7 Reasons

Tag: 5Live

  • 7 Reasons That Peter Allen Should Be On Twitter

    7 Reasons That Peter Allen Should Be On Twitter

    Hello 7 Reasons readers!  I hadn’t intended to write about Peter Allen or Twitter today.  I had originally intended to write about Hitler and the British plot to add oestrogen to his meals but then, in a fleetingly overheard snatch of BBC Radio 5Live’s Drive programme, I heard Anita Anand exhorting broadcasting legend and curmudgeon’s curmudgeon, Peter Allen to open a Twitter account.  Amazing idea, I thought, as all notions of one charismatic pint-sized despot receded from my mind, to be replaced by thoughts of Peter Allen using Twitter.  That would be amazing.  Here are seven reasons why.

    1.  The Username Potential Is Great.  Anita Anand is presenting Drive all week alongside Peter Allen.  Her Twitter-name is @tweeter_anita.  Peter Allen could take the name @tweeter_peter.  Could anything be sweeter than @tweeter_anita helping @tweeter_peter take his first tentative steps on Twitter?  Well, yes, kittens and just about all other things in the known world, but the matching names sound like fun.  They’d be the Howard and Hilda of the Twitterverse.

    2.  We’d Learn More About  Him.  What do we really know about Peter Allen’s life?  Very little.  I checked his Wikipedia entry and this is all of the information contained in the Personal Life section:

    He follows Tottenham Hotspur, owns a barn and has a trademark grunt.

    While every 5Live listener will be aware of the first and third things mentioned, that he owns a barn is a revelation that has piqued my interest and raises many, many questions:

    • Why does Peter Allen own a barn?
    • What colour is Peter Allen’s barn?
    • What does Peter Allen keep in his barn?
    • Where is Peter Allen’s barn?
    • How long has Peter Allen owned a barn?
    • Does Peter Allen allow other people into his barn or is it like a rural Essex-based version of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude where he goes to hone his opinions and polish his hair?
    • Did Peter Allen wake up one morning and think, “You know, what I really need to complete my life is a barn”?
    • Does Peter Allen actually live in the barn?
    • Why can’t I stop thinking about Peter Allen’s barn?

    I’ll try to contain my curiosity about Peter Allen’s barn for the moment.  Essentially we’d get to know more about the man behind the microphone and the barn behind the man behind the microphone.  That would be great.

    3.  He Would Bring Something Different To Twitter.  According to people that spuriously concoct statistics on the internet* rather than researching things properly, the average age of a Twitter user is thirty-one.  That isn’t high enough to make Twitter truly representative of society.  Peter Allen is more than twice that age.  He’d bring a rarely seen perspective of experience and the benefit of time-accrued wisdom to the social network.  Twitter is – in my experience – also predominantly a happy and joyful medium.  He’d soon sort that too.

    4.  He Would Be Better Informed.  During Drive, he regularly solicits listener feedback via text and email.  If he were on Twitter, he’d get feedback 24 hours a day, whether he’d asked for it or not.  He’d get feedback about travel, he’d get feedback about news, he’d get feedback about sport, he’d get questions about the barn from me, he’d get tweets from his colleagues poking fun at him (which would stop Aasmah getting out of practice during her week off) and he’d get feedback about things that he didn’t even know he wanted feedback about.  Peter Allen would be better informed than he’d ever been in his life.  If you need an opinion on anything, it will find you on Twitter.

    5.  There Would Be Pictures.  Radio is a non-visual medium, so the ability to post pictures on Twitter would probably be liberating for Peter Allen and enlightening for the rest of us.  We’d get pictures of Essex, we’d get pictures of the studio, we’d get pictures of the most bountiful and luxuriant silver barnet in the known universe and – most importantly – we’d get pictures of the barn.  Please.

    6.  He Would Be Good On Twitter.  A lifetime spent in journalism and broadcasting is the ideal preparation for the successful use of Twitter.  After all, the distillation of the essence of a news story down to a headline or the dogged pursuit of an insightful quote from a radio interviewee are pretty much the same skills that are involved in condensing a thought, experience or opinion down to 140 characters on Twitter.  Peter Allen’s tweets are likely to be provocative, incisive and sharp.  Or at the very least he’d be able to say “Go away!” with alacrity and authority when confronted with the ninth question of the day about the barn or the fifteenth about his hair.  Probably by tweeting “Go away!”.

