Just over a week ago, I wrote a slightly provocative blog implying that the closure of 6Music didn’t matter as much as everyone thought, because really everyone ought to find new music for themselves and listen to it on their lovely MP3 player and not bother with music radio at all. (I’m making myself sound slightly more crass than I was, but that was the gist of it.) I then realised that not everyone has an MP3 player because a lot of this blog’s readers are not multi-billionaire comedians, like my good self, but students trying to make £1.19 last for a week, like my good self ten years ago.* Accordingly, I decided to take the opportunity to launch the first COMPETITION of this decade-long blogathon. I would buy a cheap MP3 player and give it to the person who made the most convincing claim to need it. In this way I would contribute to the furthering and enjoyment of new music. I then decided, in the spirit of the 24-hour shows, we should make it our mission to convey the prize from me, to the winner, by means of a human chain. What fun.

30-odd people made a play for the MP3 player and I have whittled them down, slightly unfairly, to a shortlist of eight. My criteria were, roughly: poverty; desperation; obvious enthusiasm for music; fun distance away from me which would make it amusing to try and get to the prize to them; sheer cheek, but not so much cheek that it would take the piss if they won. I apologise if you didn’t make it. It’s not some sort of rejection, it’s more to do with this whole thing being very silly.

Anyway, the shortlisted entries are below. Once more in the tradition of the marathon shows, it is now over to the audience (you) to choose the winner from the entries from England, Scotland, Holland and France. Decide who you want to win, leave it as a Comment. The recipient of the most votes wins the music player, simple as that. We then start planning to get it to them, ideally in the most ludicrously overcomplicated way we can. 

Voting closes last thing on Wednesday. Please do not vote after this time, you may still be charged, etc. And the lines are open… now.

*NB I am not really a multi-billionaire or even a uni-billionaire. I shouldn’t need to say that, but people sometimes take things very literally.

ANNA For the sake of my son, you should give me this MP3 player. You see, I was cool once. I had pink hair, I went to gigs, I knew who was number one in the indie chart. But, gradually, without me even noticing it was happening, I started to get old. These days, my hair is a very sensible colour, and the last gig I went to was 18 months ago ago (Frank Turner, in case you’re interested). I’ve no idea who is number one in the main chart, let alone the indie chart. In short, I’ve turned into my mother. Of course, to do all of this, I need something to listen to all this new music on. Mark, I implore you, help me with my TYSIC, save my son from a lifetime of his mummy living in the past, and give me an MP3 player.
Thank you.

CARL Last month my beautiful girlfriend Beth, who I’ve been lucky enough to have not driven away for almost a year, had a bit of an accident. We were in a rush to leave the house – my fault – and during the commotion her drinks bottled exploded in her bag, filling her iPod with water. Not a pretty afternoon.

So I would love for Beth to be awarded with this iPod, not me. Mine is fully functional (and caused a dent in my ex’s wallet) whereas hers looks all sad and moist during the final months of her degree, which, in my experience, requires some relaxing tunes to help you power through.

THOMAS The reason I need an MP3 player so much is simple: Radio 1 is played at work all day everyday, and it is terrible.

That good enough?

LIZZIE I think that I need this mp3 player the most for this very simple reason: my iPod fell in the toilet. Properly.

And yes, it’s more easily done than you think; one minute it’s safely tucked into the waistband of you pants after a session of dancing around to Kaiser Chiefs in your kitchen after everyone else has gone to bed, the next moment you are peeing happily when you hear a verrrry suspicious plop. And you know it wasn’t natural. Alas, its little LCD screen stares mournfully up at you from the depths. What to do? You can’t flush, you can’t ignore it, so you must bear the humiliation of lifting your own iPod from an (all too full) toilet bowl. And only after this ordeal do you realise that your prized music player shall never function properly again.

BETH Dear Mark, Please find attached my plea for a new MP3.

