The primary selling points for digital audio broadcasting (DAB) are choice and sound quality - "crystal-clear digital sound", as the adverts tell us ceaselessly. Having overcome the teething problems with my digital set that I wrote about a couple of months ago, I'm not sure either of these holds true.

Although there are plenty of stations, especially if you live in London, that have five multiplexes stuffed to bursting, [...]

For wireless humorists and parodists, local radio is easy meat. In the early 1980s, Radio Active took the genre apart expertly. In the early 1990s, On the Hour did it again, the sustained attack afforded by the ex-Radio Norwich sports jock Alan Partridge being supplemented by events such as Chris Morris's demolition of Mike d'Abo, a Manfred Mann singer-turned-local radio presenter. Then, in the late 1990s, the cruelly underrated Grievous [...]

In these days when most computers are capable of becoming multi-track recording studios and CD factories, the amazement registered by those hearing their voices on record in the early years of the gramophone is perhaps easy to forget. For many years, the only way an average person could cut a disc was to use one of the sixpence-a-go booths that proliferated in railway stations and at seaside resorts between the [...]

Danny Baker divides public opinion violently. He is either one of the most intelligent, idiosyncratic and funny broadcasters around, or he's just Chris Evans's talentless Cockney loudmouth mate. I've been in the former camp since he presented the Radio 5 breakfast show Morning Edition a decade ago. He became a standard-bearer for Matthew Bannister's all-new Radio 1 in 1993, when the then director general of the BBC, John Birt, spoke [...]

After Kenneth Clarke's Jazz Greats series ended, I thought about other politicians who have turned to the wireless. Some fare better than others. Once in the 1980s, when Neil Kinnock was depping for Jimmy Young, a cruel producer forced him to play Honeybus's 1968 hit, "I Can't Let Maggie Go". As I listened, I was willing him to make an aside about his parliamentary nemesis, but as the record faded, [...]

Ken Bruce recently joked on his Radio 2 show that he wasn't sure what he was going to do about digital radio. He then added that he didn't think the BBC was too certain what to do, either. Although he and Terry Wogan have turned badmouthing your employer into an art form over the years, there's more than a little truth to Bruce's quip, as technical tinkering seems likely to [...]

Many politicians like to suggest that they have a rich "hinterland" - a portfolio of interests outside of politics, thus making them seem almost human. Ted Heath has yachting and music, Michael Heseltine has his arboretum, almost everyone knows about Ken Livingstone's amphibian chums and quite a few people must be aware that Kenneth Clarke likes jazz.

Indeed, the former chancellor has just presented a series on Radio 4 called [...]

A great deal of fuss was made last year about the BBC's Treasure Hunt campaign. Under this initiative, former staffers and members of the general public were encouraged to return private copies of vintage programmes that the Beeb had wiped, burned, chucked into skips or lost down the back of the sofa. Much of the fuss has been justified; the return of two whole long-lost episodes of Dad's Army has [...]

Last July, the BBC World Service ended short-wave transmissions to North America, Australia and New Zealand. Understandably, the move was seen as controversial. The argument was that satellite broadcasting, relays of BBC programming on local stations and the growth of radio on the internet had made such old technology as short wave redundant in developed countries - a view not entirely convincing, given that the take-up for these channels of [...]

What does it take to get ahead in radio these days? Given that Radio 1 employs DJs called Emma B and Sarah HB, being named after a pencil must help. Stand by for the Top 40 with Caran d'Ache. More conventionally, a distinctive voice is the main thing, and a memorable catchphrase or two wouldn't do any harm. Since arriving in Britain 45 years ago, Alan "Fluff" Freeman has offered [...]