Scott Mills
Radio 1

On Radio 1 Scott Mills was talking about privacy on the internet. "I've been investigating Aled to find what dirt about him is out there on the worldwide web," he said, in the salivating tones of someone certain the listeners were in for a rude shock.

In came Aled - one of Chris Moyles's gimps, but a sweet enough kid - to be faced with a wall covered in snaps of him that had previously been posted online. "This is scary," breathed Aled, "this is sooo scary." "How scary?" checked Scott. Aled needed a moment to let it all sink in. I say a moment, but time moves quickly on Radio 1, so a single discombobulated pant can be made to mark a whole hour of existential agony. "There are photos that . . . other people have put of me on Facebook!" squeals Aled, the penny dropping suddenly. "You've been tagged, mate!" yells Scott.

“I've been tagged! When I've been out DJing! This is a stalker board! OK, that's weird. This is scary. OK, this is scary!" I don't know about you, but I wasn't really getting a credible sense of terror here. I mean, if this was a movie, so far there wouldn't be that many gritty street shots or runny noses in doorways, or scenes of surveillance operatives hunkering down with their earphones clamped tight and full ashtrays - just Aled in a bar cheerfully ordering another piña colada.

Radio 1's security expert Darika stepped in for a moment to draw Aled's attention to his persistent tweeting. Turns out "am jogging in hyde park past the serpentine where the café is", and "omg on the train to london have left my debit card in a shop in swansea now have no money or card to pay I have a new cc and no pin yet" are unwise tweets for a celebrity - unless they actively want to be snatched and spend the next four months playing canasta until the kidnappers' blow runs out.

“That's very scary that you saw that, Darika." "Well, you did actually say it on Twitter." "Amazing!" "How do you feel?" "Like too much of me is out there . . ."

Over on Radio 4, Peter and Dan Snow presented a documentary about Edward the Black Prince (23 June, 11am), the two of them striding across French fields saying things like "in that hedge over there" and "by the incline beneath me now" and "behind that tree the archers prepared their weapons" - but this being the radio, we could only take their word for it.

Occasionally, for colour, an academic with a voice as soft and lovely as rabbit's whiskers against the cheek piped up to speak about the Black Death ("The effect of this epidemic is almost unimaginable to . . . a modern first-world audience . . . but a rough and realistic estimate is a third of the population of England and France wiped out in 15 months . . ."). And back to the boys, divvying up the info.

These days, the Snow patrol sound more and more like two guys on a bench tensely trying to outdo each other.

“Apparently King John of Bohemia was almost blind but still he fought very bravely in the battle," Peter might say, only for Dan to interrupt with "John of Bohemia - also known as John of Luxembourg - was blind, but his horse was tied to four knights who actually led him on to the battlefield."

I know Peter doubtless started it all - feeding facts to his son as an infant like Jabba the Hutt did Chewbacca to the ravenous Sarlacc in the Return of the Jedi - but one senses now in the father a slight fear of his creation. Like Leopold Mozart with Wolfgang, Peter can do nothing but watch as Dan rises up, all-powerful in his Pakamac, eyes mesmerisingly smaller than ever, reconstructing history as unsmilingly as the WI might the pieces of a broken tureen. Scaryoso.