UKH

We've all had that experience of seeing someone in the flesh or on TV and thinking he/she's a dead ringer for someone else. But what about voice doubles? I've been enjoying a series of 15 minute programmes on radio 4 called Profile, presented by Mark Coles (very good listen, they are too).  Without fail, every time I hear his first few words my heart skips a beat and I think"That's John Peel back from the dead".

It turns out that a regular poster on here is the voice double of radio 4's Tim Harford. 

He suffers from something of an irritating lilt to his voice that reminds me of Evan Davis (let's hope it's just his "broadcasting" voice). I want to tell him, "You don't need to go up and down all the time in that annoying rhythm to sound interesting."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000n4vq

I don't mind that as long as it doesn't include the antipodean terminal uptick. What I do mind is the ever increasing tendency of serious programmes about often complex issues feeling they need to have silly and pointless "background" music. Surely anyone wanting listen to, say, analysis of vote rigging in the USA doesn't need keeping on board with musical tit-bits. Speaking as someone with much less than perfect hearing these days, I find this is the aural equivalent of magazines printing text in black on the dark areas of a photograph.

Victor Meldrew

I've recently started to listen to RTE 1 on long wave, comes through well in the Penrith area.  I stumbled on it while testing a 1960 Ever Ready (Berec) Auto-Portable in a picnic box style which I'd just fixed.  It's on 252kHz just up from R4 and it usually leaves me with a smile on my face as an antidote to the constant bitching and anti-man stuff on R4 through the day.

English language radio from the EU, who would have thunk it?

I must be listening to a different radio than you.

There should be more bitching on R4. I listen to it all day and hardly hear any.