a topic worthy of national debate.
Ref: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1342419/Millions-face-New-Year-water-shortage-thaw-Northern-Ireland-sparks-spate-burst-pipes.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Moving on then...
We read in the papers today that UK Border Agency staff mistakenly sent an email stating that drug searches were to be relaxed over the Christmas period due to staff shortages. This reduction particularly referred to the staff who have to deal with smugglers who have ingested drug packages and rely on nature to take its course before they reappear. We look at the work of these staff and ask if they are performing a useful process or are they simply going through the motions?
Ref: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3321489/Let-drugs-mules-in-says-Heathrow-customs-ass.html