I used to listen to 6Music a fair bit.

I bought a DAB radio three years ago, on the recommendation of Huw Williams [former Minister For Cool Welsh Pop -- and lesser-known as singer with the Poo Sticks], and developed a strong attachment for Phil Jupitus, Gideon Coe & Marc Riley.

However that DAB radio [one of the posh & expensive Roberts ones] broke a week after its warranty ran out. Typical.

I was a bit stumped for cash when the Roberts went down, so I bought a portable DAB that is probably the most useless and frustrating device I have ever treated myself to. And that includes my Yamaha FX500 guitar multieffects processor -- the only thing I have ever owned that I was glad got stolen.

The portable DAB would microwave my brain with ring modulated static squelch whenever there was an obstruction to the signal. For obstruction read 'anything made of atoms'.

Crisp bags would make Gideon Coe's single of the week sound like something Soundhog would turn off because it sounded too outrÈ.

I ditched the portable DAB and stopped listening to 6music. My broadband connection isn't the best, either, you see. And I don't have S*y because I'm not giving Murdoch any of my money ever [well, I used to -- but no more!].

But, a few weeks' ago, I had to call BT because I was having terrible problems accessing my e-mail.

I call BT Customer Service as the ultimate last resort. I would rather file one of my testicles down to a size where it would fit easily up one of my nostrils so that I could snort it than have to talk to one of BT's customer service representatives.

They are shitter than shit.

They are the service industry equivalent of Dirk Kuyt.

A lot of huffing and puffing, and you know that they are doing their absolute best, it's just that they're crippled from the off by being utterly unsuited to the job in hand.

I would make a better right winger than Dirk.

Sorry, Dirk. I like you as a person, but... you know the rest, don't you, mate?

So I was at my wit's end when I called BT. It was a Sunday and I knew that there were pieces of music and e-mails to gather together before that night's show, but I couldn't get hold of them.

I was cynical and spiteful and the worst kind of human being [relative to a phone call, I wasn't murdering people or forcing them to listen to Adele, or anything] to the customer service rep in India. To digress, what are the chances, do you think, of India waging a terrible war on the UK within the next decade? One rude bastard call to BT will be the straw that snaps the elephant's back [they don't have camels, do they?]. They will rain nuclear warheads down on us because of all of the rudeness that has been visited upon them by frustrated UK customers. I'm sure that the Empire will be cited as a reason too. We'll deserve the fire and fallout, though. Well, I know I will.

The thing is, and I'll write this in capitals because it is the most surprising thing that has happened to me ever: THE B.T. CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE FIXED MY PROBLEM.

He did.

I haven't been this surprised since Shevchenko missed that penalty in Istanbul in 2005.

Or since a passing bird shat in my mouth in 2001.

The third millennium has been very kind to me, so far.

The fix for the e-mail problem also speeded up my internet connection to accepted broadband speeds. I'll forget, for the moment, that I'm paying for '* up to 8Mbps' because actually getting almost 2Mbps is woo and a hoo for me, I can tell you.

So, to cut a long & tortuous story a mite shorter: I can now listen to the radio via the internet at home.

The first thing I did was listen to Radio Wales, of course.

Then I thought I would relight my relationship with 6Music.

I didn't bother looking to see who was presenting. I just clicked the 'Listen Live' link and got on with my correspondence... but it wasn't Gideon Coe, as I expected. Some puerile turds were swapping comedic one-liners in the most embarrassing pidgin patois imaginable. Now, I more than most know that otherwise fine radio shows can get railroaded into a ditch filled with shite on occasion. So I carried on listening, assuming that it was a sketch-gone-wrong, or something ironic thats irony was beyond me because of my shock at BT having just disturbed the equilibrium of the entire universe. But the sketch stretched itself out relentlessly. That was the show.

You listen to 6music for music, don't you? It's there in the name of the station. I think I heard one track in half an hour, and that was something very obvious like the Clash. I know that the words black, pot and kettle are arranging themselves somewhere in your cerebral cortex, but my smugness and self-gratifying verbosity has declined of late, hasn't it? Tell me if you think otherwise. Seriously. [I'm referring to the radio show, not here, obviously!]

I shut my browser down and shuddered.

It was a horrible listening experience.

Fast forward a couple of weeks to yesterday.

I've had an introspective couple of weeks. There are people who criticise my show. I understand that. It can't be to everyone's tastes. But I do do *my* best, as do the contributors. There is an integrity at work, so some criticisms hurt. The most hurtful criticism comes from bands that I have rejected for airplay. I can count the ones who have been most poisonous and vituperative on the fingers of one-and-a-half hands, over 14 years, but the criticisms still scar. It's what I call the Russell Hunter syndrome... but I won't go into that here. Maybe next time, you lucky sods.

The typical, nasty response to me turning one of these bands down is for them to listen to a show and spam me remorselessly via txt and e-mail saying things like: I lv the Lizzies! Why aren't you playing them. There msic is gr8r than this SHIT!

There's a band from Mold, now sadly defunct, called Hollowflame whose 'manager', Alan Wainwright, took offence to me calling them generic. They were a pop-punk-by-numbers band with no small amount of competence, but only a deluded fool would deny that they were generic.

He wrote a series of bilious e-mails to me analysing and describing, in great detail, the shortcomings of my show... my amateurishness, the shitness of the music that I play, how out-of-touch I am... blah blah blah. Why hadn't he levelled the same amount of scrutiny at his band?

And if the show was so shit, why have these people been so keen -- initially -- to be featured on it?

The contradictions and hypocrisies are there for anyone of any sense to see.

But dealing with a faceless radio presenter, sending them your dreams, the recordings that have so much work and craft invested in them, is an incredibly emotive thing to do. And for me to then not get it... well, it's EXACTLY like my dealings with BT Customer Service.

Fuck, that's a horrible thought.

And I have had to tolerate a lot of criticism recently. Well, I say a lot. It's a storm of shit from 2 different people. Both of whose bands I have refused to play on account of not thinking they are any good. No one else is playing them. No one -- NO ONE -- else has shown any interest in their musings. But because I entered into a dialogue with them and, in the case of Blackwood's 'No Sleep Police', told them that I didn't want to play them because they sounded like a third rate G.L.C. with much worse jokes and much less imaginative productions [I wasn't *that* harsh, initially, but they are the facts], I have to tolerate this remorseless storm of shit.

Anyway -- TO GET TO THE POINT -- I logged on to my computer yesterday and saw that I had been invited to join the 'Get George Lamb off 6 Music' facebook group. It didn't seem fair to me. Man has to make a living. Are the people wielding the torches in this particular mob prepared to level the same amount of critical scrutiny at the their own work?

Well, they said they were after I posted the same question in their group.

Of course, I was reacting like this because of my own particular sensitivities. I hadn't even heard George Lamb's show. I had just reacted in a knee-jerk fashion. Letting my own insecurities dictate my behaviour.

I thought I had better check out this presenter who I had tried to show some solidarity with.

You've worked out the rest, haven't you?

Shit in my mouth again. Back to the top of the page...