End Voyeur Radio: Graham Torrington's 'Late Night Love'

If like me you have driven anywhere much in the UK late at night whether on business or pleasure, you will probably have encountered Graham Torrington droning out from your radio. For the past 12 years apparently he has hosted a programme called 'Late Night Love' which starts at 10pm and runs on to sometime later (I have never heard it end, but it must sometime) and it is on every Sunday-Thursday so only Friday and Saturday are clear. It is syndicated to local commercial radio stations across the UK to such an extent that it is difficult to find any other programme on while you are driving along at that time of night. Coming down the M1 (the main motorway between North-East and South East England) once from Leeds going to London, I kept on thinking that I would move out of the area, but of course the next local stations either side of the motorway as I got South had also bought the programme so I could not escape it. Around Luton was an even worse thing, where some local station which straddles a number of towns in that area has a different transmitter for each locale (and presumably during the day, slightly different local news) and I kept crossing the boundary between two of them and they were seconds out of step so you would hear the same sentence you had just heard repeated it doubled the agony. The only respite seemed to be some real backwater station coming in from somewhere in East Anglia that seemed to be broadcast from a shed and had features with the DJ just telling you about obscure villages.

When you are driving, especially late at night, you want music that will keep you awake, not talk radio. Torrington effectively forces talk radio on to music stations. Yes, he does play a few romantic songs but the bulk of his programme is talk. His voice drones on and he sounds like a grumpy depressive. Most of the programme is not about people ringing up and saying how much they love someone else (though there are elements of that), most of it is about the relationship problems they are having, though these quite quickly spiral off into more general social problems with loads of women seemingly falling into debt and prostitution even on the few occasions I have heard the programme. Torrington is noted for his judgemental approach. I accept he sometimes gives people numbers to call for help, but he also lays down a moral code of behaviour for their behaviour and tries to shame them into doing things. In some ways he is the audio version of the plethora of programmes like 'Trisha' and 'The Jeremny Kyle Show', modelled on US programmes where people outline their problems in front of a baying crowd and fight with their ex-partner. The lack of sophistication of radio means you simply get Torrington's judgement then those of other people who leave messages. Back in 2001 I used to have the programme on the background for not wanting to tune off my local station for when it woke me in the morning, but these days I would avoid it like the plague and especially carry Torrington antidote tapes if I stray passed 10pm. I thought he would have gone out of business, but I heard him straying on to the station in my current area and going online I see his approach has not changed and he has even been awarded for it. I am not the only online commentator who bemoans the existence of this programme

Torrington is painfully self-righteous and smug and his programme subsists on the misery of others. He has no medical, counselling or psychology qualifications. You might as well tell your troubles to a barman. The one incident that made me laugh was when a young man telephoned in saying that he had seen his male partner kissing another man at a fair and was cut up about it. Torrington heard a woman's voice in the background of the call and assumed that this was actually the man's girlfriend and that the caller was faking the whole story. He got angry and cut the man off. I thought, what was the point. Does it matter if the stories are real or not? Airing them may help the callers, it may harm them further. Torrington offers minimal constructive advice, just basically criticism, so why should not the stories be fake, it would have as much impact as real or simply exaggerated ones. The benefit of the whole exercise is clearly for gossip mongers and those who simply love poking their noses in other people's businesses. It is the nosy woman on the corner writ large across the country and aside from pandering to such tastes, gives nothing of benefit to the UK.

I beg radio companies to please put on music at night. Please have pity for us poor drivers who have listened to our cassettes or CDs thirty times on a journey. Twelve years is far too long, purge the unqualified Torrington and his totally misnamed programme (it should be retitled 'Late Night Misery') from our radios. Maybe I should ring in and say I was driven to suicide whilst driving down the M1 hearing his programme and see what he suggests. This is an appalling case of voyeur radio (presumably that should be 'entendeur' radio to be accurate). Please just give us a break. Not only us, but the bulk of callers would be better off for it.