{"id":1202,"date":"2012-12-16T16:30:33","date_gmt":"2012-12-17T00:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1202"},"modified":"2012-12-16T16:30:33","modified_gmt":"2012-12-17T00:30:33","slug":"podthoughts-the-danny-baker-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1202","title":{"rendered":"Podthoughts: The Danny Baker Show"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/center>
\nVital stats:<\/strong>
\nFormat: Danny Baker, his co-host, his callers, and a bunch of (mostly British) celebrities talk football \u2014 but mostly go on tangents therefrom
\nEpisode duration: ~1h30m
\nFrequency: erratic<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause all of the subjects are British, there are qualities that leap out for an American viewer,\u201d Roger Ebert once\u00a0wrote about Michael Apted\u2019s\u00a0Up<\/em>\u00a0documentaries<\/a>. \u201cOne is how articulate the subjects are [ .. ] they speak with precision, and often with grace and humor. One ponders the inarticulate murkiness, self-help cliches, sports metaphors and management truisms that clutter American speech.\u201d As an American all too eager to run down his less fortunate countrymen, I certainly ponder those things. Yet I also ponder something I heard Lewis Black say years ago: the Brits need those accents to mask a stupidity even deeper than ours. Best, I think, to see each side of the pond as expressing its dimwittedness in different ways. Here in the States, we compulsively elevate the least thoughtful and (therefore) least articulate among us to the highest planes of media exposure. We consequently become colonials again, genuflecting to almost every Englishman sitting before a microphone. This goes for their workaday non-celebrities like those in the\u00a0Up<\/em>s as well as their craggiest, most donnish and experience-curmudgeonified broadcast hosts \u2014 or, as they call themselves, \u201cpresenters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Danny Baker may qualify as one such genuflection-worthy presenter, though you wouldn\u2019t call him craggy or donnish. (As for the state of his curmudgeonification, it varies with the topics.) \u201cIt’s almost inconceivable that Colin would be interested in covering this particular podcast,\u201d a certain Alistair Johnson\u00a0wrote on the Maximum Fun Forum<\/a>, \u201cbut I’d love to see him take on BBC’s\u00a0The Danny Baker Show<\/em>\u00a0[RSS<\/a>] [iTunes<\/a>].\u201d He went so far as to make a list of the reasons for my probable disinterest, including its being \u201can edit of a radio show,\u201d \u201ca phone-in show,\u201d one whose \u201csubject is (supposed to be) football,\u201d and on top of all that, one that\u2019s \u201cBritish, and deals with British topics.\u201d Though no Anglophile, I like to think I relish the opportunity to step outside my own culture in any medium possible, and Alistair added that \u201cDanny Baker is considered a genius of radio by many in the U.K.,\u201d and that his show is \u201cnot really about sport.\u201d His personal testimony: \u201cI have no interest in football, but listen every week.\u201d Holding fast to my principle that few behaviors make one lamer than only taking interest in one\u2019s interests, I began listening immediately.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing at Maximumfun.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vital stats: Format: Danny Baker, his co-host, his callers, and a bunch of (mostly British) celebrities talk football \u2014 but mostly go on tangents therefrom Episode duration: ~1h30m Frequency: erratic \u201cBecause all of the subjects are British, there are qualities that leap out for an American viewer,\u201d Roger Ebert once\u00a0wrote about Michael Apted\u2019s\u00a0Up\u00a0documentaries. \u201cOne is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podthoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1204,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions\/1204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}