    7.  His Presence Would Provide Encouragement For Curmudgeons.  Having such a high-profile, self-confessed Twitter-sceptic jump into the fray would be an interesting experience for the man himself, his listeners and Twitter users.  What better way to introduce other sceptics, doubters, technophobes and the plain hostile to the medium than to hear someone with a similar mindset coming to terms with its use?  He might even learn to love it or, at the very least, loathe it less; which possibly amounts to the same thing in his world.  Peter Allen could blaze a trail for the timid, the wary and the sceptical to become late-adopters of Twitter and would probably entertain his listeners royally into the bargain.  I’ve loved listening to him since Radio 5 (as was) started and I can’t help thinking I’d enjoy his presence on Twitter every bit as much.  Anita Anand is right.  #letsgetpeterallenontwitter as soon as possible.  Then we can teach him what that hashtag means.

    *Source: 7Reasons.org, 2011.

     

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons Cash Peters is Awesome

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons Cash Peters is Awesome

    It’s Saturday and, as is traditional at the weekend, the 7 Reasons team are off somewhere avoiding DIY and trying not to see the inside of a shoe shop.  So, sitting up straight in an immaculately pressed dinner jacket on the 7 Reasons sofa today poised to inform, educate and entertain us, is regular guest poster, Dr Simon Percy Jennifer Best.  Take it away Simon.

    Many of you won’t have heard of Cash Peters. If you are one of these people, you’re missing out. He is awesome.  Here’s why.

    Author, television presenter and BBC Radio 5 Live correspondent, Cash Peters

    1.  Television Reviews One of Cash’s jobs is reviewing US television for the BBC Radio 5 Live programme, Up All Night, though sometimes reviews appear to be an afterthought during his weekly twenty five minute slot. He talks about a seemingly random assortment of stuff including; the neighbours he suspected of being in a witness protection programme, burying a lady’s dog behind his garage, the ghost in his house, celebrity encounters in LA, the space shuttle and Idaho. But it is when reviewing television that he is at his best. He described Downton Abbey as “Upstairs Downstairs with a bit more upstairs” and the ABC show Skating with the Stars as “Rather like Dancing with the Stars, except with no dancing and no stars”. He has also managed to mock Piers Morgan about the slump in his ratings. Cash Peters is awesome because his TV reviews are laugh out loud funny.

    2.  Longevity. Cash’s regular BBC 5 live slot has been running for thirteen years. This is an impressively long time for any radio feature where things generally last for a few weeks or, if they’re really special, about a year before being dropped. The only other slot that has been running this long on late night radio is Dotun Adebayo’s Virtual Bookshelf.* Despite this Wogan-esque longevity Cash still has all his own hair, has never worn a cardigan, and the slot still feels fresh and interesting. Cash Peters is awesome because his slot – though long lasting – remains vibrant.

    3.  Location, Location, Location. Cash is probably most famous, worldwide, for his all-too-short-lived travel show: Stranded with Cash Peters. In this show, he travelled to lots of exotic locations and basically lived rough. However, that isn’t why he’s is awesome, it’s his radio broadcasting that marks him out.  After using a studio in LA for years (where he was basically squatting) he switched to broadcasting from home. At first he did this from inside his sauna, until it was discovered that this made him sound like he was talking from inside a small wooden box.** He now broadcasts from his living room floor surrounded by cables and his laptop.  He has to put up with numerous technical difficulties but despite this he always entertains.  Cash Peters is awesome: He is his own sound engineer, producer and studio manager.

    4.  Timing. Cash’s slot on BBC Radio 5 Live is broadcast on a Tuesday night/Wednesday morning at 2:35 am. This is not exactly a prime time slot.  It is, however, the prime slot for insomniacs, lorry drivers, shift workers and milkmen. All you get on TV at this time is Quiz Call, reruns of Bergerac and Countryfile with sign language. However, the fact that he is on in the middle of the night and doesn’t get the recognition or listenership that he deserves doesn’t diminish his enthusiasm or the originality of his material. Cash Peters is awesome because he’s brilliant on radio when the rest of the world is asleep.

