iPM Radio 4
Joe Lycett’s Obsessions Radio 4
The draw of iPM is that it starts with the listeners. It’s up close and personal.
The Your News bulletin features individual stories told in a few sentences: “I have just fulfilled my mother’s ambitions of getting a first class honours degree ... I will now be studying for a Masters degree - not needed - just to make her happy.”
There are everyday tales of depression; the heartbreak of being begged by someone with dementia to please take her out of the home; the pain of being dumped by text message by a best friend of 20 years.
It was an advert for domestic abuse that prompted one man to contact the programme.
He and his girlfriend were having problems.
“All my friends really liked her and said she’s a keeper ... don’t mess this one up,” but then things changed.
“The good times became a lot less,” he said.
She had mood changes, she told him off for eating chocolate too loudly, she knocked on the bathroom door to say he was spending too long in the shower after two or three minutes, at night, he would be reading in the living room and she’d turn out the light and tell him it was time to stop.
Where is the line crossed from normal couple arguments to one person’s control over another? When she takes his phone and goes through his messages? When the silent treatment goes on for too long without a reason?
Joe Lycett’s Obsessions is a meander through the weird and wonderful things that people are mad about.
The highlight was Rebecca who loves rollercoasters so much she has pictures of them around her house.
When she was 18, she was working in a restaurant when John Wardley walked in.
Even John Wardley’s family asked: “How do you know him?” she said.
Apparently he’s a famous rollercoaster designer and she’d watched all his DVDs and YouTube videos. She got his autograph.
She has gone on all kinds of rollercoasters including “the big one” in Blackpool, but has never got to the biggest rollercoasters in the world.
“They’re in America and I’m scared of flying,” she sighed to incredulous laughter from the audience.
