Yet Another Cycling Forum
Off Topic => The Pub => Arts and Entertainment => Topic started by: Zoidburg on 05 August, 2009, 05:30:44 pm
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I listen most evenings to the chain
Now I used to really enjoy this but Mark Radcliffe seems to have buggered off for some reason that I havent quite bothered to persue until now. Maconie is now running the show on his own and it is dire, unfunny, dry and also now lacking a decent playlist as Stuart Maconie actualy seems to think that people want to listen to every new single from the latest Lightning Seeds album.
What went wrong? did Radcliffe get fed up with the smug git and leave him to it?
The show is going to die on it's arse and this would be shame as it was once well worth a listen.
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Hols time isn't it ?
I must admit I'm running about a week behind - I'm ploughing through last week's on my MP3 player.
2 weeks ago it was Maconie on his own (and I agree he's a bit irritating) and last week seems to have been Radcliffe on his own, at least at the start of the week (as far as I've got)
They did mention prolonged periods of only one presenter this summer.
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It was maconie again last night and Radcliffe has been gone for the best part of a month. :(
Full on pants - I may be forced to start the the "Bring Me the Head Of Stuart Maconie" group on facebook...
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It was maconie again last night and Radcliffe has been gone for the best part of a month. :(
He was there last Monday, cos I'm listening to it now...so there is some hope :)
edit: just quickly went through all the downloaded MP3s Radcliffe all last week on his own.
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It's a bit odd that they seem to be not going on air together, it doesnt quite fit with holidays all this chopping and changing. :-\
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I do agree ZB. Something odd afoot. Perhaps they secretly hate each other :)
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I do agree ZB. Something odd afoot. Perhaps they secretly hate each other :)
Why on earth would someone hate a former NME journalist?
::-)
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Just listened when I was running to Friday's
Radcliffe said that this week was going to be Maconie alone, but next week they'd both be on.
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Pure ;)
Best pop song ever written :thumbsup:
Viva Lightning Seeds ;D ;D
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Mark Radcliffe is filling in for Simon Mayo on Radio 5 in the afternoons, I think Simon Mayo is covering Chris Evans's Radio 2 early evening slot?
Radio 5 is moving en masse to Manchester at some point in the near future and AIUI Mayo is unfortunately not going with, as he wants to stay in London for his family. I think Mayo is therefore getting a permanent Radio 2 home, but presumably not Evans's timeslot??
I'll miss Simon Mayo on Radio 5, his programmes have been invariably excellent. I hardly ever listen to Radio 2 as I can't stand the music, although I did like to tune in to Radcliffe and Maconie occasionally. I wonder if Mark Radcliffe may be moving to Five Live afternoons permanently, as presumably he wouldn't mind being based in MCR? Heard a bit of his show this afternoon and it was fine.
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Simon Mayo is a much better broadcaster than he used to be, and fits into Radio 2 well. Certainly the drivetime sounds less like a child in a playpen when he's on.
As for R&M, I prefer Maconie. Radcliffe spends a lot of time trying to say something funny, talking over the top of his partner (without actually using any words), and failing.
Typical Mark Radcliffe script.
'That was um er er errrrrrrereumerrrerrerrumerrr Was it? No it wasn't. Errururrururrurrururuuuurrrr....'
Sounds like someone trying to start a generator.
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I thought he was quite good on R5 yesterday, but never been as good without Lard. Simon Mayo seems to be tracking my radio career - Radio 1 when I was that age, Radio 5 while I was doing a lot of driving then radio 2 just as I'm tuning into that..
Radcliffes biog is worth a read, quite funny in places.
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never been as good without Lard.
:thumbsup: Those were the days!
Did anyone use to listen to them back in their original Radio Five days (before it became Five Live), presenting Hit the North on a Wednesday night? Takes me back to my sixth form years. I've still got some of their ridiculous japes recorded on tape, somewhere in a box.
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Pure ;)
Best pop song ever written :thumbsup:
Viva Lightning Seeds ;D ;D
That Sir, is the thin end of the wedge.
He will be playing the Lighthouse Family next.
