At Print Club, where the Sally Can’t Dance magic happens, there is a radio which people occasionally listen to. Usually it’s on BBC Radio 1 or Xfm but over the past few days, it’s been tuned in to BBC Radio 2. This in itself is no bad thing, except that I’ve been privy to BBC veteran Simon Mayo standing in for Chris Evans, which is a bit like soothing your herpes only to find out you’ve got thrush too. Except the thrush is really boring and talks nonsense in a dull, characterless voice.
This is Simon Mayo's "heroic" face
Topics of alarmingly extensive discussion have included whistling (Can Simon Mayo whistle? Can other people in the studio with Simon Mayo whistle? Which kind of whistling is the best kind of whistling?) and boules. Both discussions involved surprisingly in-depth and completely unironic interviews with Britain’s only professional whislter (he’s recorded proper albums which you can buy with actual money if you like that kind of thing and he tours throughout the U.S.) and a semi-professional boules player, who was even more boring than Simon Mayo.
I took my headphones and thrust them so far down my ear canals that they had to be surgically removed and turned the volume of Jay-Z’s “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)” up so loud I forgot my sister’s name.
But even then, I still caught snippets of conversation in between songs, like the boules player being asked (again, completely without irony) whether he thought boules had gotten a more exciting, “sexier” image over the last few years. He responded with an unequivocally tentative “perhaps.” Boules players are serious, decisive people.
