What gets me out of bed on a morning?

[tonym]

For a couple of years now I have had the luxury of not having to crawl out of bed early morn to set off on a journey to work. Therefore my morning wake up ritual didn't neccesitate an alarm clock.

My wife has one. It either bleeps or you can program a radio station broadcast.

I never hear it. I also never hear the first few attempts she makes at getting me up. Usually 20 minutes or so passes before she is heard to be saying things like "the car's out of the garage and running, I'm off".

That's when I have to get up for my son and my work.

This isn't making me out to be the best dad in the world is it?

Anyhow, yesterday I thought it would be less stressful and more effective if she set the alarm for me.

Problem is I don't like radio shows really, apart from the odd jazz one. Furthermore, little did I know that the station she had set it to was a commercial one based about 60 miles to the north of here, where you can hear ads about car dealerships 'supplying the whole of Esh Winning for the last 10 years'; that's about 6 Ford Sierras and one Subaru Impreza (there's always one) sold then.

So 7:20am: I hear Outkast's 'Hey Ya'. Great start to a sunny morning. I am beginning to wake. The DJ chirps in about halfway through the song and he's got a DJ voice. Sorry to offend our resident DJs here but in the UK, our guys have become infamous for feigning a Mid-Atlantic, Estuary English, glottal stop- free accent. Add this to a Geordie dialect and it sounds very irritating indeed.

Then a lady pipes up. They are a Breakfast team!!!

Now we have answers flooding in from this morning's trivia quiz.

Q. Which organ of the human body has the ability to heal itself? Ooooo!!! That's a bit freaky innit.

They start reading some of the respondants answers. Not in a sarcastic way at all, genuine, in the manner of, Lee from Blackhall thinks it's the brain (Could be, we aren't that far ahead in medical advances to know for sure that it doesn't, are we? Are we?)

Des, Mel, Britney, Chuck and Wayne all got it. Sarah from Durham thinks it's the neck . Pam says it's the hair Rachel from Belmont thinks it's the spine

Then we have a list of bodily parts offered from more Britneys and Brooklyns which include toes and teeth. FUCK, I hear the nation's dentists shouting.

Poor Frank from Tow Law thought, well actually he didn't think at all, he didn't know. He did have the courtesy to ring the show though just to tell them that.

So, the moral of the story, it isn't what you might think, you can visit County Durham, it still has a lot to offer. But that, in the morning I'll just have the 'BLEEP' instead.

[BERIGAN]

Trust me, it is much, MUCH, MUCH worse in the states! Every morning show has people laughing...and Laughing and LAUGHING all the time, like laughing gas is being pumped into the studios.....for some reason, the less music, music stations play the higher their ratings go.... Thank God for Cds!