My mum died on Friday after a long illness.  I’m not sure what i’m thinking now but what it keeps coming back to is how hard she worked. All the time. By the time she rested in life and was now cruelly too ill to walk her dogs and look after her beloved garden, she was so exhausted she just took comfort in watching bad tv and her joy at hearing about her grandchildren.

She was born in Brighton in the middle of the war and the eldest of four daughters (like my wife oddly) . She literally did have those austerity childhoods where kids had Mars Bars and a doll for Christmas. She spent much of her teenage life looking after them; cleaning, walking them to school. When I proudly told her that in my new house a few years back I’d ripped out the electrics to have an open fire in the living room, she looked appalled and recalled having to brush out the grate daily every winter back in her uncentrally heated house. Why go back to that ?

In the sixties she met my Dad, on a blind date, moved in with him and in 1966 had twin boys. My Dad was a shop steward at the time and didn’t come home until late and I only know now, having 3 boys myself, what bringing up twins must have been like. Yet throughout the 70s and early 80s and now joined by my sister a few years down the line I just remember a secure, safe and happy childhood of being thoroughly looked after. If friends came round. A knock on the door and a tray of biscuits would arrive. If I sneaked into Brighton on the bus to play down the arcades I’d come back to a miraculousy tidy bedroom and just the one cry “Are you hungry?”. On Saturday nights in front of the Generation Game and Starsky and Hutch I was allowed a big bag of Spring Onion Marks and Spencers crisps, a cream cake and with barely any resistance the ok to stay up late to watch Match of the Day. Spool through 15 years and now in her fifties and my mum regularly came round and hoovered my disgusting bedsit, heated up one of her cooked dinners in the microwave and then washed up the plate before she left.

Of course i only realise now that this incredible support and indulgence of her (lazy ?) son didn’t come by magic. My Dad worked long hours keeping his engineering business going and from time to time in the 80s my mum spent many hours as waitress at tented corporate dos and all of the above means two things. Unconditional love and exhaustion. I really didn’t understand this at the time. I’m a married Dad now,  and i can’t say i work that hard at being one.

Anyway I was only the second  person from either side of the family to go to university and thats because she and my Dad (who is similarly the most generous man you’re ever likely to meet) provided the safe, supportive, and encouraging home that made all that possible and desirable.  Over many years she forgave me for playing loud Smiths records over and over again through the ceiling, didn’t miss a beat when i told her I “was taking a year out” and was only genuinely angry with me once. Getting my ears pierced. She was right. She even helped me out even when in those last few years it was painful just to get out of her chair. She often came round to babysit and was still tidying up my kitchen when my eyes were turned.

This morning I took my eldest son to “big school” for his first try out day. As i said goodbye to him, my first thought was to ring my mum first to tell her all about it. His nervousness, how he looked and what he was feeling because she’d be so eager to hear about it and offer advice. And then I remembered.

I’ll really miss her.

• Phillip Holt's World of NLP, Hypnosis, PhotoReading, Mind Maps & Memory: Special Half Hour, Radio 5 Live
  "Being on the show, I was awarded the Special Half Hour badge, and I said I would wear it with pride at a training course I am now giving here in Milan, Italy, the NLP Master Practitioner." .
  (tags: 5live facebook richardbacon specialhalfhour)

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  Not the first on air Beeb person to use AudioBoo. That was Rory Cellan Jones i think but @richardpbacon; the #1 Twitter followed BBC radio presenter previews his 5 Live show using the 4iP funded audio app; AudioBoo. That must be an example of this partnership i keep hearing about.
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  Joanna Geary live blogs the RBS annual meeting using CoverItLive embedded into a Times Online article page.
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• BBC – MESSAGE BOARDS – Religion – Did Darwin Kill God? – Conversation
  "The programme's Executive Producer, Jean Claude Bragard, will be available on this message board thread to answer your questions during board opening hours on Wednesday 1st April." Should happen more on BBC boards but when it does as this thread shows it usually results in more considered, articulate, useful exchanges even for sensitive subjects such as creationism/evolution.
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An old radio tuned to Radio 4 by Quilted/Stephen

Mostly i think because we were bored one lunchtime. Steve and myself have come up with the idea of Good Radio Club. Its completely unoriginal, something to do with Twitter no less and Radio 4 (or Radio 3 or well we’re not quite sure yet). Probably not a marriage made in heaven. So you might never hear about it again but in case you’re keen its all happening over here.