I have  always been and will always be a big music fan. I currently listen to music about 11 hours a day, I love everything from Brand New to Girls Aloud. However tragically my mp3 decided not to charge just before Christmas, so it was given to my dad to try and fix, even though I was going to take it back as it was within warranty. My dad refused saying he could fix it, then claiming he had. The day after my warranty runs out I go to turn it on and it unfortunately had passed on to mp3 heaven. I refused to let my parents buy me a new one as they do a lot for me, and didn’t want them to be spending more on me. So I currently have a very small, unnamed brand of mp3 player, that fits about 2 albums on. The only thing keeping me from going insane at work from the loud shouting lawyer and the very noisy eating man opposite me. Please help me remember what other albums exist other than the ting tings!

JORIK I feel a bit awkward about leaving this comment, but as I’ll spend it begging for some electronic music-face-gear I’ll just go and do it.

I’m one of those seven freaks who follow the UK comedy scene from the continent (in my case, Holland. I am Dutch myself; officially. English is my second language. It is. It really is.

I lost my mp3-player when I was staying in a horribly dingy Youth Hostel in London. I suspect the slightly frightening Argentinian alcoholic physician (this is what he called himself (not the alcoholic bit, obviously)) took it, trying to trade it for some booze. I pitied him so didn’t go after him. Also, as I said, I was scared of him.

I believe I deserve the iPod for prolonging the misery of this clearly troubled man and not helping him trying to sort out his problems. Also: I’m foreign, so that’s double points.

I am ashamed of what I have become. 

HELEN I live in France in a town in the middle of nowhere (in fact it’s only an hour south of Paris but certainly feels like that way). My town has a speaker system set up so that broadcasts the town’s local commercial radio, the joy of which follows you wherever you go. I’m training for a marathon at the moment so could really do with something to block out the annoying adverts (avez-vous pensé de votre enterrement? appelez monsieur harreau pour discuter touts vos besoins après la mort) and the terrible music. The French stuff is fine, it’s the terrible choices of english music that is upsetting, I heard 50 Cent and The Nolans in the space of one run – although it did make me run faster in attempt to get away, so maybe an ipod would be counter-productive..?

And also getting it to me in France might be a challenge, but a fun one perhaps?

SEAMUS Why do I deserve an MP3 player from you? Well, music is what my world revolves around. I make music, listen to music, play music, everything. However, my MP3 player broke some time ago, and for the past 4 or 5 months I have been borrowing my mum’s, as she doesn’t use it that often. However, this is far from ideal. As you pointed out, even “cheap” MP3 players cost money, and that is my problem. If I save up to buy myself a new player, I won’t have any money left to buy any new CDs to put on it.

The problem with money could easily be solved by getting a job, but there are 2 problems with that. 1, I’m 16, and my exams are in a couple of months, so revising is a higher priority, and 2, I live in the Scottish highlands, so even if I had the time to get a part time job, there simply aren’t any within an hour’s drive of me.

So, ummmm, yeah. An MP3 player would be nice.

http://www.hundreddays.net/

Despite being her friend (two examples: we hung out in Adelaide, went to a light show and played Boggle; my wife and I went for Mexican dinner at her house and  everyone had to invent a game), I had either not heard about this undertaking of Josie’s, which ended this week, or forgotten about it. In any case, I feel slightly silly for trumpeting my own Self-Improvement project as though I’d split the atom when, in fact, I’m more or less retreading the ground she went onto first, plus I don’t even know how you split an atom. Of course, it’s not a competition – and there are lots of differences, notably the fact that, being more pretentious, I’ve set a 10-year course for the TYSIC rather than 100 days. And I’ve spoken to Josie over Twitter, which these days is the same as actually speaking to someone, and she was fine about it, being the sort of person who genuinely wants to see the world made into a better place, rather than wanting to claim a lot of credit for doing something clever. In fact we’ve collaborated on clearing up the planet’s problems before, during the 24-hour shows. So it’s all fine.

But the least I can do is to draw your attention to her website in this manner. The collection of resolutions and good deeds and personal achievements should be an inspiration to us all. I will speak to the charismatic Long and see if there is some way we can honour and continue her work in our own Challenge. Just as soon as she comes out of The Bubble, where I believe she is about to disappear to.

