Jamie Theakston's all talk

It's a brand-new morning on a brand-new day and here's a brand-new Jamie Theakston ready to guide us through that difficult rite of life's passage called waking up.

It was joyous news that Jamie was going to provide an alternative to the laddish characters who infest breakfast radio like cockroaches on last night's supper. "It's a brand-new era," trumpeted Jamie, "it's a new dawn."

There was a pause as he listened to the rain drumming on the roof of Heart FM. "I can't tell you how excited I am to be here," he added, a trouper after only one minute of the new show. "It's a wet start, it's proper London weather." Ah, what a nice boy, and a Shane Warne of meteorological spin.

Unfortunately, this was the high point of the show.

There is obviously something about having to get up wretchedly early in the morning that brings out the lad in a bloke. Whereas the trusty Harriet Scott, once a partner of Jono, now joined at the lip to Jamie as it were, can perform naturally at this ungodly hour, Jamie can't stop telling us what time it is.

Although he is striving to be the new Gerald Harper of the airwaves, his gut instinct is to be as laddish as he promised not to be. Getting into gear with a story about Paula Radcliffe having a pee stop during the London marathon - "I'm happy she didn't finish No 2" - he proudly announces the beginning of a brand-new breakfast feature called Rude Awakening. Goodness knows how many fine minds were gathered around the table to think this one up, but it is a masterpiece of the asinine.

A whispering Pam from Dagenham comes on the phone to announce that her husband, Paul, is to be the first recipient of this gutbusting radio innovation. She puts the phone to the ear of her slumbering spouse, whereupon Jamie cues up a blast of hideous brassy noise, before shouting into the receiver. Paul, bless his cotton bed socks, has the enormous good grace to make some laughing noises. In the same situation, I would not have behaved so politely. I would have told Jamie exactly where to shove his brand-new dawn.

To be fair, this might have been down to brand-new, first- morning nerves. Although the other new feature - "We want to know about your first day at work" - seemed to suggest that Jamie has got his new job on the brain, rather than caring about the rest of us, who mostly don't have brand-new jobs and are only listening to find out which bit of London's road and rail networks have snarled up. And, to be even fairer, Harriet performs this task admirably.