Wednesday, December 16, 2009

It's the sound of Lincolnshire, that special place to live

... It's the sound of Lincolnshire, with so much more to give. Radio Lincolnshire!

I grew up listening to that catchy jingle, although I don't think they still use it nowadays, and they almost certainly don't play it on Radio Solent, which serves Hampshire, Dorset and the Isle of Wight. But despite this, my appearance on Jon Cuthill's morning show was good fun. Click on that link to hear it, about two hours and ten minutes in (you're allowed to fast-forward if you want). He even had me memorise a pack of cards, live on air (which doesn't sound terribly impressive when you're doing a phone interview on a radio show, but I really didn't cheat. I did only memorise the first dozen or so cards, because I knew he wouldn't ask me them all, but I didn't cheat!). And he gave me thirty seconds to memorise it, thirty seconds of dead air, which I didn't think radio presenters were really supposed to do. Most radio people don't want me to do cards at all...

I do enjoy this kind of thing, though - perhaps I should try to spread the word to local radio stations that I'm available for interviews, free of charge, if they want. They don't have to wait until Sainsbury's tell them to interview me. Radio Derby always tell me to tell them when I win a memory competition, and I never do because I disapprove of self-publicity, but perhaps I'll change that policy.

Also, the producer said we were only allowed to mention Sainsbury's a maximum of two times, otherwise he'd have to fill in a BBC form of some kind, but in the end we only mentioned it once. I feel like I'm not completely living up to my contract with Sainsbury's (especially since they were hoping to get me on national TV and in all the newspapers, name-dropping them left, right and centre, but seriously overestimated how big a draw I am to the media), so here's a bit more advertising, courtesy of Zoomy's Thing: Sainsbury's, Sainsbury's, Sainsbury's. It's the place to buy things. Sainsbury's, Sainsbury's, Sainsbury's. Something something something wings.

Okay, writing advertising slogans isn't my forté.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ben, I am unable to hear what you said. Your voice is not clear as you shuffled through them so fast.

I guess room in island sitting kangaroo..

Please explain it again.

Anonymous said...

Funny interview Ben :)
Please recollect those images.

Zoomy said...

Well, all right, even though you asked TWICE, in ten minutes (did you think I wouldn't read the first one?) and even though you're only going to reply with something like "How is the LEFT TO RIGHT order maintained. You imagine car with face. You are a liar, I hate you. Please recollect those images."

What I said (going from memory here, rather than bothering to listen to it again and check) was something like "In my bedroom, there's an island on which a rally car is being driven by a kangaroo, which is throwing a cup into my spare room where it's being caught by Pebbles Flintstone, who's hanging out with a hippy. 3c/4c/Ad/5c/Jh/Js/3s/Qs/2h/9s/3h/Qh; Island/Rally/Kangaroo/Cup/Pebbles/Hippy"

This is a good example of how I sometimes lie about my images on TV/radio to cut down on the explanations and thus fit into a 30-second interview - Jh/Js is actually 'pouch', and I imagine a sort of kangaroo pouch on the object or person preceding, which in this case was a rally car. I can picture it in my head, but it's hard to explain. And the pouch does tend to throw things, or eject things... it makes sense to me, anyway.

Also, 3s/Qs is actually 'sippy cup', one of those things for babies with two handles and a lid on top, not to be confused with 'cup', 5c/Qc, which is a china teacup, or for that matter 'mug', 5c/6s, a bigger and more working-class drinking vessel. That it was a sippy made me think 'ha, that's appropriate' when the next image was Pebbles, who's a baby. Then when I come to recall, it's the 'ha, that's appropriate' that I remember first, before even the images come to mind. It works as sort of a double-check.