- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Ebury Press; New Ed edition (4 April 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0091882745
- ISBN-13: 978-0091882747
- Product Dimensions: 1.9 x 12.7 x 20.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 431,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Travels With My Radio
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
"Everybody has a favourite station", writes Fi Glover in Travels with My Radio. On arriving in a city for the first time some people get a feel for the place by climbing the tallest building, others browse supermarket shelves or head for the nearest bar--Radio Five presenter Fi Glover asks her taxi driver what they listen to and scans the dial. This obsession has evolved into Travels with My Radio--part biography, part lightweight travelogue and partly an analysis and history of global radio.
Fi's search for the "perfect" station begins dully with visits to Blue Danube Radio in Vienna and a Radio Five football broadcast. However, things get rapidly more interesting with Irish UN troops doubling as volunteer DJs at Camp Shamrock in Southern Lebanon, line-dance-loving community shows in North Carolina and paranormal programmes from the Nevada desert. Out of "sheer curiosity" she heads for Palm Springs to listen to its Frank Sinatra station for retirees and to Monsterrat to hear a station that kept broadcasting right through the volcanic eruption. While she doesn't visit many of the world's 35,000 registered stations, she does experience some wonderfully surreal diversions--from shoe-shopping with Reuters' man in Beirut to driving out of Las Vegas with a stranger called Jolene.
Fi's travelogue resembles her radio shows. The segments are segued together with "a funny thing happened to me on the way to the studio" anecdotes and filled out with amusing asides. She writes as if talking to her listeners: musing over hotel room service, airline meals and rainy GLR outside broadcasts--making you feel that you know her intimately by the end.
Not that Travels with My Radio is all flippant stuff--Fi also touches on serious matters like the role "hate radio" played in the Rwandan genocide or request shows for the "missing" in Columbia. However, overall this is mostly an irreverent, humorous personal rant in the Tony Hawkes Round Ireland with a Fridge vein. --Sarah Champion
Anne Karpf, Guardian
‘Her wit is brut dry’
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Anyone who has ever heard Fi's brilliant Five Live show 'Late Night Live' must surely, at the very least be curious. For those of us who share Fi's passion for radio the book makes compelling reading. Even if you don't you still must read the book. Why? I think it is because whatever media Fi uses she will shine. She is first and formost a communicator. The book shows off her full command of language. She is able to be enormously witty and self-depricating without being trivial and still manages to show her reader or listener immense (and sharply observed) insight into what are often surprising and unusual situations. The book made me laugh more times than a Jasper Carrott stand up show- her idea of a wipe clean crime board in Dalston was quite brilliant. Overall well worth a read.
3 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Where Echo is interested in the connections between the signified and the signifier in language, Glover's book finds itself concerned with the intricate connections between radio and the places she visits. This book is both a commentary on the power of one of the oldestand simplist forms of communication and a guide to some of the worlds most interesting places. One cannot fail to see Glover in some parts of the book as a tour guide with the golden ticket which means she can take her group where the other guides can't or won't. Where other books would say 'move along' Glover's prose shouts 'let's have a look at this then!' Those who comment on the apparent 'inconsistences' of style in this book have failed to notice the death of the linear narrative in modern writing. Glover is pushing travel writing into a similar new dawn to Echo's in the world of fiction and criticism. Glover's literary voice is as friendly and informative as her spoken voice but be warned. This might be a travel book. But, as you know if you've heard her show on Radio 5, there is no taking Fi Glover for a ride. Her journalistic skill is still present within the pages of her book. This is the journalist who made a palestinian stop talking about how bad the people of israel are with just one question. Tune into Glover
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
See You On the Radio
2 Aug 2007
Format:Paperback
Fi Glover, a dj on BBC in England, finds herself between radio gigs for a few months, and decides to see what radio is like in other countries. So she buys a wind-up radio that requires no batteries or electricity and sets off for some places she'd heard were interesting, radio-wise. Travels With My Radio is the result, a hodge-podge of radio adventures in Europe, America, Lebanon, and the Caribbean.
