For years I've tended to go to sleep with the radio on, and usually find it still on all through the night.
I often wonder whether, if I left it on, say, a French station, I'd eventually wake up with perfect French. Don't think so, but you never know.
For a long time-maybe twenty years-it was always Radio 4 on long wave, which at about 2am changed into the BBC World Service, then back again at about 5:30 to good old Radio 4.
The World Service always had its own distinctive character.
It sounded like it was coming from a long way away, and the voices always sounded slightly shouty, and slow, and clearly enunciated, like they were English people trying to get foreigners top understand. And of course there was the theme tune, Lilibullero (sp?)
Some time ago, I became a Radio 5 Live fan, and that of course is on through the night anyway (the title 'Up all night' always raising a slight titter) so I've tended to listen to that.
But then last Xmas I got a DAB radio, and one of the stations that gives you is the World Service.
But it's not the same: it just sounds like another BBC channel, a combination of 4 & 5 perhaps, without its own distinctive slant, its feeling of being 'away from it all' somewhere around the world.
Back to the nonsense next time, after I've watched this week's X Factor.
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My Dad loved his radios and had several little transistor radios at any one time. He liked to listen early in the morning. In fact he woke me up at about half 5 on 9th October 1980 when I was just 20, knocking on my bedroom door and told me to turn on Radio 4 on my Hi-Fi. After many words about Paul McCartney and John Lennon from the late, great John Peel, I puzzled for 10 minutes wondering why they were discussing them at such length. Then, of course, I learned that John Lennon had been shot dead.
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