They say, whoever they may be, that you should never try to replicate former glories, writes our Grumpy Old Man Bill McCarthy.

There is no better demonstratio of this than in the case of ancient DJ Simon Bates getting the morning slot on Smooth Radio.

I know Smooth  targets people of a certain age, but dinosaurs like Bates should be consigned to the Natural History Museum, along with the other fossils. I feel like a spring chicken in comparison.

It was bad enough listening to him back in the eighties, but at least then you didn’t  have to put up with the insufferable adverts as well.

Smooth used to be an easy listening locally-based radio station that has decided to go national and has suffered as a result.

Not  only is Bates back, he is now asking listeners whether the appalling Our Tune, the mawkish slot he presented on Radio 1 a liftetime ago, should return with him.

Hence the point about former glories. Our Tune was anything but glorious This nauseating drivel allowed saddos to whine on endlessly in public, through the sanctimonious Bates, about their failings, illnesses or sheer awfulness of their lives.

All of this with the dreary Romeo and Juliet film music in the background had me reaching for the painkillers.

Now, after listening to Smooth, formerly Saga for a few years now, the hiring of Bates, and other Radio 1 relics like Mark Goodier and Andy Peebles has me reaching for the ‘off’ button or even in desperation, tuning in Chris Evans on Radio 2, or even, God help us, Chris Moyles on Radio 1.

No, it really is  that bad.

*****

Neighbours from hell must be a terrible thing, but what about the ones who are just plain irritating.

You know the kind, they never do enough for a full-blown row, but just chip away at your senses until you are seething.

They leave bin bags and garden rubbish more outside your place than theirs; despite having a drive wider than the M6, they still manage to park close enough so they have to get out of the car on your grass.

Then they reverse off the drive over your grass, or cut the corner coming returning leaving tyre tracks.

Gormless and living in a world of their own or just selfish idiots?

*****

It must be galling for hard-pressed motorists feeling the squeeze on petrol prices to hear the  genius the transport secretary Philip Hammond blaming the looming price rise on ‘the mess left by Labour.’ Fair enough, Labour’s love of taxing fuel is well documented.

But excuse me. Just who is in government  now and has the power to overturn it?

Go figure, as our American pals would say.