Annoyances 2

“Independent” radio stations that have identical presenters, identical playlists and identical programmes. Most irritating however is the requisite traffic report girl (always a girl) who, when having to describe a traffic jam with no obvious cause, will ALWAYS state that it is due to “sheer weight of traffic.”

How does this differ from merely “weight of traffic?” ‘Spose it could be worse. (Referring to Annoyances 1) it could have been “actual weight of traffic.”

This does not happen by chance. Somewhere, there will exist a curriculum for training traffic report girls where it will be written in black and white that this term must be used in all situations. Somewhere, potential traffic report girls are failing exams and being thrown back into the massed ranks of unemployables because they forgot to use the word “sheer.”


TV listings magazine and TV announcers who, for reasons I cannot begin to guess at, believe it is their job to tell you what is about to happen in the programme you have decided to watch.
Would we do the same thing in the theatre? “Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats for the next act where the Macbeths discover that being royalty isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I told you to keep on eye on that Macduff.”


Drivers (and I use the term loosely) who regard the use of indicators as something that should be used by other people. Where I live, this would be about 75% of all drivers. I have lost count of the number of times I stand on the pavement waiting to cross only for the oncoming vehicle to turn off without any indication.

Anyone who listens regularly to PM on Radio 4 will know already what some of us knew before – that it is almost impossible to listen to a weather forecast and have any idea what was actually said. This is probably why you can watch BBC TV and get a local forecast for your region, immediately followed by a contradictory forecast from the Met Office. Switch channels and ITV will often give you a third choice of possible weather. I suspect that there is a pack of “weather cards” – the various presenters select some then have to predict whatever is on it, ensuring that no duplications take place.

I don’t know if this is true, but I was once told that a school had invented the most accurate weather forecasting system ever. Basically it said “Tomorrow will be like today.”