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’
Wendy Holden
‘Brilliant…Bill Bryson but better looking’
Stephen Armstrong, The Times
‘Witty and feisty to boot’
Sue Arnold, Observer
‘Warm, spontaneous…with admirable sensitivity’
Book Description
'Her wit is brut dry' Anne Karpf, Guardian. B format paperback of much-praised large format
Product Description
Fi Glover is a bit of a traveller. She loves hotels, air stewardesses and fluffy towelling robes, but above all, she loves radio. One night, whilst recording BBC 2's Travel Show, she found herself in the far reaches of Texas, suffering from a night of line-dancing and an over-enthusiastic radio DJ. She started to wonder about all the places she'd ended up in, all the radio DJs she'd listened to, the way a new radio station made her feel at home and yet gave her the fastest insight into an alien city or community. She decided to take a journey around the world collecting hotel freebies and DJs - from the charismatic Rose who guided Montserrat through the tragedy of their volcanic eruption to Dr Laura, who talks the dysfunctional of New York through their psychotic days; from the peace-keeping corps of Beirut and their radio-station-in-a-hut to the despairing English football broadcasters in their radio-station-above-a-caf- in Brussels 2000. From Somerset to Beirut, Las Vegas to Vienna, Travels With My Radio is a wonderfully funny and strangely moving quest to find the perfect radio station.
About the Author
Previously a much-loved voice of GLR, Fi Glover is currently the host of BBC Radio Five's subversive Sunday Service, and has presented several series of BBC 2's somewhat less subversive Travel Show. (20020220)
Excerpted from Travels with My Radio by Fi Glover. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
8 I just love your value system
New York
WOR is housed in a huge skyscraper on Broadway. At eight in the morning me and about a thousand New Yorkers are racing down the street in some kind of a competition to see who can get wherever they are going first. I've stepped up my own pace now from my Montserrat dawdle - this has been helped by ordering the kind of coffee that Gareth Hunt could only shake a handful of coffee beans at (Americano - double shot - no cream with a bit of cold water on the top) and had a packet of regular fries for breakfast.
It was strange to come back to New York. It felt a bit like I was coming home. I recognised the route back into the city - I even thought I recognised the car lot with the 'it runs' 700 dollar heap in it. The only thing I didn't recognise was the Ambassadors because they were sold out and I'd had to book into the Comfort Inn and few blocks away. It seemed very comfortable and I was definitely in it.
By comparison to Palm Springs everyone had too many clothes on - but that would be the difference between the desert sun and the drizzle. I'd promised Fitz that I'd come back to visit him in Palm Springs again as we said our goodbyes outside the Ritz Carlton. I was pretty sure that I would - if I'm ever in the unhappy position of being on the receiving end of an affidavit then I'm first on the plane. I flew to New York the next day with a couple of flannels from the Hyatt Grand Champions that I didn't think they'd miss too much. I had my appointment with problems to keep.
So I'm charging past the huge bill boards for Elton John's Aida, past the queues already forming for something on ESPN - the Sports Channel and over the 41st street junction to 1440 Broadway. Deborah, Dr Joy Browne's very helpful assistant, had said take the elevator to the 22nd floor and then walk down the corridor to the glass doors and just knock. Deborah sounded very much like the kind of efficient New York woman who could organise your life in one of those tiny filofaxes and still have time to colour-coordinate her trouser suits of a morning. Security is tight at this station and you can't just walk in like you might be able to in Palm Springs. So I follow her instructions to the letter and after tapping gently on the door a lady dressed in a blue trouser suit comes over to let me in.
'Hi, you must be Deborah ... I'm Fi Glover - I've come to talk to Dr Joy?'
Slight pause here
'I am Dr Joy Browne.'
Ahem. Right. Flying start.
Dr Joy Browne hosts the 4th most listened to talk show in the whole of the United States of America. I am very impressed by this. Although she broadcasts from New York she too has reached that zenith of broadcasting and is syndicated. She is only beaten in the rankings by Russ Limbaugh, Howard Stern and Dr Laura Schlessinger. She gets over six million listeners and, as I had heard for myself, her callers seem to love her deeply. .
Given that Dr Joy is an enormous feature in the radio world that I find myself in she is remarkably normal. By this I mean that I am not asked to sit in an ante room and wait for her. No one has asked to see the questions first and Deborah appears to be her only assistant. The walls in her office looking out over Broadway are covered with certificates. The thermo printing industry in New York must love her. There's several talk show host awards, some charity ones thanking her for her participation - I think I spotted a book one too and lots of those radio societies that have meetings about themselves, for themselves and give out prizes to themselves.
Dr Joy looks me up and down.
'And what is this outfit we are wearing today?'
