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A slice more lamb
MediaGuardian reports more deeply on George Lamb's victory as a "rising star" of radio at last night's Sonys:
Announcing his win, the Sony Radio Academy praised Lamb's blend of "surrealist humour, irreverent interviewing techniques and tongue-in-cheek antics".
"Although attracting listeners with his engaging banter and quirky approach to presenting, George's diverse music tastes form the heart of his show, taking in dancehall, rap, rave and beyond," the body added.
"Although attracting listeners with his engaging banter and quirky approach to presenting, George's diverse music tastes form the heart of his show, taking in dancehall, rap, rave and beyond," the body added.
The trouble is, this sounds like someone desperately trying to explain why something won rather than a description of the programme. Unless we've missed the redefining of "surrealist" to mean "fifth-generation copy of late period Vic Reeves". And "tongue-in-cheek antics"? Antics? Are they hoping to have Nev The Blue Bear co-host?
It's the "irreverent interviewing technique" that's the real problem, though. Okay, if you're talking to Paul Daniels, fair enough. But a lot of his interviews are with the bands who play the Hub sessions - who, yes, are well chosen and probably account for much of the show's audience (doesn't everyone just spool through to 1 hour 43 and listen for ten minutes?). Why do I want an irreverent interview with a young band who I might not yet have heard an interview with? Okay, you might not want The Ting Tings interviewed as if they were senior clergy, but it would be nice to find out something about them rather than hearing Lamb's piffle-panted queries. And even if you like his line of questioning, his style is poor - he'll ask a question, get a reply, which he'll then repeat back slowly to the interviewee like a confused Brit asking for directions in central Luxembourg, before clucking and doing a Lee Green style "Awwwright".
Sure, there's a time and a place for George Lamb's style of presentation, but it's not on 6Music. The sooner his spiritual forebear Steve Wright retires and Lamb can move off 6, the better.
Not that it matters. You can just put last night's Gideon Coe on the listen agains.
2 comments:
Can you define "attracting" in the phrase "attracting listeners"? Everyone I know thinks he's a unlistenable twat.
But I'm glad he's won an award. Hopefully it will attract the scouts from his spiritual home at capital, who'll lure him off
There's already a trailer in which he puts on his best sincere voice and thanks people for voting for him, followed by a clip of an exiting new feature from the show where loud annoying men bray at each other. I genuinely don't think I can listen to the station until he's gone now in case I hear it again.
The abuses of language about "surrealist humour" and "tongue-in-cheek antics" were all in the blurb on the page which had the details of voting, so they couldn't think of anything new to say about him. The illustrative clip they used is still there and entirely fails to show any evidence of surrealist humour, tongue-in-cheek anything or anything other than two annoying men bellowing at each other.
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