:sick:
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Simon Mayo is a much better broadcaster than he used to be, and fits into Radio 2 well.
He seems to have grown up a bit.
He also is a radio natural - never really suited telly programmes, so I'm glad he's gone back. Sounds more relaxed than on the goggle-box.
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Pure ;)
Best pop song ever written :thumbsup:
Viva Lightning Seeds ;D ;D
That Sir, is the thin end of the wedge.
He will be playing the Lighthouse Family next.
:sick:
The sad thing is that even if the Lighthouse Family has long been used for kindling in the execution of miscreants, their recorded works will survive. Sometimes I think the public burning of "works of art" may be justified ;)
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Pure ;)
Best pop song ever written :thumbsup:
Viva Lightning Seeds ;D ;D
That Sir, is the thin end of the wedge.
He will be playing the Lighthouse Family next.
:sick:
The sad thing is that even if the Lighthouse Family has long been used for kindling in the execution of miscreants, their recorded works will survive. Sometimes I think the public burning of "works of art" may be justified ;)
It's not art it's assembly line elevator music, they use a sweat shop studio in Korea then dub some session singer over it.
On the subject of The Lightning Seeds.
Not wishing to sound like a 6th form college performing arts lecturer who lives alone with many cats now but music should make you think of and "feel" colours.
Heavy Metal - Black and red
Dance Music - Dayglow orange
The Blues - Well...blue
A bit of Roxy Music - Emerald Green drapes and a rich brown leather chiase lounge
The Lightning Seeds?
Beige.
Beige slacks and and a beige MFI sofa next to a beige coffee table with a copy of the daily mail and country life on it and a BMW parked outside in the drive.
Beige Music is bad for your health.
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Beige slacks and and a beige MFI sofa next to a beige coffee table with a copy of the daily mail and country life on it and a BMW parked outside in the drive.
I've been searching for a mental picture of Rapples for a while now.
Thank you ZB, thank you so much :)
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I like racliffe and maconie and agree that when it is just one of them then the show isn't as good
However, this pales into insignificance beside the major "DJ isn't who it should be" crime on 6 music
Cerys Matthews was supposed to be standing in for one of the other people. Which she did for about a week. But now she has buggered off too! And it's whoever they can find. Laren Lavene isn't Cerys but she is acceptable. But the other day they had someone shocking on instead, my mind has blanked out who exactly (to prevent psychological damage I suppose) but it was pretty nasty. I really like Cerys' voice and she chooses pretty good tunes too.
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Radio 5 is moving en masse to Manchester at some point in the near future and AIUI Mayo is unfortunately not going with
What does this mean for the future of the Mark Kermode film reviews slot? Please don't tell me that's going off the air too! Nooooooooo! :o :'(
I wonder if Mark Radcliffe may be moving to Five Live afternoons permanently, as presumably he wouldn't mind being based in MCR?
Radcliffe & Maconie are already based in Manchester, aren't they?
Did anyone use to listen to them back in their original Radio Five days (before it became Five Live), presenting Hit the North on a Wednesday night?
Ho yuss.
And "Out On Blue Six" was great too - in fact it kept me sane through revising for my A-Levels.
d.
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never been as good without Lard.
:thumbsup: Those were the days!
Did anyone use to listen to them back in their original Radio Five days
Yes.
Laugh-out-loud funny.
Biddely-Biddely-Boing
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Stuart Maconies's Freak Zone (6Music) is still very good (although 5% is sh1te - possibly a criteria of any good radio show? Nice ...)
You non-digital listeners can "iPlayer" it.
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Stuart Maconies's Freak Zone (6Music) is still very good (although 5% is sh1te - possibly a criteria of any good radio show? Nice ...)
You non-digital listeners can "iPlayer" it.
I'd reverse that, a really good show should only have 5% you feel comfortable with.
I can't believe that most people can even understand what Mark and Stuart are saying, I'm Lancastrian, and I need to concentrate. which is good, but get Miranda Sawyer on there as well and most of your minds must go into meltdown.
Damon.
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never been as good without Lard.
:thumbsup: Those were the days!
