Making Radio Waves
Fi Glover, a dj on BBC in England, finds herself between radio gigs for a few months, and decides to see what radio is like in other countries. So she buys a wind-up radio that requires no batteries or electricity and sets off for some places she'd heard were interesting, radio-wise. Travels With My Radio is the result, a hodge-podge of radio adventures in Europe, America, Lebanon, and the Caribbean.

The original title was I Am An Oil Tanker, based on a radio blooper made by a dj reading a breaking news bulletin. I'm glad the title was changed to something more straightforward because I would have ignored the book otherwise, thinking it was a children's book. As it was, I saw the title in a catalog (since Amazon doesn't sell the book, only the audiotape, I don't have any qualms about saying that I found it in The Common Reader catalog) and thought, what a great idea for a book. I always travel with a tiny transistor radio and enjoy hearing the different programs around the world.

Since Glover is in the business, she gains access to stations and radio hosts wherever she goes and this behind-the-scenes look is quite revealing. She sets off determined to meet Howard Stern and Art Bell, as well as some less famous, less quirky radio personalities. At least half the book is set in the U.S., in California, Las Vegas, New York, and Chicago.

Part of the fun of Travels With My Radio, for me, is the Britishness of it. (The book is not published in the U.S.) It's always fun to see what someone from abroad thinks of your country (Ciao, America by Beppe Severgnini, for example). Glover translates everything American into something her intended readers, Brits, will understand. So we end up with a New York traffic reporter saying "there's one flipped over on the carriageway in Queens," and a Santa Rosa dj saying "another beautiful summer day in Sonoma County with lows of 25 (celsius) on the coast." She misspells unfamiliar placenames: Pahrump, Nevada is consistently spelled Parumph and San Bernardino as San Bernadino. And she decides to take the Greyhound bus to Palm Springs from L.A. Naturally she finds her fellow riders are an odd, scraggly lot, because in this country, no one rides the bus unless they are unable, physically or legally, to drive a car. When she tries to take the city bus within Palm Springs, the bus driver advises her to take a cab.

Even though it is now possible to listen to just about any radio station in the world on the internet, Glover still manages to make her radio travels relevant. Her description of Gene Hackman giving a petulant interview, her arrival and adventures in Las Vegas the very week that Art Bell was quitting his paranormal talk show (coincidence?), her white-knuckle drive through Beirut, all great stories. She should be on the radio.

Feisty Fi's Travels with her radio
Fi Glover is an acclaimed BBC Radio Five Live broadcaster who began her career at the BBC's smallest local station Somerset Sound, later worked for GLR in London, flirted with television in BBC2's The Travel Show and now hosts BBC Radio Five Live's late show.

Glover is a self-confessed radio anorak whose first priority, when checking into any hotel room anywhere is to tune in the bedside radio to whatever local station takes her fancy. The Travel Show having given her a dose of wanderlust, she decides to travel to various far-flung parts of the world and discover them through their local radio stations. For some reason she has not made a radio programme about this, she has instead written a book, presumably because there was more money in a book. There's certainly very little in radio (and even less in web sites!).

I am an Oil Tanker is a travel book, in much the same way that Bill Bryson's books are and we are immediately as interested in the person doing the travelling as we are in the journey itself.

The first thing I do when I pick up a book to read it is look for a list of chapter titles to give me some idea of what might lie in store. This doesn't work with Terry Pratchett books but in this case we get:

1. Are you the girl on the radio this morning?
2. I'm feeling a bit grantic today
3. I am Frank Warren
4. And then he puked up over the minister
5. Why isn't there any radio porn?
6. We have the technology to take you to hell
7. Where do retired air stewardesses go?
8. I just love your value system
9. Gene Hackman has a jackal of a day
10. Maybe I'll stay a while
11. I haven't forgotten the chutney

... so we're clearly going to have a varied and interesting time in the company of a girl with a fully working sense of humour as our guide!

At the start of the book we find ourselves unceremoniously plonked in North California at a radio station whose breakfast show appears to be being presented by a couple of 'good old boys' who are absolutely full of it, and yet their programme connected with its audience and the phone-in element seemed to be the show's saving grace. I guess you had to be there.

In complete contrast chapter 2 takes us to Austria, and specifically to Blue Danube Radio, a wonderful station with an educational remit aimed at the international traveller. Sadly, at the time of her visit BDR is about to be closed, to be replaced by new and trendy Fear FM. Fear FM will not be, as it happens, a completely different station but one staffed by exactly the same people working in the very same building. But fortunately for us the change has not yet happened at the time of Glover's visit, and the book is well worth reading just for this chapter alone.

The Frank Warren bit comes in because Glover gets given Frank Warren's ticket for Euro 2000, so we're on our way to a small opt-out outpost of Five Live at Charleroi in Belgium. This gives us a fascinating insight into the way BBC radio manages to function on a budget worth slightly less than half a pair of shoelaces. (I presume this is what people mean when they say shoestring?)

Succeeding chapters then fling us to Beiruit and Southern Lebanon, New York, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, New York again, Chicago, Montserrat and Taunton, spending just enough time in each place to regain enough composure to steal a few hotel towels.

I particularly enjoyed her visits to Palm Springs, where she sampled KJJZ's brand of Cool Jazz and Montserrat, where Radio Montserrat proved to be the cement which held the island together both during and after the eruption of the islands once 'dormant' volcano.

To say that this book is readable is an understatement. Fi Glover has a wonderful writing style in which she holds little of herself back. In Beiruit she tells us of the "roasty toasty heat" of the Lebanon:

"we are all dripping with sweat - obviously I could at this point pretend that I was simply perspiring slightly but I wasn't, I was drenched - I suggest we stay under the shade of the trees in the garden to chat amicably about how he got to be a DJ in the middle of a war zone. This is the army after all - no time for idle chit-chat."

Fi Glover is the perfect companion on this trip around bits of the globe. There is also an abridged audiobook.

And the title...? Well, if you don't know the story, you'll have to buy the book for the explaination!