I’ve been listening to Radio 1 today, I’m ashamed to admit. Well, actually I’m not.

You see, once upon a time when I was about thirteen, I used to only ever listen to Radio 1. Most people did; it was the most listened to station back then. Of course, a downhill spiral happened with rubbish DJs, all the old and good DJs disappearing and the music becomming so bad it was out of touch with what people were actually listening to. In short, Radio 1 became akin to having a rusty screwdriver jabbed in your ear repeatedly.

Their listening figures plummeted. At the same time I discovered Radio 2, and found that was were all the good Radio 1 DJs had gone. No longer was Radio 2 the preserve of the Derek Jacobs-esc DJ playing obscure dross from the 50s and 60s, but instead was like Radio 1 when Radio 1 was good; they played the good stuff that people wanted to hear.

Of late though, Radio 2 has begun to slide again. I suppose everything comes in cycles. In the evenings and at the weekends it is quite bad, and I’ve become fed up and started tuning around. I hate commercial stations with their manufactured and cloned sound and cheesey adverts. Radio 4 was okay at times, but frequently punctuated by boring radio plays that are neither funny nor interesting and obscure documentaries on the three-toed woppit (okay, I made that one up, but you get the picture). Radio 3 was okay, but seemed to try and pretend to be Radio 4 at the boring times a lot. The presenters too had something about them that made classical music seem dreary. I found Classic FM, and despite being a commercial station, I liked its more popularist classical vibe.

Then I discovered, with trepidation, where Radio 1 still lurks on the dial. The music was actually quite good. In fact, for three hours it was very good playing stuff as diverse as 808 state, Metallica and the Shamen.

I could be ashamed to admit that I actually enjoyed three hours of Radio 1. Could this be the re-emergance of Radio 1 as the radio station to listen to again? We shall see. At any rate, I feel secretly young all over again!