Why The Long Face?

Regular readers of the Skirky blogspot, gripped and entranced by both the published versions of these accounts and the regular updates here, will doubtless have pored over the minutae of the sidebar just over there to the right and often wondered what this radio show malarkey is all about. Well, to summarise, the joy of Community Radio is that by its very definition anyone can have a go at it and so my friend Neale and I get together every Thursday at ten o'clock at night to curate two hours of chat, music and filleted highlights from the week's media in what is best described as a loosely-scripted fashion. The genesis of the whole thing can be read about in the introduction to Philip Bryer's book http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/why-the-long-face-the-paper-trail/14954100 which is a compendium of pieces he's contributed to the show over the past couple of years in his weekly feature None of Your Business. We also have a regular section entitled Celebrity Death Watch, Neale usually reports some important Chinese News, we conduct Why The Long Quiz? (one week we played "Arr or Narrr?" - wherein I attempted to cleave truth from fiction in working out whether he was naming actual Pirates from history or mere figments of his imagination - we've done similar things with Barbara Cartland novels and James Last album titles in the past) and for a while http://mybandtshirt.tumblr.com/ progenitor Wadey Wade did a weekly soup review for us. We have regular input from and share badinage with correspondents such as Lord Tilkey, The Mystery Txtr, Daron - The King of South East Minnesota and My Wife Kelly Brook, and we play some of our favourite music to listeners in as far flung places as Barcelona, New Zealand, North Wales and Framlingham. There's even a Facebook group. It really is what community broadcasting was designed for, and the very existence of ICRFM is a continuing tribute to the hard work and long hours put in by countless volunteers from it's very inception as part of the Venue for Ipswich Campaign in the nineteen eighties. It's also jolly handy indeed for me personally, as it gives me a convenient global platform to explain why I think a bloke called Dave, who sent me a message earlier this week calling me "a ***t", is a fucking wanker.