Did anyone use to listen to them back in their original Radio Five days
Yes.
Laugh-out-loud funny.
Biddely-Biddely-Boing
I'm missing the sarcasm smiley. :demon:
Mark and Lard on Radio 1 in the afternoons some ten years ago was dreary, repetitious s***e.
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get Miranda Sawyer on there as well and most of your minds must go into meltdown.
Miranda Sawyer is from Wilmslow, which means that her accent is pretty-much the same as that of my early girlfriends...
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It's good to get a diversity of accents on there, breaking the sterility of Home Counties/'Urban' BBC. Radcliffe's Bury, Maconie's Warrington, Lord Noddlington of Holder's Yamyam, Miranda Sawyer's Castrian, Sarah Outen's um, er, Midlandsofsomesort, and the voices of interviewees and callers from around the country makes it a lively listen.
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Maconie's Warrington,
Are you sure ?
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Maconie's Warrington,
Are you sure ?
Warrington/Wigan/Widnes... they're all grim northern towns with not much to distinguish them. ;)
Maconie's actually from Whiston, which isn't that far from Warrington, I suppose.
d.
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Warrington/Wigan/Widnes... they're all grim northern towns with not much to distinguish them. ;)
Some outlying parts of greater Warrington are rather nice ;)
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Maconie's Warrington,
Are you sure ?
Not sure at all - it all kinda falls into the sea west of Saddleworth ;D
EDIT: On closer inspection, it turns out that Whiston, where Mr Maconie first entered the world is in this order of proximity to the other Ws:
Widnes
Warrington
Wigan.
So, if I cared one jot about the geography of Merseyside (it has none, and is just a marsh at the extent of Strathclyde, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle attests), I might claim to have been right.
As it is, I suspect that, wherever he was born, he did, in fact, grow up in Pie-land. So I'm wrong. ;D
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Maconie claims to be from Wigan in both Pies & Prejudice and Cider With Roadies, but since the former contains a Several of factual blunders, it might be foolish to assume anything about the veracity of his claim.
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I bet he comes from a posh bit of Cheshire and tries to pass himself as something else.
Knutsford, maybe Alderly Edge, footballers wives land.
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His accent is def. Wigan*. I'm listening at the moment.
*not that that means much of course
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Wigan is actually a very nice place. 30 years ago it suffered from appalling post industrial dereliction, this has largely been sorted and there are now extensive woodlands on many of the old colliery sites. It is fair to say that the area offers few opportunities, other than the nuclear industry in Warrington, for highly educated people, and there are no Universities, the result is migration of the clever and a reputation for a certain lack of sparkle in comparison with the surrounding cities of Manchester, Liverpool and Preston. Radcliffe and Maconie are indeed very posh by local standards. Mark jokes about his posing as a punk while being a middle class pupil of Bolton Grammar, a school of impeccable academic credentials. They both have smoothed out accents, the only problem is that in company with others, such as Miranda Sawyer, they start to speed up and you have to be attuned to the cadences of fast Northern speech to keep up.
Damon.
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I listen most evenings to the chain
Now I used to really enjoy this but Mark Radcliffe seems to have buggered off for some reason that I havent quite bothered to persue until now. Maconie is now running the show on his own and it is dire, unfunny, dry and also now lacking a decent playlist as Stuart Maconie actualy seems to think that people want to listen to every new single from the latest Lightning Seeds album.
What went wrong? did Radcliffe get fed up with the smug git and leave him to it?
The show is going to die on it's arse and this would be shame as it was once well worth a listen.
I listened to tuesday's and wednesday's from last week today (Maconie on his own again). Dear God. What a dire collection of prog, whimsy and 3rd rate psychodelia. If I wanted that I'd listen to his tediously self-indulgent Freak Zone.
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Miranda Sawyer is from Wilmslow, which means that her accent is pretty-much the same as that of my early girlfriends...
I've heard that Wilmslow girls like a bit of rough ;)
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Wigan is actually a very nice place.
No.
You need to leave yourself somewhere to go and "Very Nice" sets the bar too high when you consider other places.
