Sandi Toksvig,The One Show and all that . . .

I hesitated a while before going off on this one.  Having discovered Radio 4 at about 30 years old, and still listening everyday now, 158 years later, it has always (along with BBC 4) represented to me that solid, quality side of life that surprises, delights and informs.

But I have a problem.

Or rather two, (damn - now I've gone and mixed-up numbers for numbers, and typed numbers, and my backspace key was recently vapourised by a passing death-ship from the plant 'Aaarggo' - so you're stuck with it)

Blimmey! Where was I? - oh yeah, TWO problems:

Sandi Toksvig and 'The One Show' - these two are not linked, incidentally, in anything other than the fact that their . . . stuff, comes out of the same hole in my radio when the little light says 92.9, in rather a cool blue tone.

You see satire is good.  But this sneering, complicit, self-conglatutory mush is disturbing in the extreme - and funny, it seriously isn't. Bendan O'Neill (Guardian)  writes: really only massaging our prejudices, stroking our cynicism, rather than challenging us to think about the world differently. Alexander Pope said satirists should "without sneering teach the rest to sneer". Today, in our era of sneering, satire risks becoming a self-congratulatory, back-patting display of shared public cynicism.

It says all I want to - and it's here >> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/05/comedy

and Sandie?

I don't like her voice, her sneering manner, and I hate that paused "erm . . . " after a delivery to give us time to laugh.   Don't bother, it's very rarely funny enough for that.