Have a restful but still personally challenging Sunday. Tomorrow, the contest to win an MP3 player reaches its emotion-charged endgame.

http://tombasden.blogspot.com/   Witty, good-looking chap out of Cowards, and the second series of my radio show. Funny pictures, songs, and so on.

http://lloydwoolf.blogspot.com/  Witty, rake-thin chap out of Cowards. Amusing, low-key observation.

http://annawaits.blogspot.com/  Perceptive stuff about TV and other artforms by a thoroughly nice, and clever, TYSIC participant.

 http://michaelleggesblog.blogspot.com/  One of comedy’s most celebrated blogs, foul-mouthed, misanthropic, bitter and funny.

http://tiernandouieb.blogspot.com/ An extraordinarily long-sustained blog by an amiable comic colleague of mine.

http://backofthenet.markwatsonthecomedian.com/category/soccermen/ Something a bit different here. My brother decided to become the world’s youngest international football coach. Now he is. This blog charts his odd story.

Enjoy these, and keep going with the challenge. I’ll be watching you. I have many eyes. Well, two.

It’s Friday. Normally at this time of the week, I make a brazen effort to promote my forthcoming novel (Eleven; it’s on Amazon, but that’s as far as I’m going with the plugging today), but try to redress the balance by offering some encouragement to other writers at the same time. I’m going to resume my series ‘Poorly-Organised Thoughts On Writing’ next week. Today, my focus is on the other side of my little career – stand-up. I shall try to flog the fruits of my humorous efforts and then list some tips for anyone thinking about doing comedy.

Firstly, then, the self-publicity. I am doing a tour this year and the dates are elsewhere on this site and please come and see a show and prop up my emotional wellbeing thank you kindly. Also – a DVD. I’m releasing a DVD! At last. I am one of only ten comedians living in the world today who haven’t done this yet, and there’s a quite powerful fear of failing to sell copies, looking like an idiot compared with certain friends of mine who have sold shitloads, ending up in HMV’s ’20 for £5’ bin, and overhearing someone in WHSmith pick it up and say ‘I saw this guy, he’s shit’. Optimism is my personal challenge these days though, so I’m putting all these things aside and releasing it. It will be a combination of a DVD record I did in 2008 (at the Bloomsbury), and a kind of ‘greatest hits’ show which I’ll do for one night in Edinburgh, and which you might be able to scrounge free tickets for if you go to the fans’ forum shortly.

Anyway, here’s the Amazon link. http://tiny.cc/buythisbloodydvd

It will be quite good, I think. Lots of extras. Lots of jokes, and so on. I don’t know – I don’t often watch stand-up DVDs myself, but if you like that sort of thing, yes, I think you could do worse. Was that suitably optimistic but not too cringingly in-your-face? Good.

And now a little ‘how-to’ guide to the job to which I – almost accidentally, without ever planning it – devoted my twenties. This isn’t just out of the blue: one of the most common themes of the Ten Year Self-Improvement Challenge has been people vowing to give stand-up a go, and several people have asked me for advice. Sure enough, it is one of the most rewarding, but also terrifying artforms/hobbies/ways of getting served in a bar. As with writing, I’m not laying claim to any special abilities by listing my tips like this. There are plenty of better, wiser and more experienced comedians than me (that’s not pessimism, just realism).  But I doubt any of them are blogging about it at this precise second. So you’re stuck with me. Hold onto your hats.

-         DO LOADS OF GIGS. This is by far the most important tip a comic can ever have. You can be as naturally funny and confident as you like, you can write marvellous stuff in your room, but you’ll be a hell of a lot better with 100 gigs under your belt, and a hell of a lot better than that with 1,000. There is no theoretical advice which substitutes for actually doing it, over and over again (as with many skills in life – football, sex etc). This means taking five minutes on stage wherever you can get it, and not earning money for quite a while. I used to go to Manchester on a Megabus, do ten minutes, get paid nothing, go home again on the Megabus, get in to Victoria station at 6am and think ‘well, I guess this is better than being dead’. But it is worth it. Although…

-         DON’T GET DISCOURAGED BY RUBBISH GIGS. …it’s worth remembering that standup gets easier the more you do it, not just because you’re better, but because audiences back you much more. If you go and see Eddie Izzard, people are pretty much soiling themselves with laughter the second he walks on stage. Whereas if you’re in a club in Balham and eight people are there and six leave before you get on, you won’t get much of a reaction. You should have expectations based on how easy/impossible the gig is.