    5.  Diet. Cash Peters likes cake. “Big deal” you might say, “So do I”. Cash eats a lot of cake: Then every so often he does a liver flush or a master cleanse, which is basically a two week regime of torturing your body to discover you have been walking around with a conga eel, a vat of grease and a sizeable quantity of Inca gold in your gut. Cash purges himself, blogs about it, and tells you how healthy he feels as a result.  He’s so evangelistic and compelling on the subject that he gets right up to the point of making you think it is a good idea, before he returns to the cake, hamburgers and buffet food, which makes everyone else feel better despite not having been through a liver flush. Cash Peters is awesome because, unlike other celebrities, he is not on a constant guilt inducing diet.

    6.  Travel. Cash is also a travel writer and broadcaster (or rather he was, he’s now given it up for life in LA with his partner, his cats and his ex-ghost***). He has authored two books, Gullible’s Travels and Naked in Dangerous Places. The second is connected with the TV series Stranded with Cash Peters (currently showing on Discovery Travel and on Living at 5 am and 5:30 am respectively (see what I mean about a milkman’s prime time viewing?)). In these books Cash went to such enticing places as the Museum of Dirt, the Precious Moments Chapel and even further afield to Vanuatu and Alaska. He says on the cover of one book that he eats little and is allergic to just about everything, but still he went and, what is more, he wrote about going. I don’t think he features on the Solvang, California tourist  board’s Christmas card list but that is a small price to pay. Cash Peters is awesome because he visited lots of inhospitable, godforsaken and frankly boring places so that you and I don’t have to.

    7.  Listener Engagement. Cash often jokes with Rhod Sharp (the venerable presenter of Up All Night) that, given the timing, their slot only gets fifteen listeners. This isn’t false modesty but their genuine belief. Sort of. One day Cash set out to find these 15. Not only did he find them (via the medium of Twitter) but he assigned them numbers and established a list. Unsurprisingly the list grew beyond the original 15. Cash has promised to use these listeners to storm town hall meetings, picket book-signings by celebrities, or just to disrupt a taping of Strictly Come Dancing. I for one am looking forward to going for Craig Revel Horwood with a pitchfork. So what if you’re not on the list? Well this is just an example of how Cash engages with his listeners . He’s responds to those fans who tweet him and write into the show. Last year a listener – Brit Homes – wrote to Rhod complaining about the “rubbish programmes” Cash reviews. Did Cash listen to her points and respond in a calm and reasoned manner?  Not a bit of it. Cash’s response was the withering:  “Well Brit, you clearly have no taste”. Cash Peters is awesome because he engages with his listeners, both positively and negatively but always to the benefit of those he interacts with and always in an entertaining manner****.

     

    *Actually it’s only be going for about six months it just feels like it’s been running since Jimmy Young was on the BBC home service.

    ** This shouldn’t have come as a surprise. He was doing exactly that.

    *** They don’t have a ghost anymore, they had their house cleansed.

    ****Yes Brit I do believe that you needed to be told you have bad taste.

     

  • 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Share a Bed With Me

    7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Share a Bed With Me

    The 7 Reasons Sofa with a big, red arrow

    Hi, I’m Marc.  I’m half of the 7 Reasons team – the one with the feet.  Some of you probably imagine that after a long day on the 7 Reasons sofa, in the manner of Laurel and Hardy or Morecambe and Wise, Jon and I put on our jim-jams and nightcaps and retire to the 7 Reasons bed for some hard-earned slumber.  This is not true, please un-think it.  The reality is, in fact, more bizarre than that.

    I would just like to make it clear that today’s 7 Reasons post is not 7 reasons that you shouldn’t share a bed with our website, and it isn’t 7 reasons that you shouldn’t share a bed with Jon (you’ll probably have your own reasons for that), it’s 7 Reasons that you shouldn’t share a bed with me – sorry if that upsets any plans.

    Red and white image of an insomniac man with alarm clock

    1.  Reading.  I read in bed.  My bedtime reading matter of choice is often a large, heavy, hardback biography or a similarly weighty historical tome.  Consequently, holding a book tires my arms – especially when I’m fidgeting (I do a lot of fidgeting) between positions.  At some point I will use the nearest person as a book-rest – their head is the most practical place to rest my book as it is at my eye-level.  I’m told that this is annoying.

