I believe that someone here was going to try and contact him towards the end of last year. I`ll try to find out if they had any luck.

Mills I hope you don't think I'm a nitpicker, any more than I think your posts are trivial! I love words, no-one more. I just happen to think that the place for such discussions is on boards like these - highly successful and enjoyable threads abound, and good luck to everyone. But here we have the choice whether we read them or not. There's no such choice when it's broadcast, and I tune to R3 in the morning to listen to the music. As you have said, the alternatives are too awful to contemplate, and I want a bit of civilised music, not hearing about why the world and his wife likes umbrage or Ambridge.  I want to listen to Frank Bridge.

Part of the problem with BBC people imho, and 'twas ever thus, is that they see the world entirely through its vastish prism, failing to realise that they are no longer the universally acknowledged gold standard, for all the pockets of excellence on its borders.In the contemporary world, this equates not so much to say the Army-which
appositely is ever-more contemporary in its consciousness-as Tesco.
Rob C has enough provenance as a hack-old Boosey and Hawkes hand etc-to have a perspective on the format to which he has to shoehorn. Whatever you think of the result, I think that's a definitive difference.Not long ago he read out a forlorn 'excellence gone'   "radio 3 haiku" which illustrates some even-handedness at the mike.