-         SERIOUSLY, DON’T GET DISCOURAGED BY RUBBISH GIGS. Sometimes, it will be a perfectly nice club, and a perfectly nice audience, and you still won’t do well. This is fine. It has happened to every comedian who stuck around long enough to get good . There are no exceptions to this rule.

-         DON’T FRET ABOUT HECKLERS. 95 percent of people who come to a comedy show do not wish to shout shit at you. Assume the audience are friends, not that they’re out to trap you. And if people DO shout stuff, it will normally be quite stupid stuff and you will get huge credit for saying pretty much anything back.

-         WATCH GOOD COMICS AND LEARN. Not as in DVDs; watch people live. My mentors included Chris Addison, Dara O’Briain, Lee Mack, Daniel Kitson, Adam Hills, Emo Philips, Milton Jones. I was still learning from these people even at the stage where I was on the same bill as them. But…

-         DON’T GET OBSESSED WITH WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING. Once again, this rule has its flipside; don’t watch so much comedy that you get overwhelmed. You can easily end up thinking ‘what’s the point? I’ll never be as good as that person’. But the same applies to anything in life you could possibly take on. The idea that the world ‘doesn’t need’ another comic is neither here nor there. It’s what you need that counts.

-         DO WHAT YOU THINK IS FUNNY, NOT WHAT YOU THINK AUDIENCES ‘LIKE’. This is similar to the above.  You see an awful lot of potentially good comedians who are bogged down by trying too hard to imitate Chris Rock/Gervais/Izzard/the last person they saw. The really great comics are the ones that see good comedians, take lessons from it, but then go off and do something that’s all their own.

-         NEVER STEAL A JOKE. Someone will always notice and you will get punched.

-         TALK ABOUT THINGS YOU CARE ABOUT. Not things which are in the news just because they’re in the news. Topicality is overrated. Personal insight is at the heart of pretty much anything funny. And lastly…

-         IF YOU’RE GOOD, YOU WILL EVENTUALLY BE SUCCESSFUL. IF YOU’RE NOT GOOD, YOU’LL KNOW WHEN TO GIVE UP. Self-explanatory.

It’s amazing how pompous you can sound trying to give tips on something you’ve only been doing yourself for a few years, but there it is. Hope someone can make use of it. Good luck. It’s a hard old game, the comedy game. But it’s better than working down a mine. And you can still go and do that if it doesn’t work out. Provided you can find a mine.

-A couple of haircuts and one (unsuccessful) dyeing.
-A number of people have begun confronting low confidence issues by talking to strangers,
leaving the house at unusual times, or even just writing a comment.
 
…and lots lots more. Well done, everyone.
 
There have also been quite a few suggestions for ways we can all join forces, communal goals we can aim towards, and so on. I’m going to get my head around these over the next week or so (the first joint mission will be to convey the iPod to the winner of the Beg For An iPod game – which we will judge together next Monday). Remember there is a forum these days (www.markwatsonfans.com) for getting in touch with TYSIC colleagues: already there have been some heartening instances of people helping each other with the use of appropriate skills. But in the meantime I’m going to up the ante by setting your task for the days ahead:
  
Who can do the best/most spectacular/most difficult/weirdest thing in pursuit of their TYSIC, and post some sort of proof of it (picture, video, emailed copy of prison bail certificate etc), by next Wednesday?
 
This project isn’t meant to be competitive – not, at least, in a way that makes anyone feel under pressure, or insecure – but a bit of friendly rivalry does bring the best out of people, I think. And you don’t have to do anything scarily public, or show-off-y. Just something slightly beyond what you would normally have attempted. And if you can’t do anything prize-worthy, don’t be discouraged: keep the TYSIC going nonetheless. I will conjure up some sort of reward for the winner. But the real reward, philosophy fans, is within your own life. Etc.
 
Admin point: please put all entries as a Comment to THIS blog – even if it’s a link to a fuller record of your efforts - so it’s a bit easier for me to keep track. Ta.
  