It's a good point. I had noticed quite a few New Yorkers clocking me as I strode down Broadway. The uniform for young ladies in this city is obviously the trouser suit and the colour is black. If you want to be a little risqué then dark blue will do. I have on a pair of low-slung white trousers, a white kind of tunic thing over the top of them and some decidedly dodgy trainers which are beginning to require hanging outside the window of an evening. I've topped this all off with a diagonally slung rucksack which seemed a great idea at the time but I know that several pickpockets have come remarkably close to opening it and robbing me while my back was turned, i.e. all the time. The effect of this ensemble is that I look like a Hare Krishna devotee. All I need is an orange sarong and I too can part the crowds in Oxford Street.
Dr Joy has a wry smile on her face. 'All you need is a bindi in the middle of your forehead and you could convert me at twenty paces.' She opens a drawer in her desk. 'Here ... I've only got a green felt pen, but go right ahead ...' and she starts laughing.
New York
WOR is housed in a huge skyscraper on Broadway. At eight in the morning me and about a thousand New Yorkers are racing down the street in some kind of a competition to see who can get wherever they are going first. I've stepped up my own pace now from my Montserrat dawdle - this has been helped by ordering the kind of coffee that Gareth Hunt could only shake a handful of coffee beans at (Americano - double shot - no cream with a bit of cold water on the top) and had a packet of regular fries for breakfast.
It was strange to come back to New York. It felt a bit like I was coming home. I recognised the route back into the city - I even thought I recognised the car lot with the 'it runs' 700 dollar heap in it. The only thing I didn't recognise was the Ambassadors because they were sold out and I'd had to book into the Comfort Inn and few blocks away. It seemed very comfortable and I was definitely in it.
By comparison to Palm Springs everyone had too many clothes on - but that would be the difference between the desert sun and the drizzle. I'd promised Fitz that I'd come back to visit him in Palm Springs again as we said our goodbyes outside the Ritz Carlton. I was pretty sure that I would - if I'm ever in the unhappy position of being on the receiving end of an affidavit then I'm first on the plane. I flew to New York the next day with a couple of flannels from the Hyatt Grand Champions that I didn't think they'd miss too much. I had my appointment with problems to keep.
So I'm charging past the huge bill boards for Elton John's Aida, past the queues already forming for something on ESPN - the Sports Channel and over the 41st street junction to 1440 Broadway. Deborah, Dr Joy Browne's very helpful assistant, had said take the elevator to the 22nd floor and then walk down the corridor to the glass doors and just knock. Deborah sounded very much like the kind of efficient New York woman who could organise your life in one of those tiny filofaxes and still have time to colour-coordinate her trouser suits of a morning. Security is tight at this station and you can't just walk in like you might be able to in Palm Springs. So I follow her instructions to the letter and after tapping gently on the door a lady dressed in a blue trouser suit comes over to let me in.
'Hi, you must be Deborah ... I'm Fi Glover - I've come to talk to Dr Joy?'
Slight pause here
'I am Dr Joy Browne.'
Ahem. Right. Flying start.
Dr Joy Browne hosts the 4th most listened to talk show in the whole of the United States of America. I am very impressed by this. Although she broadcasts from New York she too has reached that zenith of broadcasting and is syndicated. She is only beaten in the rankings by Russ Limbaugh, Howard Stern and Dr Laura Schlessinger. She gets over six million listeners and, as I had heard for myself, her callers seem to love her deeply. .
Given that Dr Joy is an enormous feature in the radio world that I find myself in she is remarkably normal. By this I mean that I am not asked to sit in an ante room and wait for her. No one has asked to see the questions first and Deborah appears to be her only assistant. The walls in her office looking out over Broadway are covered with certificates. The thermo printing industry in New York must love her. There's several talk show host awards, some charity ones thanking her for her participation - I think I spotted a book one too and lots of those radio societies that have meetings about themselves, for themselves and give out prizes to themselves.
Dr Joy looks me up and down.
'And what is this outfit we are wearing today?'
It's a good point. I had noticed quite a few New Yorkers clocking me as I strode down Broadway. The uniform for young ladies in this city is obviously the trouser suit and the colour is black. If you want to be a little risqué then dark blue will do. I have on a pair of low-slung white trousers, a white kind of tunic thing over the top of them and some decidedly dodgy trainers which are beginning to require hanging outside the window of an evening. I've topped this all off with a diagonally slung rucksack which seemed a great idea at the time but I know that several pickpockets have come remarkably close to opening it and robbing me while my back was turned, i.e. all the time. The effect of this ensemble is that I look like a Hare Krishna devotee. All I need is an orange sarong and I too can part the crowds in Oxford Street.
Dr Joy has a wry smile on her face. 'All you need is a bindi in the middle of your forehead and you could convert me at twenty paces.' She opens a drawer in her desk. 'Here ... I've only got a green felt pen, but go right ahead ...' and she starts laughing.