The original title was I Am An Oil Tanker, based on a radio blooper made by a dj reading a breaking news bulletin. I'm glad the title was changed to something more straightforward because I would have ignored the book otherwise, thinking it was a children's book. As it was, I saw the title in a catalog (since Amazon doesn't sell the book, only the audiotape, I don't have any qualms about saying that I found it in The Common Reader catalog) and thought, what a great idea for a book. I always travel with a tiny transistor radio and enjoy hearing the different programs around the world.
Since Glover is in the business, she gains access to stations and radio hosts wherever she goes and this behind-the-scenes look is quite revealing. She sets off determined to meet Howard Stern and Art Bell, as well as some less famous, less quirky radio personalities. At least half the book is set in the U.S., in California, Nevada, New York, and Chicago.
Part of the fun of Travels With My Radio, for me, is the Britishness of it. (The book is not published in the U.S.) It's always fun to see what someone from abroad thinks of your country (Ciao, America by Beppe Severgnini, for example). Glover translates everything American into something her intended readers, Brits, will understand. So we end up with a New York traffic reporter saying "there's one flipped over on the carriageway in Queens," and a Santa Rosa dj saying "another beautiful summer day in Sonoma County with lows of 25 (celsius) on the coast." She misspells unfamiliar placenames: Pahrump, Nevada is consistently spelled Parumph and San Bernardino as San Bernadino. And she decides to take the Greyhound bus to Palm Springs from L.A. Naturally she finds her fellow riders are an odd, scraggly lot, because in this country, no one rides the bus unless they are unable, physically or legally, to drive a car. When she tries to take the city bus within Palm Springs, the bus driver advises her to take a cab.
Even though it is now possible to listen to just about any radio station in the world on the internet, Glover still manages to make her radio travels relevant. Her description of Gene Hackman giving a petulant interview, her arrival and adventures in Las Vegas the very week that Art Bell was quitting his paranormal talk show (coincidence?), her white-knuckle drive through Beirut, all great stories. She should be on the radio.
The original title was I Am An Oil Tanker, based on a radio blooper made by a dj reading a breaking news bulletin. I'm glad the title was changed to something more straightforward because I would have ignored the book otherwise, thinking it was a children's book. As it was, I saw the title in a catalog (since Amazon doesn't sell the book, only the audiotape, I don't have any qualms about saying that I found it in The Common Reader catalog) and thought, what a great idea for a book. I always travel with a tiny transistor radio and enjoy hearing the different programs around the world.
Since Glover is in the business, she gains access to stations and radio hosts wherever she goes and this behind-the-scenes look is quite revealing. She sets off determined to meet Howard Stern and Art Bell, as well as some less famous, less quirky radio personalities. At least half the book is set in the U.S., in California, Nevada, New York, and Chicago.
Part of the fun of Travels With My Radio, for me, is the Britishness of it. (The book is not published in the U.S.) It's always fun to see what someone from abroad thinks of your country (Ciao, America by Beppe Severgnini, for example). Glover translates everything American into something her intended readers, Brits, will understand. So we end up with a New York traffic reporter saying "there's one flipped over on the carriageway in Queens," and a Santa Rosa dj saying "another beautiful summer day in Sonoma County with lows of 25 (celsius) on the coast." She misspells unfamiliar placenames: Pahrump, Nevada is consistently spelled Parumph and San Bernardino as San Bernadino. And she decides to take the Greyhound bus to Palm Springs from L.A. Naturally she finds her fellow riders are an odd, scraggly lot, because in this country, no one rides the bus unless they are unable, physically or legally, to drive a car. When she tries to take the city bus within Palm Springs, the bus driver advises her to take a cab.
Even though it is now possible to listen to just about any radio station in the world on the internet, Glover still manages to make her radio travels relevant. Her description of Gene Hackman giving a petulant interview, her arrival and adventures in Las Vegas the very week that Art Bell was quitting his paranormal talk show (coincidence?), her white-knuckle drive through Beirut, all great stories. She should be on the radio.
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