You might want to point your browsers at Radio 4, at or after 20:00 tomorrow (Thursday, September 25, 2008) when the programme "Document" (which has a habit of coming up with gems - the only problem is actually knowing about them being there) tells us how the British V-Bomber force was 5 minutes away from action.

I can't tell you any more, because that's all they told us in the trailer I just tripped over, just to get us interested I suppose.

Find it online here , available for a week after broadcast:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio/bbc_radio_four/

Or on Freeview 704 of course, - could anyone find a "real" radio if they had to?

Yep, I could put my hands on a real radio in seconds.

I assume we are talking the original Radio4 on Long Wave.

I'm impressed.

I have quite a few kicking about, but since most want some sort of battery it's too much hassle to fire them up.

They used to be interesting - hunting around in the mush for the stuff that made it around the world was a source of great amusement, especially in those Cuban missile days as the Communist states broadcast their propaganda in English. If I can hijack the term, "original" Radio Moscow from the days of the Cold War was one of the best comedy programmes on the radio, as the announcers spun their carefully chosen questions from American listeners to mock the West, and promote the Soviet, but not in overt language, but in carefully crafted terms that showed the pity of the poor, misguided capitalists, who simply did not understand how bad their life in the West was, and how wonderful things were in Soviet fairyland.

I don't think many would now believe that the material I have in mind was broadcast in deadly earnest at the time, and I wish I had recordings to back up my memory.

The clever part of the broadcasting in those days was that only part of the content fell into this controlled genre, and the stations broadcast much material that was genuinely local and interesting, and the "simple" listener wouldn't be expected to spot the points at which things slipped to and from propaganda and selected reality.

Somebody somewhere must have recording ferreted away, they'd be interesting listening now. Still, the way Putin's working Russia from behind now, and the way the "old guard" hard-liners are slotting themsleves back into place there, it may not be too long until the second generation of the same stuff begins to emerge.