Maybe what we love about radio is the way that most of its programming allows us the luxury of staying content with ourselves, of realising that it’s OK to be no more, or less, than average. There’s no spangle, no sparkle on the wireless; nothing to make us feel we should be aspiring to live in a fake and fantastical world of gilded lives, to be uber-rich, super-tanned, ultra-happy. On the contrary, you could say most radio is a celebration of Ms or Mr Average.
Think of all those short stories, plays, features and real-time, real-voice recordings which take us right inside (too far inside, some might say) the banality of most domestic situations. We can listen in our average homes, with our modest decor, glitter-free wardrobes, our everyday routines and lack of red-carpet party invitations, and take comfort from the fact that the people we are listening to are no different from ourselves.
Such thoughts were triggered by Ian Sansom’s series of essays for Radio 3, About Average (produced by Stan Ferguson). What’s wrong with being average? he asked. Why has outdoing, surpassing average become the mantra of our times?
Sansom reminded us that what was once average — the fact, for instance, that just a few decades back we all (or most of us at least) smoked like chimneys, and wore gloves, hats and three-piece suits — soon becomes exceptional, and vice versa. He quoted from W.H. Auden’s poem ‘The Average’ about a young man whose parents sacrificed everything in their desperate desire to turn their son into something special. But when he saw himself as ‘the shadow of an Average Man Attempting the Exceptional’, he could only run away. Those who despise the average, Sansom concluded, are people-haters.
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