A new job at 82.

82-year-old Gillian Reynolds has just started a new job as radio critic of The Sunday Times after more than 40 years at the Daily Telegraph. I sat next to her once at an awards dinner and she was fabulous. About 75 at the time, she was bright, funny, contemporary and curious. She made me unafraid of getting old. We shared our dismay at the creative decline of commercial radio into a bland homogeneous “portfolio” of dull, safe, predictably formatted stations playing “ten songs in a row”. The presenters are bland, anonymous and practically interchangeable. And yet it was on commercial radio that people like Chris Tarrant, Kenny Everett, Roger Scott, Pete Tong and Trevor Nelson became big stars. That would never happen now. They’d be forbidden the freedom to flourish. So isn’t it ironic? Video didn’t kill the radio star. Radio did.