    2.  Decapitation.  I like to have two pillows to myself – one placed on top of the other.  In my struggle to get comfortable/block out sound/block out light/keep my head warm/move into the night’s eighty-third position, I often place my head between the pillows.  I find this position comfortable.  If you wake up sharing a bed with me, you will briefly believe that you are sharing the bed with a headless man.  This will startle you.  Every time.

    3.  Radio.  I listen to the radio in bed – BBC Radio 5Live’s Up All Night programme – it keeps me informed, educated and entertained while I am failing to sleep.  This is fine until 2:40am on Wednesdays.  That’s when Cash Peters is on.  That’s when the sound of my (poorly) stifled laughter will wake you up.  You will probably wonder why tears are streaming down my face; you’re likely to wonder why I’m biting the duvet (this is for your benefit, you’re welcome); you may wonder if I’m having a funny turn; you will definitely wonder if the spare bed is unoccupied.

    4.  Soft toys.  If I should find a cuddly-toy in, or even near, the bed, I feel compelled to tuck it in.  If you are not expecting to wake up flanked by a slumbering bear, a recumbent penguin, a sleepy elephant or a dozing handbag (I get confused in the dark), it can be quite disconcerting.

    5.  Curling.  Not everything I do in bed is annoying.  I often curl up into a tiny ball under the covers.  This hampers my breathing somewhat, so I fashion myself a small air-hole in the side of the duvet and poke my nose out through it.  This, I am told, is one of the cutest things in the world.  And it probably is, right up until you try to move my painstakingly-positioned sheets.  Then you’ll find yourself involved in a life-and-death tussle for control of the duvet.  And I always win.

    6.  Experimentation.  During the night many important questions will pop into my head, prompting me to experiment on the nearest sleeping person.  What if I poke my finger in her ear?  What if I blow in her eye?  What if I drip water on her forehead?  What if I tie her hair to the headboard and shout “Boo!?”  What if I loudly mimic her breathing pattern for several minutes then stop abruptly?  What if I coo like a pigeon and flap the top of the duvet around?  The possibilities are limitless.

    7.  Sleep.  Eventually, I will wear myself out and fall asleep.  Don’t think that’s where the fun ends though.  It’s then that I think up entire 7 Reasons posts that make no sense at all and get chased around the house by a horse.  As I flee the dream-horse my legs will flail and I may emit noises – I might even say, “Crikey, a horse!” again.  I have also been observed barking like a dog and trying to dig a hole in the mattress with my front paws…er…hands.  I meant hands.  By this stage, you may not know what time it is, but you’ll probably decide that it’s time to get up, which is great as I’d love a coffee.

  • 7 Reasons AC Milan vs Manchester United was a Disappointment

    7 Reasons AC Milan vs Manchester United was a Disappointment

    1.  Pancake Day.  Who the hell schedules a match on Pancake Day?  After all, no one plays on Christmas Day or on Easter Sunday.  That’s because important holidays should, rightly, be observed.  I had to listen to it on the radio while making the pancakes.  Why couldn’t they have played it on Valentine’s Day instead?  I love football, after all.

    2.  Hype.  No mere football match could possibly live up to the preposterous hyperbole that preceded this game.  For a week on BBC 5Live they trailed it as “David Beckham’s AC Milan vs Manchester United”.  David Beckham’s AC Milan?  Am I missing something?  The LA Galaxy player who is on loan at AC Milan?  That David Beckham?  The David Beckham who isn’t the captain, manager or owner of AC Milan?  The David Beckham who doesn’t usually start for AC Milan?  Silvio Berlusconi owns AC Milan and he’s the President of Italy, so to describe the match as “Italy vs Manchester United” would have more accurate and less preposterous than “David Beckham’s AC Milan vs Manchester United”.

    3.  Palestine.  Fergie’s tactics were odd to say the least.  Both Graham Taylor and Alan Green remarked on it.  He set Manchester United up with a five man midfield and had Park Ji-Sung marking the Palestine Liberation Organisation.  I’m no tactical genius, but even I could see that Milan’s goal threat did not come from the P.L.O.

    4.  The Referee.  Early in the first half, Ronaldinho went down on the edge of the opposition penalty area.  The ref didn’t give Milan a free kick.  Technically he was correct, there was no foul, but he obviously hadn’t read the script.  Has he never seen a Hollywood movie?  Of course he should have let Beckham have a free kick from the edge of the area.  The occasion demanded it.  Wayne Rooney obviously hadn’t read the script either.

