Fri 4th Sept 2009

As I drove to work today Radio 4 seemed completely bereft of anything interesting to listen to. In an unprecedented shock decision, I ended up listening to Chris Moyles; who has apparently revived the “Golden Hour” feature. This is a segment which was started in the 70’s and popularised by Noel Edmonds and Simon Bates. The concept behind The Golden Hour is that Chris and his award-winning team of half-wits and morons all select a record each from one particular year. Meanwhile, listeners see if they can correctly guess the year in question by texting or emailing, adding who they are and what they’re currently doing. So you might hear a guess from Lisa who is looking forward to the weekend, whilst ironing towels in Chalfont, that sort of thing. Like an aural version of Twitter, but with mundane strangers and no opt-out clause. Occasionally, one of them will simply contact Chris to merely to say something like “Choon!”, which I believe is a ‘yoof-speak’ appreciation for having heard a song which is good. Presumably the usual playlist on Radio 1 now so god-damn awful, that the playing of a tolerable record deserves some kind of congratulatory message.

You’d have thought the revival of The Golden Hour wouldn’t be particularly amenable to the technological advancements thirty years on. Over the 70’s and 80’s people might call or fax their guesses. Nowadays it’s all texts and email. Surely the same mobile internet technology used to submit answers would also make it easy to research the year in which songs were released. Yet astonishingly, the Chris Moyles demographic still manage to email the wrong answers. At the end of the feature, he invites his team to see if they can guess the year. Worryingly, even some of them actually guess incorrectly, despite having only just picked a song each from that year.

Is the feature so flawed, it collapses under the weight of its own paradoxes? Or is it a disturbing barometer of our nation’s increasing idiocy? I honestly don’t know. Nevertheless, as a simple concept “The Golden Hour” still kinda works for me. But then hearing records from a past time when one was full of hopes and dreams is probably ideal listening for someone who is so clearly approaching a midlife crisis.