If you are of a certain age you will remember the Generation Game where people related to each other tried to prove what jolly good sports they were by taking part in mind cringing games such as knitting spaghetti or doing the Highland fling.
At the end of the programme the winning couple got to watch as a conveyor belt full of prizes went past them. They then kept any they could remember and name.
A stuffed parrot, a pair of chopsticks and a self help book teaching you how to grow gladioli - that kind of thing. Obviously the prizes were limited to what could be fitted on the conveyor belt and that was obviously why a new house or a car wasn't included much as the BBC would have liked to.
The conveyor belt always included a cuddly toy - presumably so that even those with the worst memories could take away one prize. The host kept prompting them anyway so the whole thing became pretty irrelevant and I couldn't help wondering why they didn't just give them all the prizes anyway rather than drag the whole thing out. Exciting it wasn't.
But this blog isn't about that kind of conveyor belt. Conveyor belts change. It used to be said that Wales Rugby Union produced a never ending conveyor belt of fly halves and number eights. Then of course that conveyor belt stopped running and even WD40 couldn't get it going again and today Wales have trouble beating that brilliant rugby nation (not) of Italy.
Sometimes conveyor belts are good things (Wales rugby players) but sometimes it's another side of them we see when they are full of not so good things.
Take radio DJs. The Pirate Radio stations and then Radio One gave us some of the greatest DJs of all time - John Peel, Johnny Walker, Tony Blackburn (yes Tony Blackburn) and many more. They brought music to our worlds and there seemed to be a never ending conveyor belt of them. Now there's a never ending conveyor belt of mediocre DJs on Radio One and Two and now the best of them all from the good conveyor belt, Ken Bruce, has finished with Radio Two.
It's difficult to know what has happened there as Mr Bruce has been very diplomatic about his exit. But there was a rumour that the powers that be wanted more up to date music than that featured on his show.
Ken Bruce is the most listened to DJ on any radio station in the UK. It is quite likely that he will take his skill to another radio station (Greatest Hits Radio). So what kind of conversation took place in this situation?
Person One at the BBC - Did you know that Ken Bruce has got more listeners than any other radio DJ.
Person Two - Yeah. We need to get rid of him.
There are still some decent DJs on Radio Two. There's Johnny Walker and Johnny Walker and then there's Johnny Walker. I don't mind Jo Whiley and Sarah Cox. On our way up to North Norfolk I tuned into Sarah Cox's all request show. It had requests from people going up and down the country for the weekend. Sarah must have been grimacing behind the microphone at some of the dialogue on the phone.
"I'm going up to Norfolk to help my mother celebrate her 83rd birthday. She's an amazing woman and still drives her car. It's been a tough day. I got a really bad headache. We've had World Book Day at school and it was hard work but now I'm halfway to Norfolk."
Then there was a woman who insisted in using the national airways to tell the world about all her troubles. Not as much as a hello, she just launched into things about how nervous she was about her coming marriage and pointing out that her and her husband to be weren't in the first flush of youth.
The ordinariness of all these shows is sometimes mind numbing.
Final thought today. Does spelling and grammar matter? Probably not if you listen to the instructions given to youngsters in the BBC 500 word story competition who have been told not to worry about either. My problem with this, and I understand the point is the story, is that if the spelling and grammar is bad it makes the story difficult to understand.
I probably shouldn't do it but I'm always studying Facebook messages where, at times, the spelling and grammar can be attrocious (and yes before you shout, I have deliberately spelt/spelled that wrong). There was one post of 16 words that had six spelling and grammatical errors.
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Not a bad line-up for Glastonbury this year. Arctic Monkeys, Guns and Roses, Cat Stevens and Elton John. They will probably have to help the last two up on stage but there is no doubt that both are absolute legends.
And who knows how or why the lead singer of Guns and Roses picked the stage name of Axl Rose? Actually his real surname is Rose. His forenames are William Bruce but why did he change that to Axl? Answers tomorrow, but enough for today.