Tomasz

Shafenaker is the name, and I’ll do anything rather than the job I am employed to do.

Regular readers will be aware that he is my bete noire, (yes, I do have one or two, I regret to say).

He sometimes appears when he is rostered on Radio 4 Weather update. an important job.  Desperate to keep up with the BBC mantra for a person to become a celebridy (67k and 35k Twitter and Facebook followers), he continues to be a dismal failure at doing his day job.  His latest faux pas concerns a river which is 7 metres above normal level – he couldn’t remember the name of it!  Wye not?  It was in the news broadcast five minutes earlier!  There are people who are flooded waiting on his every word for an indication of what the day brings, and what he says doesn’t make sense. Waiting in a small boat, listening to the shipping forecast with a weak signal and a low battery on your transistor radio, this is not the boy for you.  This follows on from the “finger” incident on TV, and his magnificent throw-up on the shipping forecast on R4 and another incident in which the continuity announcer had to finish the forecast.

Even when he performs, his diction is interspersed with unnecessary pauses which makes listening even harder.  Isn’t that the point of radio weather forecast – to be able to hear and understand it?  No doubt his continued employment is something to do with the ineffectual nature of BBC management, and his social network following.