To motivate you further, here is a comment which cropped up among the many when we started this up, and left me stunned for a while. I didn’t want to make a song and dance about it, but I’ve checked with the girl who wrote it, and I thought everyone should see it: 
 
‘I am a week short of 17. I was diagnosed with cancer aged 12 and given 5 years to live. My goal for 2020 is to still be around and kicking. I’ve so many things still to do, and I’m not leaving till I’ve done them all. Anyone got 10 years I can borrow?’

The most difficult type of optimism I’ve employed this week has had to do with my career. In six months I’ll be on tour (this sounds like an advert, but it’s not, except in the sense that everything I do is a plea for popularity I suppose). Six months sounds like a long time, but it’s a worryingly short time to sell a lot of tickets. Some shows are selling well; some, to be fair, aren’t. If we don’t sell enough tickets, there are two main consequences. The first, obviously, is that I don’t make as much money, which is a bit of shame with the increased financial pressure of ’supporting a family’; but the second – and more serious – is that I do a series of shows in half-full theatres, get a bit depressed (it’s almost impossible to feel like a show’s going well if there’s only half a crowd) and lose faith in my abilities. This has happened before but it can’t really be allowed to happen again.

As I mentioned when the Ten-Year Self-Improvement Challenge got underway, one of my aims in setting it up was to replicate, in a different, less sleep-deprived form, the communal atmosphere of the 24-hour shows. These celebrated and unpleasant events worked by setting up an enormous number of challenges, games, running jokes and stupid activities, and then sustaining them over a day-long period until everyone’s resistance had been worn down. The number of people signing up to the Challenge has been heartening, and by Thursday, we should have collected in reports on their success (or otherwise) in taking first steps this week. But in the meantime, I’d like to explore some other ways in which this 10-year blog can keep alive the traditions of the long show. Here are a few.

Firstly, GAMES. I began one on Saturday, by offering to give a free iPod to the person who made the best appeal for it, in mitigation of my slightly controversial remarks about the death of music radio. There have been quite a few moving appeals already. If you haven’t already, and you want to win an iPod, you have until this coming Saturday to post a suitably beseeching comment on that blog. I’ll reveal the winner the Monday after. And then, in suitably 24-hour-fashion, we are going to try to convey the iPod from me to the winner, by means of a human chain involving other readers of the blog. Fun!

Every week there will be a similar game or competition.

Secondly, ADMIN. Pointless admin, keeping tabs on the audience members coming and going, was always an enjoyable feature of the 24-hour shows. So: first of all, has anyone read the blog every day so far? These people are the equivalent of the ‘lifers’ who stuck out the whole of the marathon shows. I’d like to determine how many, if any, there are. Then we can keep track of them over the next ten years and see how many stay the course, and again, build up a community between them. When the TYSIC branch of the Fans’ Forum is set up, this will be even easier, but for now, feel free to register in the Comments section if you’ve been here for the whole time so far.

Then, CREATIVE PROJECTS. During the long shows there were often large-scale collaborative projects, like making a quilt with a patch for each country in the world, making a tapestry of history, writing a song to attract a celebrity to our clutches, sending someone to Paris and back, and so on. With so many people’s TYSICs being concerned with writing, music or arts of other kinds, it feels like we ought to have some enormous collective hobby to go back to now and again over the next 10 years: some huge piece of work that involves as many of us as possible. I’ve not thought of anything yet, but I thought I’d ‘put it out there’.

There are other aspects of the 24-hour show which are harder to translate to a virtual community, such as phoning radio stations to persuade them to send us breakfast. But I’m open to any ideas. A lot of today’s entry has been me thinking out loud, as they say, about ways to keep this blog interesting and collaborative. If there’s anything you would like the TYSIC community to tackle, do suggest it. Tomorrow I’ll try to assess the results of my first week as an official optimist. It’s going to be one hell of a blog.

Most of pop culture, obviously, has a kind of built-in naffness to it purely because it’s so much about the here and now. If you go out on a limb with massively over-stylised costumes and design like Cheryl Cole or Lady Gaga – let alone Jedward – you’re kind of acknowledging that you’re only likely to be relevant for a very short while, and thereafter you will always look a bit silly. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that – the Sex Pistols, the Kinks and the Manics all look pretty odd to today’s observer, but it doesn’t diminish the music; if anything their willingness to go to extremes makes them all the cooler in posterity’s eyes.

