The Winterval Personnel

There used to be a time when the bit between Christmas and New Year would be a sneak preview of those radio disc-spinners who were about to graduate through to the big time and it wasn't that long ago. Sadly this year has just been a bit of a disappointment. I'll put it down to Christmas Day being on a Sunday which has left us with a distinct week between Christmas and New Years.

Dev has taken over the Radio 1 breakfast show for this week and i think its finally clicked what i find disingenuous about him. For the most part, he pretends to be a bit of a geek and avoids most of the too-cool-for-school cliches that afflict some of the Radio 1 roster, but then we'll get to a feature like the resident DJ where a listener will come on an pick singles from a specific pigeonhole. Today is One Hit Wonder Wednesday. The listener chose "Turtle Power" by Partners in Kryme, which i've got to admit i haven't heard for well over a decade and in all truth it doesn't stand up badly. Meanwhile Dev is busy ripping in to the caller, the song and saying how he thinks it'll bomb, then interrupts it half way through to say he's going to finish playing it because it has received such a good reaction on the texts. So the geek without preconceptions suddenly becomes ubercool when music is involved, and its not the first time. If you're going to play a character on the air, then you've got to follow through and not have breaks in the armour otherwise the whole thing sounds like a bad ILR.

Edith Bowman is covering for Fearne Cotton. Sorry, that should read "Edith Bowman's Show About Films". For the 90% of us who aren't obsessed with being at the cinema 24/7, nor fawning over Hollywood's most overpaid (and often undertalented), Bowman's show is interminable. And i genuinely like Edith as a presenter, its just the whole format of the Films show is painfully restrictive.

Huw Stephens is about the only future star i can see from the daytime line up. His weekend afternoon show is excellent and his enthusiasm for music always comes across as sincere. He'd make far more sense presenting the weekday morning show than Fearne Cotton does.

I've also heard some of Ryan Tubridy in for Ken Bruce on Radio 2. It doesn't really move me either way, which is probably exactly when Radio 2 is looking for - new voices to the station either have to be somebody interminably bland or somebody off the telly.