Alex Lester (born Walsall, West Midlands, 11th May 1956) is a British broadcaster who presents the weekday overnight/early-morning programme on BBC Radio 2. Jump to: navigation, search Map sources for Walsall at grid reference SP0198 Walsall Art Gallery Walsall is an industrial town in the West Midlands of England. ... The West Midlands refers to western area of The Midlands (central England). ... (Redirected from 11th May) May 11 is the 131st day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (132nd in leap years). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1956 was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Note: broadcasting is also the old term for hand sowing. ... Jump to: navigation, search Radio 2 is one of the BBCs national radio stations and is the most popular station in the UK. It broadcasts throughout the UK on FM radio between 88 and 91 MHz from its studios in Broadcasting House. ...

Early Life & Career

A doctor's son, Lester was privately educated and worked in a variety of jobs (including at Dudley Zoo, in a pub and as a civil service clerk), before he began his broadcasting career in 1977 for BBC local radio stations. He then joined Radio Aire in Leeds in 1981 and later worked for other radio stations in the commercial sector. These included Radio Tees, based in Stockton-on-Tees, where he worked from 1983 to 1986 presenting, amongst others, the weekday lunchtime show and a specialist blues music programme. In 1986 he returned to the BBC, joining the newly opening BBC Essex based in Chelmsford. Lester joined Radio 2 in 1987 as an announcer and newsreader who also presented the night-time show on a rota basis. In 1992, he was given the overnight show permanently. The National Zoo in Washington, D.C.. A zoological garden, or zoo for short, is a place where wild animals are encaged in an artificial environment and exhibited to the public. ... An amusingly named pub (the Old New Inn) at Bourton-on-the-Water, in the Cotswold Hills of South West England A pub in the Haymarket area of Edinburgh, Scotland A public house, usually known as a pub, is a drinking establishment found mainly in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada... Jump to: navigation, search A civil servant or public servant is a civilian career public sector employee working for a government department or agency. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1977 was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1977 calendar). ... Radio Aire consists of several tropical regions Categories: United Kingdom broadcasting stubs | Leeds | Radio stations in the United Kingdom | Yorkshire media ... Jump to: navigation, search Leeds Coat Of Arms Map sources for Leeds at grid reference SE297338 Leeds is a city in the metropolitan borough of the City of Leeds in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the north of England. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1981 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Commercial may mean: as a noun: a form of advertising, as in a television commercial as an adjective: referring to commerce or for-profit activities or trade (compare with non-profit organization) a breed of cattle, Commercial This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that... Jump to: navigation, search Radio Tees was the original name of TFM (radio), the Independent local radio station broadcasting in the north east of England, serving Teesside and parts of County Durham and North Yorkshire. ... Stockton-on-Tees is an industrial town and port on the River Tees in north-eastern England. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1983 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1986 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Jump to: navigation, search For other uses, see blues (disambiguation) Blues is a vocal and instrumental music form which emerged in the African-American community of the United States. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1986 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... BBC Essex is the BBC Local Radio service for the English county of Essex. ... Jump to: navigation, search Chelmsford is a town in the county of Essex, in the United Kingdom. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1987 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Jump to: navigation, search News is essentially new information or current events. ... Look up rota in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1992 was a leap year starting on Wednesday. ...

The Best Time Of The Day!

The programme currently starts at 3am, ending at 6am, and has become something of a national institution with an enormous and fiercely loyal cult audience of nightshift workers and early risers. The meaningless but catchy show slogan is Slap My Top (thought to be a variation on the music hall soundbite slap my thigh - but reserved exclusively for people with bald heads) and listeners have marketed the show by writing the phrase in the dirt on the backs of trucks and vans. There was a limited edition range of T-shirts with the slogan written in Cantonese developed by a listener, which Lester awarded to people who came up with the most innovative uses of the slogan - winners included a local radio reporter who got the expression into a story; a man who wrote and recorded a song with the slogan as its title; a mystery girl, for placing an ad for Lester's show in the small ad's section of a local newspaper and a man who developed a website which remains a communal meeting point for the programme's listeners, and is listed in the External Links section below. Jump to: navigation, search In religion and sociology, a cult is a cohesive group of people (often a relatively small and new religious movement) devoted to beliefs or practices that the surrounding culture or society considers to be far outside the mainstream. ... Look up Slogan on Wiktionary, the free dictionary A slogan is a memorable phrase used in political or commercial context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose. ... Music Hall is a form of British theatrical entertainment which reached its peak of popularity between 1850 and 1960. ... Jump to: navigation, search The driver of this DAF tractor with an auto-transport semi-trailer prepares to offload Skoda Octavia cars in Cardiff, Wales For further uses of the word truck, see Truck (disambiguation). ... A van is a vehicle used for transporting goods or groups of people. ... T-Shirt A T-shirt (or tee shirt) is a shirt with short or long sleeves, a round neck, put on over the head, without pockets. ... Cantonese (粵語/粤语, lit. ... A reporter is a type of journalist who researches and presents information in certain types of mass media. ... Jump to: navigation, search A song is a relatively short musical composition for the human voice (possibly accompanied by other musical instruments), which features words (lyrics). ... Jump to: navigation, search The front page of the English Wikipedia website. ...