But what’s more interesting and odder is trying to work out what features of everyday life, away from the excesses of pop, are going to look comically outdated in twenty years’ time, or even ten years when this blog ends. Here are a few which occur to me but do feel free to add your own. I hope by bracing ourselves now, we’ll be less disconcerted when a young person in 2023 says ‘did you seriously do that?’ Or communicates it by whatever method’s replaced speaking by that point. SpaceSpeaking.

-Landlines. Not long ago I used to have to ask my dad if I could call my girlfriend, and then wait till after 6pm or until the weekend, and then stand in the hall trying to say things like ‘I love you too’ quietly enough for the family not to hear. Life-or-death situations, if they arose at breakfast, couldn’t be dealt with for nine hours until the cheaper rate kicked in. Now, it’s already coming to seem strange that we used to call buildings and hope someone was in there, rather than just call the person. Despite BT’s brave ‘if a conversation’s worth having, use the landline’ campaign, I doubt they’ll survive another couple of decades.

-Video tapes, obviously. ‘Wearing out the tape’. Taping over things. Your teacher not being able to ’work the video’ and having to call Mr Collins in. And so on.

-Encyclopaedias in book form. It used to be that a good middle-class family would invariably have a 67-volume encyclopaedia on their shelves, occupying an area the size of Dorset. Nobody ever looked anything up.

-Blackboards and chalk. Already it seems dated if, in a TV show, a teacher taps on the blackboard with chalk, instead of writing on a nice clean whiteboard. And thank God. I used to hate that screechy sound.

-Dare I say it, print newspapers. Well, not all of them. But in twenty years’ time I can’t imagine there will be as many of them around. Local papers, if they survive, will have to become free newsletters.

-Cash, eventually. I reckon within our lifetimes, we’ll be paying for even small things by scanning a card. Maybe we’ll have small change for emergencies, but the amount of money in circulation will be greatly reduced. Making and exchanging coins is one of these traditions which make sense to us, but will seem weirdly literal-minded to people of another generation. Likewise…

-…passports. Our kids will surely laugh at the idea of having a little maroon book to verify that you’re allowed to travel abroad. People mount strong opposition to the introduction of electronic cards instead of paper ID, but it’s an inevitable process, long-term. Surely.

-Someone tried to convince me the other day that dry toilet paper was unhygienic and everyone one day would use water or at least wet wipes. Not sure about this. This could be the area of life where people are most resistant to change. But you read it here first. 

-And, of course, blogging. What’s the point? Eh? All these bloody words! Dear me.

Remember to keep posting your progress on the TYSIC challenges. The time for our first weekly report is fast approaching…

Thanks to everyone who read my ‘secret’, i.e. non-Tweeted-about, blog yesterday. Many disagreed with me, but that is more than fine. I continue to be amazed by how many people can be bothered to listen to and even reply to my often ill-thought-out remarks. It’s doing my optimism campaign the world of good.

Since I began (admittedly only three weeks ago) I’ve succeeded in maintaining this blog on a daily basis despite the baby and so on, but today I’m going to give myself something akin to a ‘Sunday rest’. I’m old enough to remember (I hate starting sentences like that, but a lot of people who read this are about 18) when basically bugger-all happened on a Sunday. Pubs were, without exception, shut. Most shops were shut. There was, at most, one game of football on TV in the afternoon, and something like Ballykissangel in the evening. If people went and did stuff, someone from an older generation would raise an eyebrow in faint disapproval and say ‘and it was open on a Sunday, was it?’

Like many advances in society, the near-abolition of the Sunday rest-day was pretty sensible, but ever so slightly regrettable. So I’m going to take it easy today and I encourage you to do the same, or do something else that people used to do on Sundays, like believe in God or have some lamb. 

Quickly, though: a new feature called Gig Report. Aside from other things, I am, in fact, a comedian, and after the baby’s birth I’m slowly getting back into working. I thought it might be vaguely interesting for others, and for me in ten years, if I publish a little report on my efforts now and again. So – on Thursday I did a corporate gig, which went as follows. I’m laying it out like a real conversation to make it more homely.

