My funny bone is on active rather than passive mode today.<\/p>\n
BBC Radio 2’s daily competition to find the network’s most narrow-minded listener (the Jeremy Kyle<\/span> Vine show) yielded some comedy gold.<\/p>\n I’d link to the segment concerned but\u00c2\u00a0the sound file will vanish in 24 hours, so I’ll just have to try and recapture the moment.<\/p>\n The topic of the phone-in was ‘middle lane hoggers’.<\/p>\n Nothing to do with a genus of politically-centrist porcines.<\/p>\n This was all about that rare<\/span> all-too-common breed of motorist that refuses to move to the left-hand lane.<\/p>\n When the phone-in started I expected the segment to be a one-sided tirade against (and I’m generalising and using my overactive imagination here) ‘doddery old fools who shouldn’t be in charge of a pencil let alone controlling a machine capable of killing people at speeds approaching 100mph’.<\/p>\n That’s what I expected.<\/p>\n But…<\/p>\n Jeremy Kyle<\/span> Vine received a call from a self-confessed middle lane hogger.<\/p>\n No, really!<\/p>\n Stop tittering at the back.<\/p>\n The driver in question was, he admitted, in his 60s.<\/p>\n He also said that in his opinion he’s a safer driver now than he was in his 20s.<\/p>\n What does that say for how he drove forty years ago was my first thought.<\/p>\n My second was, what does that say for the driving test of forty years ago.<\/p>\n But our hero, the middle lane hogger, was robust in his defence of middle lane hogdom.<\/p>\n He quoted a section from the Highway Code stating that the left-hand lane is for slow traffic, the middle lane is for normal traffic and the right-hand lane is for overtaking.<\/p>\n The trouble is that the Highway Code has been extensively rewritten since the early 1970s.<\/p>\n It now states that the middle and the right-hand lane are both<\/em> overtaking lanes.<\/p>\n The Highway Code also adds that traffic should use the left-hand lane when not overtaking<\/em>.<\/p>\n But our middle lane hogger refused to accept this updated piece of wisdom.<\/p>\n Refused to take it on board even when told that the Highways Agency is going to target middle lane hoggers.<\/p>\n Anyway, the segment made me laugh.<\/p>\n Back to the point.<\/p>\n Earlier I listened (via BBC Radio 7s ‘Listen Again’ facility) to a very young episode of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue.<\/p>\n I’ve been listening to ISIHAC for three decades (off and on).<\/p>\n I used to listen as a schoolboy.<\/p>\n Paul (Ethel) Harrington and I used to spend hours trying to fathom the rules to Mornington Crescent.<\/p>\n We admired the wit of the teams and Humph’s deft comedy touch at the radiophonic tiller.<\/p>\n It was pure entertainment for one’s sense of humour.<\/p>\n It was also a memory best left undisturbed.<\/p>\n The 1974 episode I listened to was, by comparison with today’s fayre, staid.<\/p>\n Boring.<\/p>\n Unfunny.<\/p>\n Embarassing.<\/p>\n It made me realise just how much tighter the modern version is.<\/p>\n The timing is sharper.<\/p>\n Yet the teams are more relaxed.<\/p>\n More…<\/p>\n Irreverent.<\/p>\n And in the case of Humph’s stewardship – dirtier.<\/p>\n I believe that the late Willie Rushton, founding member of ISIHAC would be proud of the way the show has developed.<\/p>\n Speaking as a loyal listener, I know I am.<\/p>\n Anyway, some more comedy.<\/p>\n