Desenzano, on Lake Garda, is a very nice place.
St Emillion, in the Dordogne, is a very nice place.
Rome is a stunning place.
Hungerford is a nice place.
Using these as guidelines to position various towns and cities I would have to say that Wigan is a little shit-hole.
Using chips and pies as a guideline however would have Wigan right up there.
So, in summary, we could say that "Wigan does very nice chips and pies" and still leave room to accurately rate Venice, Rome and so on.
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This is Wigan Town Centre.
(http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/469500.jpg)
This is Hungerford apparently.
(http://www.britannia.com/tours/berks/images/hungerford.jpg)
Perhaps it was only a little shit hole when you were there.
Damon.
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Hungerford's a prettyish little market town. In terms of population it's closer in size and feel to somewhere like Lymm.
A better comparison with Wigan might be the Newbury/Thatcham conurbation, which I don't think I'd suggest overall is very much prettier than Wigan (especially the Thatcham bit - parts of Newbury are nice enough, but mainly because they've sacrificed Thatcham to make it so)
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The Manchester/Merseyside conurbation is misunderstood by those who pass through it. The ribbon development they see from the main roads is largely a facade, and a pretty grim one at that. Behind it is a mosaic of Clough woodland and reclaimed industrial land, which has a much greater degree of access than in more rural areas. There are canals and old railways criss-crossing the area and untouched villages on the periphery. Lots of workers in the main cities are attracted by new estates built on the edges of places like Standish, so much so that commuting congestion has turned the M6 form Jct 26 to 21 into one of the busiest in the country.
Maconie is from the West of Wigan, where the Grammar Schools were, both of which are now well regarded Sixth Form colleges. As I say, the main problem for Wigan is that the educated tend to leave, and that the population is skewed towards the remains of mining and heavy industry, so the cultural life revolves around brass bands and sport. There is however extreme sexual equality. It is quite normal for girls to play Rugby League, and robustness in women is seen as normal and desireable, an attitude which stretches back to the 'Pit Brow Lasses'.
Wigan Album, :: wiganworld (http://www.wiganworld.co.uk/album/showalbum.php?offset=0&opt=3&gallery=Colliery+Lasses+%2F+Pit+Brow+Girls)
Wigan Warriors - The Official Website (http://www.wiganwarriors.com/MidContent.asp?cid=219)
Damon.
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It is quite normal for girls to play Rugby League, and robustness in women is seen as normal and desireable, an attitude which stretches back to the 'Pit Brow Lasses'.
Did anyone else automatically think of The Macc Lads' Sweaty Betty on reading this?
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This is Wigan Town Centre.
(http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/469500.jpg)
This is Hungerford apparently.
(http://www.britannia.com/tours/berks/images/hungerford.jpg)
Perhaps it was only a little shit hole when you were there.
Damon.
That's not fair, you've airbrushed all the chavs and 'bingo-wings' women out of the Wigan photo.
My home town of Stockport would be lovely as well if you detonated a Neutron Bomb overhead a few hours before visiting.
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This is Wigan Town Centre.
(http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/469500.jpg)
This is Hungerford apparently.
(http://www.britannia.com/tours/berks/images/hungerford.jpg)
Perhaps it was only a little shit hole when you were there.
Damon.
That's not fair, you've airbrushed all the chavs and 'bingo-wings' women out of the Wigan photo.
My home town of Stockport would be lovely as well if you detonated a Neutron Bomb overhead a few hours before visiting.
You might want to use two bombs, just to be sure.
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I've heard that Wilmslow girls like a bit of rough ;)
That's was my thinking, yes ;)
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I've heard that Wilmslow girls like a bit of rough ;)
That's was my thinking, yes ;)
And did they ? ;D
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(http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/469500.jpg)
From the look of the empty streets I'd say that it's either early Sunday morning or there's a sale on at Matalan in Bolton.
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It's quite easy to work out what time the picture was taken.
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It's quite easy to work out what time the picture was taken.
Assuming the clock is actually working, obv.
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It's a northern clock; of course it's working.