    5.  Alan Green.  He came back from some time off to resume his monomaniacal ranting about David Beckham.  Among the first words Green said on taking over the microphone during the first half (after his customary dig at Sir Alex Ferguson)  were, “Beckham, in 24 minutes, has taken two free kicks”, he went on to complain that he had been, “static in the midfield”.  There were 21 other players he could have mentioned, but no, not Alan Green.  The one occasion on which Alan Green didn’t mention Beckham, was when the Man United fans sang “One David Beckham” as he left the pitch.  I don’t know what Beckham ever did to Alan Green, but I hope he does it again.  Frequently and with vigour.

    6.  Behaviour.  As I write this it is over eleven hours since the match ended.  There have been no reports of players drunkenly cruising the autostrada in golf carts or capsizing pedalos in Lake Como.  Why can’t footballers act more like the gentlemen that play cricket and rugby?  Football players are over-hyped, over-paid and over-behaved.

    7.  Excitement.  There were five goals and a last minute sending off, Rooney was brilliant – it was an enthralling and exciting match.  You might wonder how this is disappointing.  Let me assure you, it’s bloody disappointing when you’ve got a piece of paper in front of you with the heading “7 Reasons That AC Milan vs Manchester United was a Disappointment”, which is just as well, really.

  • 7 Reasons to Watch Rachael Hodges on BBC News

    7 Reasons to Watch Rachael Hodges on BBC News

     

    Radio legend and BBC Radio 5Live newsreader, Rachael Hodges, has recently begun presenting the sport on BBC News, the BBC’s 24 hour rolling news television channel.  She’s not sure when she’s on, but it will definitely be today, and tomorrow…probably.  Here are 7 reasons to watch.

    1. USP. Rachael Hodges has this rather wonderful quality that means she can take even the most mundane of things and turn them into something rather beautiful. Take Richard Bacon for example. Richard Bacon would not be where he is now if it wasn’t for Rachael Hodges. Just ask anyone who listened to Bacon’s late-night BBC Radio 5Live show last year. We are hoping she has a similar effect on Kevin Pietersen.

    2. Anglo-Welsh. You wouldn’t know this from listening to her, but Rachael Hodges is in fact Welsh. There are two reasons she sounds English. One is because her country of birth lost the rugby at the weekend and secondly the majority of her audience is English. As she needs to stay in the job she is more than willing to cater for the masses.

    3. Audible. Not every newsreader/sports-presenter can actually read-out-loud properly. They are either stammering or spitting or fainting at the sight of the Russian name coming up in the next paragraph. Rachael Hodges, though, is a pro. She has everything written out phonetically. You won’t even notice.

    4. Appearance. Rachael Hodges is pretty. Very pretty. While it might be a shallow reason to watch her, it is a reason none-the-less. And no one is going to convince us it is not the reason you are going to tune in every 15 minutes. Not that the 7 Reasons team will be watching. They value their lives too much.

    5. Nickname. Rachael Hodges has a nickname. The Hodges. Fiona Bruce isn’t called The Bruce is she? Jon Snow isn’t called The Snow. Rachael Hodges has a loyal group of followers called The Hodgehuggers. Ever heard of The Brucecuddlers? Or The Snowstrokers? Exactly.

    6. Competition. Rachael Hodges actually competes in sport. She competes in triathlons and is running the London Marathon this year*. Most sports presenters wouldn’t know one end of a hockey racquet from the other and would curl up and die in a wheezing heap if called upon to run for a bus. Assuming they needed a bus to take them to the next pub, of course.

    7. Australia. British sports presenters are, on the whole, a dour bunch whose bulletins feature despair, crisis, pessimism and more despair. When our boys go into sporting events they do so with the flames of public fervour already extinguished by the mewling wet-blankets that preview our national sporting events for us. Australian sport presenters, on the other hand, stir up public expectation. “Our blokes are gonna slaughter the Poms” is considered a perfectly acceptable match preview in Australia, where they tend not to get too hung up on detail, analysis or pre-match excuses.   Rachael is going out with an Australian. Perhaps it will rub off.

    *You can sponsor Rachael’s London Marathon attempt here. http://www.justgiving.com/rachael-hodges

    Picture of Rachael Hodges on the bicycle leg of a triathlon taken at Dorney Lake by SussexSportPhotography.com (Thanks Ant!).