Despite the ungodly hour, Lester prides himself on calling his programme The Best Time Of The Day. Though one of the longest-serving broadcasters on the network, he is now rarely heard on Radio 2 during the daytime except when regular presenters are away.

Show Features & Campaigns

Running themes, innovations, campaigns and ideas which have become regular topics for discussion on the programme over the years include:

• Standard Greetings & Standard Replies - a timesaver for people to greet each other without the requirement for unnecessary smalltalk about the weather or such like. Conversation begins with "standard greeting"; the respondee replies with "standard reply" and immediately they can get to the crux of the conversation...

• Penguins - years after someone first asked why penguins always appeared on Christmas cards, usually wearing a scarf, listeners still refer somehow to the wildfowl when answering Lester's daily trivia questions, known as Brain Bogglers...

• The Les Dawson Memorial Gag - also stemming from the Brain Bogglers, this allows Lester to make light of slightly 'prejudiced' answers from his large sector of male truck driver listeners whose answers are usually unkind towards mothers in law. Lester breaks into a half-accurate impersonation of Dawson, a respected comic who was prone to telling such jokes in comedy's less enlightened era...

• The Weather Chicken - any bad weather mentioned in the forecast by Lester's newsreader is often followed by Lester as the Weather Chicken - a staccato parody of female overstatement of poor weather conditions during banal, pointless discussions, with the resulting noise sounding uncannily like a chicken and resembling the screeches adopted by the Monty Python's Flying Circus team when they played domestic female characters...

• Freda, the Woollen Fridge of Doom - the show's official mascot; a woollen box which the listener knits from a pattern downloadable from the unofficial website (listed below). The idea came after Lester accidentally 'killed' his own fridge when he stuck a knife in it to see if it would help it work properly...

• Friendship Fries - also known as World Peace Through Chips, this idea claims to solve all global conflicts by adding French fries to every country's national dish, thereby giving them all something in common...

• Reverse Autographs - designed to puncture the egos of the famous, listeners are encouraged to offer their own autograph to celebrities if they meet one...

• Eating For Free - an experiment to see if people can live entirely on free samples of food products sent in the post or handed out in supermarkets...

• The Sock - from an otherwise inconclusive debate about clothing between Lester and his listeners, the sock was adopted as a superhero of the show, with nocturnal drivers accepting its status by hanging a single sock from the cabs of their trucks...

• The Sandy Status Symbol - an idea to persuade troublesome teenagers that carrying a heavy sack of sand around is fashionable. They keep their coolness factor but the weight of the status symbol means they're too tired to pursue any anti-social behaviour...

• The Christmas Cardboard Box - a gift which Lester promises will be 'all the rage' for Christmas 2005. Kids should be given a plain cardboard box for Christmas on the grounds that many toys get ignored by children who would rather play with the box in which the toy had been placed by the manufacturer...

• The Traveller's Arse - an idea that a huge prosthetic bottom could be manufactured and worn in which people could hide their money and valuables, with potential attackers and thieves not suspecting anything as they would just assume the large-bottomed folk were American...

• Tri-Team Football - initially stemming from a debate about how all sports have an aspect which make them look silly (such as the carpet on which bowls players rest their knees), this is an idea to make football more interesting by having three teams, three goals and a triangular pitch...

