TURN ON, TUNE IN, DROP OUT...

ISN'T TECHNOLOGY A WONDERFUL THING?

Suddenly having time on your hands isn't necessarily a bad thing. It gives you a chance to sit back and think. To have a bit of a muse.

It gives you breathing space. It gives you the chance to discover new things. It gives you the valuable opportunity to develop new talents.

It's invigorating. It's stimulating. It's refreshing.

And it isn't half bloody quiet.

After weekends of teenagers slamming doors, playing i-pods, shouting up and down stairs and having a different TV programme on in every room, the silence of Monday mornings is astonishingly deafening.

Or it was, until I discovered the joys of DAB radio.

Apart from offering sound quality that's light years away from my old 1960s tranny (I mixed with all-sorts, I'll have you know), it also offers a range of choice we never dreamed of when we had our ears glued to Caroline under the bed sheets. (It wasn't until the latter part of my adolescence that I discovered the joys of welding more interesting parts of my anatomy to ladies…)

There are classic rock channels, indie rock channels, dad rock channels, classical channels, channels for just about every sort of music, in fact, that your little lug-holes desire.

But, strangely for someone who's spent a large part of their life as a musician, I don't play a lot of music during the day. Much as I applaud DAB for keeping me safe from the bigoted, humourless rants of arch egotists like the dreadful Chris (if-he-didn't-exist-you-certainly-wouldn't-invent-him) Moyles, or from being seduced into premature senility by Wogan's aimiable old-bufferish banter and smooth grooves, I actually prefer the sound of voices to tunes during the day.

Voices make me feel like I'm not alone, you see. It sounds like these people are actually there, in my house, performing just for me. Which I guess may something to do with being an only child.

Don’t get me wrong - I had a very happy childhood, but, from as early as I can remember I've had a thing about voices - and radio comedy in particular. I've got shelves heaving under the weight of cassette collections of Hancock, Round the Horne, Beyond our Ken, The Goons, I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Steptoe and Son, and the like. Not to mention Steve Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Jeremy Hardy, Jack Dee, Woody Allen and Emo Phillips (one of the best joke writers you're ever likely to find - trust me, you just have to get past the funny voice).

I've got dozens of beautifully delivered Sherlock Holmes stories on tape. I've got 'Talking Heads' and some great Alan Bennett collections.

And now I've got BBC Radio 7.

If you haven't turned on and tuned in yet, I heartily recommend that you do. And check out the listen again service online too. In the last month or so you've missed a fantastically funny detective spoof, 'Boxer and Doberman' by Alastair Jessiman, Philip Glenister in a brilliant adaptation of Anthony Burgess's 'Inside Mr. Enderby', a great play about Brian Epstein and the Beatles, the fabulous 'Beachcomber, By the Way', with Richard Ingrams, entertaining new detective adventures with Nick Fisher's Julie Enfield (and her dad), and a stunningly written and performed up-date of Faust by Martin Jenkins, starring the marvellous Mark Gatiss, amongst others.

And you get a good couple of hours of classic comedy a day, too.

The great thing about rediscovering radio is realising how much joy it is to really use your imagination, rather than being passively persuaded by the clever moves of a gifted director or the combined mega-gigabyte talents of a Hollywood CGI department.

And apart from offering stimulating entertainment, as well as blasts from the past they're commissioning writers too. Which can't be a bad thing. Must make a note to send them something.

And I will send them something, really I will, when I find the time to write it. I'm just so busy these days. I mean, with a couple of blogs to keep going and the fly fishing (3 nice trout last week - sorry Andy, your turn to catch next time), and the snooker, and the football it's a wonder I have time to play guitar at all.

But I do - and it's coming on a treat, thanks to a wonderful piece of technology.

I can't praise the Tascam CD-GT2 highly enough. It's a little box (that only costs around a hundred quid), not much bigger than a portable CD player that allows you to plug a guitar in and play along with any CD you like. And not just play along, but play along at any tempo you like - in the same key (you can even drop the original guitar out, so you can be the hero). So you slow a track down, practice and practice, then speed up gradually until you reach the desired tempo.

But what use is that, I hear you say, when you're playing gypsy jazz on an acoustic?

A lot of bloody use, you old sceptic you, I reply. Because it's got a handy line-out socket and a headphone socket too. So you simply plug in a simple little set of i-pod stylee speakers, load up your Robin Nolan, Colin Cossimini, or Stephane Wrembel backing tracks, and you've got a fantastic backing band in your living room - who'll play at any tempo you tell them to.

Actually, I wonder if they'd perform my radio play for me too?

We could star off rehearsing slowly and build up to speed. If I ever get round to writing it.