If you have a DAB Digital Radio and you live in London, you’ve probably not spotted it yet, but you’ve a curious connection to Yorkshire - since you can now get not just one but two stations from there.

Global’s Galaxy Yorkshire has been available in the capital for a number of years; allowing you to enjoy the ever-entertaining ‘Hirsty’s Daily Dose’ with my old colleague Simon Hirst.

I’m rather a fan of Global stations; Heart gets an unfair share of my car listening, while LBC 97.3 is my current “alarm-clock” station, where Nick Ferrari (and currently Andrew Pierce) do a good job of waking me up with just the right amount of humour and wit. My only criticism of LBC 97.3 is that there appear to only be three advertisers: AAP (who can do very clever things with endowment mortgages if only I had one), BGR Bloomer Solicitors (if you’ve had an accident at work and it wasn’t your fault), and Martin Barnet Furniture who clearly only ever sell furniture to mad old women who listen to Steve Allen. But I digress.

The other station went live last week in London, though you’d not have noticed: the ‘Real Radio’ that you used to get on your DAB set - an embarrassment of a badly-programmed playout system that nobody listened-to or cared about - is now Real Radio Yorkshire, and contains - gosh - people, including another radio gem, Daryl Denham, who’s back on his rightful slot at breakfast.

I was listening to Real over the weekend… lots of splendidly old-fashioned but warm jingles, and a man who didn’t actually mention the name of the radio station he was on at all. It turned out to be a networked show from Century 105 in Manchester (the telephone number he read out gave it away), which Real was also taking: lots of requests and dedications for people who strangely never thought to tell the presenter where they were.

I grew up in Yorkshire, and presented probably over a thousand radio programmes there. It’s an interesting radio market: ultra-local stations (like the absurdly-named Pennine FM in Huddersfield) vie with heritage stations (like The Pulse, which also covers Huddersfield and was once named Pennine FM) which, in turn, vie with new regional stations (like Galaxy and Real), which are also competing against tremendously high-powered national radio broadcasts from Holme Moss and Emley Moor. But it’s a crowded landscape - large stations were so close, the “non-compete” clause in The Pulse’s contract was unique in the Metro Radio Group at the time in that there actually was already a radio station within the area stipulated: just five miles away in Leeds was Radio Aire, owned then by the Transworld group. No surprise, then, that many (including me) refused to sign a Metro Radio Group contract - and probably one of the reasons that Metro Radio never really got the hang of the Yorkshire marketplace.

As a result of the rivalry, radio stations in West and South Yorkshire have sounded consistently good quality: far more so than many others. In the mid 1990s, a drive down to the South West, to the blandness of GWR Group’s stations, or a listen to a Capital Radio that frankly was never much cop even in its heyday, made you wonder what all the fuss was about.

So it’s delightful to have two Yorkshire radio stations to choose from on a ‘proper’ radio. Just because they contain funny-sounding adverts for places you’ve never heard of and don’t slavishly talk about Leicester Square, doesn’t make them bad stations. In fact, if you listened for a bit you’ll hear some sparkling radio: Daryl on his adopted patch, and Barnsley-born Hirsty sounding genuinely at home. I heartily recommend them.

So, you’ve junked that Windows box, but you still fancy listening to a little bit of BBC Radio? Don’t blame you.

Thanks to a man called Tim who wrote a series of amusing emails to a colleague of mine at the BBC, and a nice man called Richard who, and I quote, said “You’re a linux man, James, aren’t you?”, I’ve rushed home and discovered how to do it, so I could tell him. Here’s how. Tested on Ubuntu Gutsy, the latest version. And ready for my colleagues to copy’n'paste into a proper BBC web-page.

Open Synaptic
Synaptic is the software that will install Real Player for you.
- Run System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager.
- Type your password when it asks you.

Tell Ubuntu where to find commercial software
Real Player is commercial software, so we need to tell Ubuntu how it can find that if we search for it.
- Under the ‘Settings’ menu, choose ‘Repositories’.
- Click the ‘Third party software’ tab.
- Click the ‘Add’ button at the bottom of the window.
- In the window that appears, type:
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu dapper-commercial main
- Then click ‘OK’ to enter that information, and ‘close’.
- A window will appear saying that the repositories have changed.
- Click ‘close’.
- Click the ‘reload’ button on the top-left of the toolbar.
- After a few seconds, it’ll load a few files.

Install Real Player
Now Synaptic will know all about commercial software, like Real Player. (Don’t worry, it’s still a free download).
- Hit the ’search’ icon in the toolbar, and search for “realplay”.
- You’ll see a few programs appear in the search results window. Tick the one called ‘realplay’ and choose “Mark for Installation”.
- Then press ‘Apply’ in the toolbar; then ‘apply’ again.
- Synaptic will automatically download a file (6 megabytes).
- Close Firefox while it’s doing this, so it can install correctly.
- Synaptic will automatically install Real Player onto your system.

Go to the iPlayer for Radio
- Open Firefox.
- Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/
- Click on “Listen live” for the station of your choice
- Enjoy the best the BBC has to offer.

Photo: Alosh Bennett. Used under licence