GIG REPORT

What sort of gig was it, Mark? – I was hosting an award ceremony for marketing people. There were categories like Best Campaign Featuring Online Or Interactive Contact. In total I had to present 26 awards and do a bit of stand-up at the start. 

What were the audience like, Mark? – Jolly, slightly drunk people with quite big salaries. The men were clean-shaven and confident. The women, in a minority, were glammed up and focused-looking.

Were you good. Mark? – I wasn’t bad. I handled the arcane categories quite well and took the piss out of the event slightly without rubbishing people’s jobs and lives too rudely. 7/10.

See you next time, introspection fans!

Now it should go without saying that I’m opposed to closing 6Music, like almost everyone I know who’s ever listened to it, but - crucially – unlike the Director-General. The reasons have been well covered by other people: it’s the BBC’s best, most interesting music radio station, representing cutting-edge music where the likes of Radio 1 suck up to the Saturdays; it’s not right to close a station because it offers unacceptable competition to commerical channels, as has been absurdly claimed; its entire budget is the same as the BBC pisses away on people to write Jonathan Ross’s monologues, or wax Graham Norton’s face. And so on. And more worryingly still it’s a slippery slope: if the BBC sets this precedent, what other assets will it sell off or throw away once the Tories come to power? As I say, I’m in agreement with all these arguments and I would strongly recommend adding your voice to the dissent, writing to the BBC Trust, pretending you also care about the Asian Network, whatever it takes to at least make sure this isn’t done lightly.

But.

It does seem to me that the whole idea of ‘music radio’ is something of an anachronism in a world where we can all download any song in the known Universe, in a matter of seconds, for about 70p (and I’m aware that certain individuals also do it for free, but I can’t sanction that on this blog or we’ll slide into anarchy). 6Music was better than most because of people like Adam and Joe, Jon Richardson, and recently even the great Jarvis Cocker. But when I hear people saying ‘how am I going to hear good music now?’, I have this urge to go and buy them an MP3 player.

Nobody in this day and age needs to rely on radio for new music. You can go online and find out what’s good. You can download it in less time than it takes to go for a wee. Then you can set up your music player to play it, and everything else you like, forever. No adverts. No ‘you’re listening to…’ No chatter about current affairs. No news and sport every hour. Just music, the way it was meant to be listened to, for as long as you want.

Yes, I know people listen to things like 6Music for more than just the music; they like the badinage. But you can buy DVDs and CDs if you want to listen to comedians. You can get podcasts. You can watch the telly, even. There are more ways than ever, these days, of listening to funny people talking. What the world needs more of is people, quite frankly, shutting the fuck up and putting a record on. That’s something which even the best radio has struggled to provide consistently. But it’s something we can do all, in the comfort of our own homes, without producers’ playlists, without commercial interests playing a part in what we hear.

The evolution of music into digital forms has alarmed many traditionalists – and I’m pretty much a traditionalist myself – but all it really means is more power to the individual. Each of us is his or her own radio station now: that’s what the MP3 generation has inherited. And of course it has its pitfalls. If you choose unwisely you might be a bad radio station, like Heart. But get it right, and you can have 24-hour-7-days-a-week music that you, yourself, individually, want to listen to. And that’s even better than 6Music. If it makes you feel better, you can always say ‘you’re listening to Mark’s iPod’ between each track. Works wonders for me.

I’ve just read back through this and I realise it sounds a bit snooty saying ‘I have this urge to buy them an MP3 player’, because even shitty ones cost a bit of money, and not everyone has any money. So to pilot this blog back towards ‘fun’ than ‘preaching’, I’m going to buy one person an MP3 player. Just a cheap one, like an iPod Touch or something. To win it, you have to convince me you’re in the greatest need of it – i.e. you won’t be able to listen to decent music any more. The only catch is you might have to come to one of my shows to collect it, but you’d still be well in profit.

You have a week to leave the most deserving comment. Hehe. This is fun. I’d better hope no-one’s reading, with it being the weekend.