[To continue the thread drift for a minute] I often wonder if the dizzying array of visual images that bombard kids is hindering their minds from developing in certain areas where - when it had to create its own illustrations and scene-settings - it was forced to work, and therefore grow. Reading and listening to radio, or being read to, or simply told a tale makes one exercise a facility that will atrophy if the mind is not required to use it.

I loved radio and books as a child - and still do. But I'm of an age where television - though it existed - wasn't a given in every home and spent a lot of its daytime hours just showing a static test-card; never mind the internet! Generations older than me (yes, they do exist) can remember not even having radio, and needing to rely on telling each other their own stories and playing their music live, for lack of any mechanical equipment to do it for them. And I know we are the poorer for the loss of that.

Excellent suggestion about getting in contact with RTÉ, though would it transmit across England as far as Yorkshire? We never could get it when I lived in London, to my great dismay -