Deborah Hill Cone: Afternoons on Radio NZZZZZZ

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There are many boring things in life: baby showers, celtic tattoos, garden centres, people who tell you about their skiing holidays, windbags with designer watches, people who call eggs benedict "eggs benny", rules, raisins, grouting, having to put your seatbelt on in the back of a cab ...

This is fun! I could go on. But then I would have to add myself to my own list.

Which brings me to the particular boring topic of this column.

I'm sure he is a lovely, lovely man and I am a total cow to say this out loud, but Afternoons on National Radio with Simon Mercep are just so batshit boring.

I wish I could capture the low-fi eye-poking nature of the extreme torpor that permeates this show, but even the act of writing about it threatens to infuse it with some undeserved ersatz pizzazz. Instead, a sample: an interview with nine-time Bluff oyster-shucking champion Keith Lovett about why he is throwing in the towel.

Mercep: Keith is on the line now. Keith, good afternoon to you, welcome!

Gruff peasant from Central Casting: How are ya?

Mercep: I'm very well. Good to talk to you today.

GP: Good to talk to ya too.

Mercep: The first question I'd like to ask, and you're the man to ask, what is the secret to a quick shuck of an oyster?

GP: [Mumble, indecipherable something about concentrating].

Mercep: Ah, concentrating must be the most important thing. You wouldn't want to make a slip!

GP: No that's right.

Mercep: Do you get nervous when you compete in the competitions you have competed in over the years?

GP: Yeah you get that for the first minute or so but then you come right.

Mercep: What sort of knife do you use?

GP: It's a knife made of a tableknife. You carve the handle out.

Mercep: As I said you've been at Bluff for a long long time, actually Keith what is your shucking record?

GP: In 2005, two minutes and 13 seconds [mumble indecipherable].

Mercep: Sorry I spoke over you, how many oysters in that time?

Oyster guy: 50.

Mercep [laughing] Sounds like a lot to me!

(And so on, for another nine thrilling minutes.)

Oi, sweetheart, wake up! Stay with me, I'm still going. Simon Mercep does seem a kindly fellow. He would make a great oncologist - brilliant bedside manner - or a geography teacher.

But on the radio I just start to long for him to pick a fight with someone or just do something that is not so nice. If they ever invite me on the Panel again - which I somehow suspect they won't after reading this column - I might feel the need to talk about anal sex.

This is not to say I don't like National Radio. This is not one of those off-the-peg rants about National Radio being a waste of taxpayer money or full of lefty tossers.

I am saying it is a waste of money because it is bo-ring.

This new soporific afternoon show was part of a larger shakeup at the taxpayer-funded station which ushered in a new team on Morning Report with Guyon Espiner and Susie Ferguson. I like that.

Espiner has a neat way of asking questions where he sounds quizzical and genuinely curious about the answer. Which, Mary Wilson I'm looking at you, is not as easy to do as you might think. (Just a suggestion Guyon, there are other ways to end an interview than with "We'll leave it there thanks").

And I won't hear a word said against the divine Kathryn Ryan. But why do the bosses at National Radio think that after midday everyone is an OAP with spit bubbles for a brain?

I totally accept that our tax dollars have to go on all measure of dreary utilitarian necessities of a civil society - but if we are going to also splash out tax dollars on things that are supposedly intended to entertain or inform, then Afternoons with Simon Mercep is not it.

If we are going to spend taxpayers' money on something this boring, we may as well spend it on Team New Zealand.

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