The Late Show - BBC Radio Derby

On the Sony award-winning Radio Derby, the late-night DJ Rob Underwood was an hour into his phone-in. A new caller was on the line. "Tell me about your impulse buying, Sue," asked Rob of a nice middle-class lady, possibly a couple of Gordons down and up for spending the evening going through linen catalogues for the daughter who's getting married, and sharing information with a complete stranger.

“Well, it started 25 years ago I suppose, Rob. We'd hired some BBQ lights at the weekend and when we took them back we just put the deposit money down on a swimming pool. I think that was the biggest impulse buy ever . . ."

There was a long pause as the Midlands took in this money madness. Sue was happy with the silence. One sensed she was busy, possibly marking catalogue pages with Post-it notes, face absorbed and serious - an expression her husband calls her "paratrooper look".

“And have you still got the swimming pool?" asks Rob eventually.

“Oh yes."

“And is it an inflatable one?"

“God no. We had to dig a big hole in the garden and everything. When the digger came and took away all the soil I suppose I did think, God, what are we doing?"

This kind of exchange is the norm for Underwood's show. It's indescribably boring, but good. Underwood's is a resolutely gentle landscape inhabited by the kind of people who would cheerfully ramble on about nothing while a round of gunfire was going off in the stockrooms at the supermarket. And Rob is a total genius: a man who could mediate in any disagreement. Not that there are many disagreements on Radio Derby. There's just something about the way he says "yeah" and "right" that would instantly lobotomise even the most aggro lunatic - you know, the kind that turn their heads, unbidden, from the window of the bus, saying "What the fuck are you staring at?"

“Ah, such a fantastic story," muses Rob, almost to himself. "From BBQ lights to a swimming pool . . . I'm not sure we can beat that . . ."

“Byeeeeee!" trills Sue, her evening jobs nowhere near exhausted. (I could just see her at the kitchen table getting out her marker pens.

I could see her husband coming in for a top-up, and avoiding a conversation. He immediately senses her mood: the kind that, if they were out for dinner, would have her violently zigzagging between friends, holidays and causes right through the soup course.)

“Can you beat that, folks? Talk about impulse buying! How about some Abba?" There's not much info on Rob on Radio Derby's web page. It just says he likes to get up late. And then the other night, out of the blue, he declared that he worried about the "inbuilt mechanism inside people". (Did he mean the human brain?) Also, he drives a motorbike. "I came in on my bike today," he said last week. "Well, I thought it was a decent enough summer's evening. Ish. I'm not going to generalise." Someone called Mike dialled in. "I've got a Yamaha Fazer, Rob."

“ What cc is that?"

“600."

“And do you feel King of the Road on that?" "Well, not really. You have to ride responsibly."

“Hmm, yeah."

“And assume that everybody else on the road is a total idiot."

“Yeah."