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Big changes are happening to the airwaves, part of the frenetic technological revolution that’s been unleashed by the development of a digital language.

Big changes are happening to the airwaves, part of the frenetic technological revolution that’s been unleashed by the development of a digital language. Radio, against expectations, is proving itself a vital force in these fast-moving times, because it’s flexible, adaptable and still compelling. The human voice, the imagination of sound, will endure when perhaps TV will fade out, evolving into another kind of internet exchange.

Wireless itself now means something quite different from those first crystal receivers, but nothing it seems can kill off that intimate connection between the person behind the microphone and the ear of the listener. In this time of cuts and more cuts, though, which of the BBC’s stations will still be around in 2021?

Radio 1 has just given itself a huge boost to its argument for survival by raising £2,406,648 for Comic Relief through the efforts of Chris Moyles and Comedy Dave, its breakfast-show hosts. They stayed on air way beyond the bacon-and-eggs, calling for donations and putting themselves in the Guinness Book of Records by staying awake and in the studio for 52 hours of non-stop chat. Their conversation by the end was pretty dire. I made the mistake of tuning in at 6.30 on Friday morning to find out whether they had lasted through the night and heard him and the team burbling on about their bowel movements, or rather lack of them. For a moment I thought I must have pressed the wrong button and had wandered across to Smooth or Classic FM and was overhearing one of those creepy lifestyle ads, this time for Senokot. You might think that Moyles would have been conditioned not to speak of such things on a station aimed at the under-25s.