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My home town of Stockport would be lovely as well if you detonated a Neutron Bomb overhead a few hours before visiting.
[/quote]
Some of my best friends are Wiganers, but it is significant that they now live in Central Lancs, likewise my Scouse and Manc friends. All these places hold 'Here be Dragons' significance for us round here.
Their view of us is that we're distant, mumbling, woolybacks, and that indeed is our culture, with added begrudging. Our local celebrities are Nick Park, John Inman and Phil Cool. Make of that what you will.
Damon.
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These days Phil Cool is largely famous for being described as a "rubber-faced irritant" on the closing track of Half Man Half Biscuit's latest album, CSI Ambleside.
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Some of my best friends are Wiganers, but it is significant that they now live in Central Lancs, likewise my Scouse and Manc friends. All these places hold 'Here be Dragons' significance for us round here.
Their view of us is that we're distant, mumbling, woolybacks, and that indeed is our culture, with added begrudging. Our local celebrities are Nick Park, John Inman and Phil Cool. Make of that what you will.
Damon.
My test is:
If you won £10 million, would you move to Wigan?
I doubt it. The area is so over-populated and, in general, a bit post-Thatchered (Preston, Skelmersdale, Bolton, Leyland, Blackburn and so on).
My guess is that any Wigan Lottery winners will head 25 miles south into Cheshire. Nobody wins the lottery in Kuntsford Knutsford and moves to Wigan.
That's my definition of a very nice place.
I retract my statement about it being a shit-hole (that doesn't give me enough scope to describe Longsight in Manchester) so I'll say that Wigan, rather than being a very nice place or a nice place, is a place.
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If you were a Wiganer who won the lottery, you'd buy a nice old farmhouse in Billinge, Orrell or Upholland. This would be the view.
(http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/2143296.jpg)
That's if you still wanted to live in Wigan Borough. Millionaires tend to prefer Wrightington, Heskin and Eccleston, slightly to the North, where there are some very good training routes, which is why Wiggo likes it.
Serious wealth is concentrated in the Ribble Valley. Cheshire is for Footballers and people who like Onynx.
I don't know where you get the idea that the areas is heavily populated, only someone who has only seen the area from the A49, A6 and A59 would get that impression, and I can't believe that there is anyone on here so dim as to stick to those roads when alternatives exist.
Damon.
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I don't know where you get the idea that the areas is heavily populated
I'd say it was similar to the position of Slough in the south. A smallish town in itself but surrounded by other towns and close to a large city.
A look at any map will clearly indicate it's a heavily populated area, within that Manchester/Liverpool/Preston triangle. Birmingham is havily populated but in a smaller, more concentrated area and obviously London, within the M25 is fairly well-stuffed.
I'm not saying there aren't nice, quiet, roads to cycle on (There are many within 30 mins of my old home town of Stockport and that's basically a Manchester suburb) but there's no point in arguing that it isn't a highly populated area. Within 15 miles of Wigan you have Manchester, Liverpool, Blackburn, Preston, Warrington, Skelmersdale, all considerable conurbations and probably home to 5 million people. It's the epitome of a highly populated area, it's the industrial north-west.
Onyx "Cheshire" is a tiny area around Wilmslow that actually extends north into south Manchester (Bramhall). True (more southerly) Cheshire is sparsely populated and is where the old money lives.
The South Manchester/ North Cheshire boundary has always been very elastic depending upon the snobbery of the individual resident. Stockport, Cheshire is still used by many.
My Father in Law is Wigan born and bred btw. (We had his tail docked a few year ago).
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Oddly Cheshire is more industrial than Lancashire these days, Runcorn skews things massively, and Widnes and Warrington are now in Cheshire. Bolton, Wigan and Preston form a triangle of densely populated towns with good access to high quality, if wet, countryside. The centre of that triangle is Chorley Borough, 200 square kilometres with 100,000 people living in it, most in Chorley, Adlington and Coppull, that's where most of the riding is done, and bits of West Lancs. Most of the clubs also get into the Ribble Valley and the Bowland Fells. The towns are relatively compact, leaving a lot of space for us to stretch our legs.
Damon.