Thursday, July 15, 2010

Nazi Gold - not a new radio station

Have a listen to the clip on this page. It's from Richard Bacon's BBC Radio 5 Live show a few days ago, and features an excerpt of an interview with sacked TalkSPORT presenter Jon Gaunt. Well, I say interview. It is, unsurprisingly, a Gaunt monologue. It's interesting to imagine what it would have been like if a guest had tried the same tricks on Gaunt's show, back when he had one. In particular that hideous, smug "Over to you". Said guest would have been reminded in no uncertain terms whose show it was, I'm guessing.

As it happens, I believe there is a place for Gaunt's style of radio, but I also believe that, to pull it off, you have to be far cleverer than Gaunt seems to be. By all means be contrarian and controversial. Go ahead and wind people up. Feel free to cloak yourself in righteous indignation. Don't, however, lose your rag, whatever you do. You'll have lost the argument, and your job too.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Idents World Cup - final results

Well, the votes have been totted up and the result of the Idents World Cup final is as follows:

ATV 4 Thames 2

If it had been a Prodcaps World Cup, the boot might have been on the other foot, but I think that this is a fair and decisive result, and I'd like to thank Sir Lew Grade and Howard Thomas for the clean way in which their teams played. Let's hear that Midlands marvel once again.

Semi-final results and, holy crap, it's the final

LWT 1 ATV 3
Thames 3 HTV 1

Bad luck for LWT in the semi-finals, scoring a lone goal against Sir Lew and the might of the Midlands. Bad luck also to the HTV aerial, the only ident in this semi-final line-up not to feature any vuvuzela-like brass scoring. However, HTV does take back to Pontcanna the 3rd place title. Which means that, live and at the same time as the footballers go at it, we ident fans see a stand-off between the ATV in Colour 'Zoom' ident and the Thames skyline. A few classics have fallen by the wayside, but personally, I think two stunning teams have made it to the final. Now all that remains is to decide the victor. Votes will close at the final whistle in South Africa. Get on with it.

Quarter-final results and semi final matches

No time Toulouse. The results are as follows:

Harlech eye test 1 LWT river 5
Thames skyline 5 Channel 4 original 2
ATV Zoom 7 Westward galleon 0
HTV Aerial 4 BBC mirror globe 3

Oh dear. That means it's:

LWT river vs ATV Zoom
Thames skyline vs HTV aerial.

Votes by 2pm Sunday.