MAR 1584 AM - 30th June/1st July 2012

This guy is only on once a week, yet spends a good part of his show being completely and embarrassingly technically incompetent, with songs stopping dead, restarting, or repeating and then having to be faded out. When he works out how to actually do it, he does the usual boring thing of seguing two songs back to back and then his following link is all full of apologies and stops and starts and completely meandering of thought. A little bit of prep would be a good idea. Plus learning how to use the equipment might help. Otherwise why on earth are those who are risking fines and prison sentences to put this crap out bothering?

Nick is learning on the job and being first on air on a Saturday has the disadvantages of anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Nick does technical because that is what he is; more tech than DJ the same as Rodger. Nick has a good following.

The problems with equipment is not normally his fault. As you can appreciate we only put the AM on in the afternoon just before his show and problems happen. We don't have the luxury of having engineers at hand 24/7 as the other stations do.

I hope this explains things for you Christopher.

This guy's voice is so deep and mumbly you'd think he was speaking whilst half asleep actually laying in bed with his microphone under his pillow. Sometimes his voice gets drowned by the music, especially on AM. I'm not sure if the wide range of different musical styles he plays would appeal to absolutely everybody. Maybe it should be targeted to one particular niche. I say this whilst generally finding the music he plays refreshingly varied for my personal tastes most of the time, well, as long as he stops the songs that remind me of Mr Blobby.

I assume 30 years ago when he first started radio dejaying he was a lot zanier and bubbly or something, because he has completely out of place jingles telling us how wacky he is, something he, well, doesn't appear to be any more. Well, not whilst he's laid out in his bed presenting his show, at least.

Indeed, considering the format across MAR generally, it does seem that the extremely old and old fashioned jingles, some quite zappy and fast moving, are not in keeping with the generally far more laid back mainly rock oldies they are playing, but the jingles probably mean something to those who have a history with the station.

I've got to admit that I've got quite a soft spot for this station. It does take a little getting used to and it's not wall-to-wall great music and content, but it's got its moments. Lee Morrison's progressive rock and beyond its good - quite an education for sometime my age! Jackie and Roger are also a good listen, especially when they allow themselves to relax and chat a bit rather than feeling the necessity to get back to the music too quickly. Also, if you're lucky enough to catch one of Bert Williams' rare appearances and he's in the mood for telling one of his long and drawn out stories, it can be a really good listen.

The quality control leaves a little to be desired at times, but overall I think there's a place for a station like MAR. As radio becomes more and more consolidated and formulaic, it's nice to hear something a bit unusual.

Sunday mornings are quite good, yes. This is when they sound like Family Favourites on the Light Programme used to sound, carefully and very slowly reading out requests and dedications from the same people each week. The friendly patter and sincere sounding voices are like the good old BBC used to back in the day. It's odd that a pirate should want to copy the BBC, but MAR do do it very well. The range of songs they play is, like the original Family Favourites, as extremely diverse as you can get.

Thanks for your comments Christopher & Garsh, always pleased to know you listening. Here at MAR we like to think all our listeners are part of our family.

I don't aspire to be like the Beeb. I read slow because I'm blind and have great difficulty seeing the text on the screen. (I'm so looking forward to the large screen installation).

I love my job as bossy dj and am really pleased with the mix of DJs and music we have on the station. We wouldn't want to sound like every other station out there, that would be too boring.