Listeners' pictures at 5pm
So thank you Eddie and the whole PM team. You’ve changed my life.
I am a hopeless Anglophile (not all the RSC and Globe posters in the background), and in fact a few years ago I managed to purchase a flat in Primrose Hill in order to live out my dream of going native. I get to London a few months a year. But my daily dose of PM gets me through the periods when I am stranded here.
A big part of the Anglophilia is the quality of the BBC. I used to be a loyal supporter of public radio here. But then I discovered what real journalism is on PM and Today: presenters who really challenge their interlocultors, and writers who tell the whole story, not the sanitized ones. (For example, while everyone here reported Gates’ admission that we are losing the war, only PM put it up against a clip from W just weeks ago triumphantly trumpeting that we were winning.) Meanwhile, public radio’s incessant advertising and the way it caved in to right-wing pressure under Bush & Co. made it impossible to listen to any longer.
I took this picture at 5 PM Eastern Time here in the US. It’s a photo of my exercise bike. Every day at 5 I tune in to PM on the internet to get me through my workout. I do it at five to feel more like a London listener, and also because I couldn’t bear my workout otherwise. So you’re also helping keep me healthy!