EDitorial ± 30-Sep-2003

Capital Radio Fun

Dateline: Friday 26th September, 2003, around 4.30pm. There I am in the family motor, tootling home from work with an actual smile on my face and a metaphorical spring in my step, for tonight the children, all 17 of 'em, are elsewhere!

Wireless is on Radio Five Live, and the venerable Peter Allen is talking Dr Who – big news on Friday when the Beeb announced the surprise return of the Timelord, albeit not until 2005.

Bookies' favourite to be the Gallifrey guy, says Peter, is Alan "Jonathan Creek" Davies, with Sean "voiceover son of Worzel Gummidge" Pertwee and Richard E "Argos ads" Grant close behind. Last man on the list, at odds of 100-1, is one Don Cheadle. Don who, says everyone?

My Nokia, occasional source of disinformation

Inviting listeners to fill them in on this mystery man, I quickly type and send the following SMS:

Don Cheadle
used to play
drums for The
Clash.
Ed, Ipswich

Now, this information isn't strictly true. In fact it's a total fabrication. But I remembered an old Danny Baker line, that if you know nothing about a certain individual, it's always a good conversational gambit to speculate that they once drummed for the rather late Joe Strummer's outfit.

Five minutes later, after others have (correctly) informed the station that Don was in Ocean's Eleven, Swordfish and ER, Mr Allen comes back on, saying "and Ed from Ipswich adds that Mr Cheadle was also The Clash's drummer".

Cue much confusion and indignation among fans of the band that once rocked the Casbah, who email and text in numbers, quite rightly, to correct this misapprehension. Sorry 'bout that. Made me laugh.

Be seeing you!

Ed