What killed radio?

It's just habit these days, but I still have a radio in every room - kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, livingroom. I also have 2 or 3 in reserve in the hall cupboard.

I got the radio habit when I was still at school. I remember enjoying a Saturday lunchtime show by David Frost before he went all political and pompous. I did my homework on a Sunday with BBC comedy shows running in the background. The Navy Lark (left hand down a bit), Hancock, Round the Horne, Beyond Our Ken. Al Reed was a genius. The only one I couldn't stand was the Clitheroe Kid - a grown man pretending to be a wee boy - too creepy for me.

As a student, during my year in France, I bought a radio and tuned it to BBC World Service. Not madly exciting but it did have world news - and remains one of the few accurate sources of news outside the UK.

When I moved out of Glasgow for work, radio reception was a bit unreliable. I remember on my way home from a parents' evening in Islay only being able to get Raidió Teilifís Éireann and listening to a programme featuring a display of Irish dancing from Cork County Hall. An interesting concept, audio tap dancing...

On a 5 week exile in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, I was forced to buy a radio because my digs had none. I still have that radio in my bathroom, permanently tuned to Radio 2, the only BBC 'national' station I can now stand to listen to.

I have problems with radio these days.

The first is the design of radios. It seems to be impossible to buy a radio that lets you tune in a dozen stations and keep them after a power cut. We don't have many power cuts where I live but it strikes me radio design hasn't really moved on much in the last generation. What I really want is to key in: LBC James O'Brien and get programmes by this journalist saved as they would be on a Sky or Virgin  box. Likewise, I don't want to have to pore over every single BBC radio 4 programme on iPlayer to find programmes featuring Marcus Brigstocke or Mark Steel.

And then there's the problem of the BBC radio output. I've got used to BBC (and ITV and C4 and Sky) TV news being fixated on the Home Counties. (Was there ever a more snobbish expression than that?) But can BBC radio's national stations not have some input from the rest of the UK? I don't listen to Radio Scotland because its 'journalists' are so far removed from the rest of the population. The BBC have a vast network of 'local' stations all over the UK (which we pay for, remember) but on R1, R2, R4 and R5, it's as if that means the BBC can concentrate on the London/South East area and the rest of us don't exist, whereas I think these should be the national and international stations - meaning UK, EU and worldwide.

Now that I think about it, could it be that 'we' never took to being in the EU because on radio and TV news we never heard anything about the workings of the EU - except in relation to the UK? Unless we listen to Eorpa, of course. (Surely there's another series starting soon? The programme can't be missing out on Brexit, can it?)

My final beef about radio is the cost of buying a radio. There are so few companies manufacturing radios, they can name their own price. And what we get in return is pretty poor quality. Just remember, in every end of the world movie you've ever seen, it's not the telly or a computer that keeps the last remaining survivors in touch. It's radio.