Greeting habits are social customs or rituals to show attention or to confirm friendship or social status between individuals or groups of people meeting each other. ... Jump to: navigation, search Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective, programming language designed at Xerox PARC by Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, Ted Kaehler, Adele Goldberg, and others during the 1970s, influenced by Sketchpad and Simula. ... Jump to: navigation, search Composite satellite image showing the progress of a hurricane weather system approaching the East Coast of the United States Weather comprises all the various phenomena that occur in the atmosphere of a planet. ... For the movie from Francis Ford Coppola, see The Conversation. ... Jump to: navigation, search Genera Aptenodytes Eudyptes Eudyptula Megadyptes Pygoscelis Spheniscus Penguins (order Sphenisciformes, family Spheniscidae) are an order of flightless birds living in the southern hemisphere. ... Christmas Card is a vinyl album of Christmas music the case of which contained a reproduction of a Christmas card that was signed by the whole Partridge Family, the stars of a 1970s sitcom. ... A Scarf joint is a means of joining usually wood, sometimes metal, end to end. ... Les Dawson (2 February 1931 - 10 June 1993) was a popular Lancashire comedian, known for his deadpan style. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... Comedy is the use of humor in the performing arts. ... Jump to: navigation, search Binomial name Gallus gallus (Linnaeus, 1758) A chicken (Gallus gallus) is a type of domesticated bird which is often raised as a type of poultry. ... In musical notation, staccato indicates that notes are sounded in a detached and distinctly separate manner with their lengths shortened; that is, a short silence should be between the notes, without affecting the rhythm. ... Monty Pythons Flying Circus (aka Flying Circus or MPFC, known during the fourth season as Monty Python) was the popular BBC sketch comedy show from Monty Python. ... A domestic goat Domestic can refer to: An animal or plant that has been domesticated A domestic worker Something pertaining to home Domestic policy is that policy relevant within a country A lobby term for women or girls This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that... Domestic refrigerators (usually shortened to fridge) are amongst the most common electric applicances in the world, for instance being present in 99. ... Knit hat, yarn, and knitting needles A woman knitting at a coffee shop Knitting is one of several ways to turn thread or yarn into cloth (cf weaving, crochet). ... Jump to: navigation, search Traditional Finnish puukko knife A knife is a sharp-edged hand tool used for cutting. ... CHiPs was a US television series running on NBC from September 15, 1977 to July 17, 1983. ... Jump to: navigation, search French fries (or french-fried potatoes, or simply fries or chips) are pieces of potato that have been deep-fried. ... Autograph of king Charles XII of Sweden (1682-1718) An autograph is a document written entirely in the handwriting of its author, as opposed to a typeset document or one transcribed by an amanuensis or a copyist (see allography). ... eGO is a company that builds electric motor scooters which are becoming popular for urban transportation and vacation use. ... Celebrity is an abstract word stemming from the Latin celebritas, itself from the adjective celeber famous, celebrated. A celebrity is a person who is widely recognized in a society. ... Jump to: navigation, search Food is any substance consumed by living organisms, including liquid drinks. ... Exterior appearance of typical supermarket (Safeway Inc. ... Jump to: navigation, search Socks // Physical Characteristics and Uses A sock is a baglike covering for the foot and/or lower leg, which is designed to: ease chafing between the foot and footwear, keep feet warm, and absorb sweat from the feet. ... Jump to: navigation, search Superman (left) and Batman, two of the most recognizable and influential superheroes. ... Patterns in the sand Sand is an example of a class of materials called granular matter. ... For the 80s New Wave band, see Fashion The term fashion applies to a characteristic means of expression or presentation; fashions may follow trends, in which they gain or lose popularity. ... Jump to: navigation, search Cardboard (called corrugated paper in the industry) is a heavy wood-based type of paper, notable for its stiffness and durability. ... Jump to: navigation, search 2005 (MMV) is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Green Razor Scooter This article is about things that people play with. ... Jump to: navigation, search Human buttocks. ... Jump to: navigation, search Money Money is any marketable good or token used by a society as a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a unit of account. ... Jump to: navigation, search This article deals with the history and development of the different sports around the world known as football. For links to articles on each of these codes of football, please see the list in the Football today section of this article. ... Jump to: navigation, search Men playing bowls Wikimedia Commons has more media related to: Bowls // History Bowls (also known as Lawn Bowls or Lawn Bowling) is a precision sport where the goal is to roll slightly radially asymmetrical balls (called bowls) closer to a smaller white ball (the jack or... An x-ray of a human knee In human anatomy, the knee is the leg joint connecting the femur and the tibia. ... Goal is a graffiti artist who is a member of the crew 1134 http://en. ... Jump to: navigation, search A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a two-dimensional figure with three vertices and three sides which are straight line segments. ...

Miscellaneous

Lester has a home in Hastings. For many years he lived aboard a 60-foot traditional stern canal boat (which he nicknamed The Blue Pig) during the week, while presenting his show from the BBC studios in Birmingham. He also has a restored cottage as a second home in the Normandy region of France. Hastings is a town and local government district in South East England, in the county of East Sussex. ... For other meanings of the term, see Stern (disambiguation). ... A narrowboat is a boat or small barge used on narrow beam canals in Britain. ... Art studio Adriaen van Ostade. ... Jump to: navigation, search The city from above Centenary Square. ... 19th century Cottages in the small hamlet of Crafton, Buckinghamshire A cottage is a small house of any period. ... Jump to: navigation, search Mont Saint Michel is a historic pilgrimage site and a symbol of Normandy Normandy is a geographical region in northern France. ...

Away from his radio work, he enjoys good food and drink, cars and attending concerts. He is known in particular for his love of 1970s rock, and attended many festivals in his youth. A concert is a live performance, usually of music, before an audience. ... Jump to: navigation, search The 1970s in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1970 and 1979. ... A festival or fest is an event, usually staged by a local community, which centers on some theme, sometimes on some unique aspect of the community. ...

External links

• BBC Radio 2's Alex Lester show page
• Slap My Top! - The Unofficial Alex Lester show site (endorsed by Alex Lester but not by BBC Radio 2)