ResQgeek

I first heard about Peter Grant a couple of months ago, when Jenny Kendall-Tobias (aka JKT) interviewed him on BBC Radio Guernsey. While he's still only a teenager, I was impressed by the maturity of his music, so I hunted down his debut album, New Vintage. I've now been listing to it almost non-stop for a couple of days. If you are a fan of Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett, you really should check out this young man. His velvety voice compares favorably with these giants, and his ability to evoke mood with his voice is impressive. These songs are all covers of well-known standards, yet Grant does an excellent job of reinterpreting them and making them his own.

Yesterday afternoon, I was listening to BBC Radio Guernsey while I was finishing up at the office. Their evening show features Duncan Warren, broadcasting on several BBC local radio stations in the UK Southwest. At one point, Duncan started talking with one of his callers about the Stella Awards, named for the woman who sued McDonald's after spilling their coffee on herself and getting burned. These awards are allegedly given to outrageous lawsuits that actually collect damages. He specifically mentioned one that involved someone setting the cruise control on their new RV and leaving the driver's seat. Supposedly, this person sued the RV manufacturer arguing that the manual didn't warn that they couldn't leave the wheel when the cruise control was engaged.

Now this caught my attention, because the RV cruise control story is a notorious and venerable urban legend. So I went to Snopes.com and did a quick search. Sure enough, the cruise control lawsuit is in there as a confirmed myth. I also noted that the entire existence of the Stella Awards is also apparently a myth.

So, I sent Duncan an e-mail to that effect, pointing to the Snopes website. I got a reply from his producer, indicating that he wanted to talk to me on the air today. So we arranged for them to call me at 8:30pm England time, and I spent about five minutes on the air with him, discussing the nature of the urban legend and the Snopes website. I did manage to mention BookCrossing in passing, but wasn't able to steer the conversation in that direction.

Unfortunately, while skyring was all set to try and record my interview for posterity, it seems that BBC Radio Guernsey wasn't streaming Duncan's show today, but was instead streaming their AM feed with local programming, and he missed my five minutes of air time. Oh well. JKT has been hinting that she'd like to talk to me on the air at some point, so maybe next time will work out.

I've had a chance to sort through this weeks mail, and found the package I was expecting from BBC Radio Guernsey. The books I'd won in their trivia contest had arrived. The envelope included three Quick Reads books, which the BBC was giving away to promote World Book Day. Unfortunately, I've belatedly realized that I should have insisted that JKT register these with BookCrossing before sending them across the Atlantic to me. I definitely will release these, and I hope I get good catches to show Jenny.