I renew acquaintance with an old friend

As part of the slow removal of me from my place of work, I now find myself in a new office. To be exact, I've been given a desk in the photocopier room.

One of the few benefits of my new situation is I can play my music a bit louder.

So, for the first time in ages, I've been listening to Virgin Radio. Ten years ago, I worked in an office that I could listen to internet radio in, and I listened to Virgin quite a lot. The mid-late nineties were much like the early eighties in that there was a ton of decent music being made in the UK that was very slowly trickling over here.

The nostalgia continues with their format. In the course of two day's listening I've heard Oasis ("Wonderwall"), Coldplay ("Yellow") and Travis ("Why Does It Always Rain on Me?") -- all songs I first heard on Virgin. As soon as I hear "Perfect Ten" by The Beautiful South, I will know that I have come home.

There is some amount of difference -- "Pete and Geoff" have turned into just plain old "Geoff," and yet the banter sounds exactly the same. The current contest involves a big star that listeners have to guess how much cash it is filled with. Once I figured that out, I was disappointed as I thought that they were talking about Big Star.

There's some new stuff too, I've been happy to hear KT Tunstall after hearing about her for a while. Likewise the Kaiser Chiefs and Snow Patrol came off decently (I'd been avoiding listening to them purposefully as it felt like they'd been rammed down my throat as the Next Big Thing). Ray Lamontagne seems to be the current hot commodity, although his single leaves me cold.

One song that was played quite a bit was a curious drunken romp that was so catchy that at first I thought it was an advertisement. The fact that it didn't pop up in the "just played" listings seemed to confirm that. Then I had a look at the "just played" fine print.

We play songs two ways on Virgin Radio, from a studio complex including three studios that are on-air capable.

This system will recognise nearly all songs played off our playout system, as long as the tracks are loaded into the songs area of that system.

It'll also recognise most CDs our presenters play. However, not all the CDs we play are in our system: during some parts of our programming, we may not recognise all the CDs we play - there are thousands of CDs, after all. If you want to come in and do some typing, let us know.

The next time I'm planning on coming to town, I might just take them up on that offer. Seriously.

In any event, a few plays later, and someone had typed the name of the song into their computer system. It was "Chelsea Dagger" by The Fratellis. It's one of those songs that I really liked the first five times I heard it, but I can see how it can get old really fast. I am certain that at this very moment a pack of drunks are jumping up and down, ignoring the lyrics and yelling "Yabba dabba Dabba dabba Yabba dabba Dabbily Dabb-Bah. Oh Yeah!" at the top of their lungs.

This reminds me. I haven't heard "Tubthumper" yet either.