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  "Radio 4's Thought for the day" slot might be temporarily used for this purpose"
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• Italy vs Ireland rugby match twitter analysis – patrickphelan.ie
  brilliant 10 min by 10 min tag clouds documenting the ireland v italy tag rugby match (via aarons)
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  The rather brilliant radio preview column in the Stage.
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  “Because if all music is accessible, all the time, it’s what you do with it that makes it interesting. You as curator, you as DJ, is what music becomes about. Just as there was always one kid at school who made the best mixtapes, there are people out there who make the best playlists. Online, it’s music bloggers, of course.”
  (tags: observer music mirandasawyer playlists curator spotify)
• On radio: Here’s one intriguing question that Feedback doesn’t answer – Telegraph
  “there are constant invitations by individual programmes to phone in, or text, or press the red button on the digital handset to interact with what is going out on air. Every time we do, it is added to the statistics as evidence that the programme is being heard or seen. The comments we make are not necessarily noticed or answered.
  With Feedback you can be certain that Roger Bolton will pursue the question, thoroughly. ” (from late 2007)
  (tags: bbc radio radio4 feedback gillianreynolds)
• The Beagle Project Blog: Darwin Day in London: my live-tweets, pics, vids and thoughts
  liveblogging/tweeting yesterdays darwing day “By popular demand, and as promised on Twitter, I have a clutch of photos, video and a few reflections of my Darwin Day in London to share with you.” from the very fine Beagle blog.
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  Melvyn Bragg’s speech on Darwin’s bicentenary from the Natural History Museum. (filmed on a mobile i think from a long way away but audio is good).
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  Great chart of the top UK radio presenters/journalists on twitter with # of followers/followed.
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  "YouTube Comment Snob filters out undesirable comments from YouTube comment threads"….capital letters, spelling mistakes, excessive punctuation. Ho ho.
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• Radio 4 and 'fun' -Times Online
  Letter to the Times.(from 2005) "Sir, Being middle-class and close to 54 I fit the description by Mr Mark Damazer, the new controller of Radio 4, of his average listener (report, July 28). I don’t wear tweeds, nor do I play golf. I run my own little business."
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• Sharon Shoesmith: The first (audio) interview | Society | guardian.co.uk
  Guardian ran not just the first print interview with Sharon Shoesmith but largely un noticed published the first audio interview too. (before that afternoon's Weekend Womans Hour on Radio 4).
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A Radio 4 sticker by Michael Wincott/radiothings.com

This week I was part of the team that helped launch the new Radio 4 blog.

The Controller of the station; Mark Damazer has used it so far to introduce himself to listeners, explain how and why  he schedules repeats,  and the background behind the selection of the Reith lecturer . The post that has received the most feedback, however, was an explanation as to why Weekend Womans Hour dispensed with its format for a week to run a 45 minute interview with former head of Haringey Social Services; Sharon Shoesmith.

Now there have been many, many other places to discuss this issue online both hosted on the BBC and elsewhere. but i was taken aback by the quality, range but also the provenance of the comments that Mark’s post attracted:

They included a:

• A charity worker explaining how she used to visit families in their homes
• A middle manager from a local authority childrens service.
• A lawyer with years of experience of working in a family court.
• A social worker with forty years experience.
• A head teacher from Haringey.
• An interpreter who works regularly with  inner city social workers.
• Another user with an intimate knowledge of the Childrens Act 1989.

Mark, in a follow up post called them “richly informative thoughts and comments. Some of them reveal significant expertise and personal experience.”

The myth about commenting, because its often done very badly, is that its all back of the taxi cab, and  teenagers txting and offers no value.  Yet this is more due to poor design, a lack of community management. rather than comments per se. I also wouldn’t want to overstate the impact of comments or message board posts on Radio 4 programmes. Direct email (even letters) are still a more familiar and comfortable way of interacting with Radio 4 listeners for production teams and listeners. This is largely true of other BBC networks where sms/mms and voice of course is still the default techique for user contributions used widely across R1, 2 and 5Live.

However this particular set of responses and in a much more social context; the rather incredible Archers message board overseen crucially by a brilliant host)  is an illustration that the usual doesn’t normally apply when you try to work with Radio 4 audiences.

Because in a small way the R4 listeners have shown here that they have the capacity to respond in intelligent, unexpected ways often confounding expectations. Again. Should have expected that really.

(NB:  R4’s Feedback this week  featured both Jill Burridge; the editor of Womans Hour responding to the listeners reaction to the Sharon Shoesmith interview (mostly via email as it happens) and a feature/interview with Whizz Bang Joan about her experiences on the Archers message board.)