I am not a "radio person", but in the not-so-distant past I made a discovery which I am sharing with you - Just a minute, with Nicholas Parsons.

The players are given a subject, they must talk about it for one minute, without repeating themselves, hesitating, or deviating from the discussion point; i.e. no "repetition, hesitation, or deviation".

When either of these happens, another player can challenge the current speaker, explain where their fault is, and take over the subject. This sounds easy, but it is not.

The game is very entertaining, because the players are really good at it, and they have a great sense of humour. This programme is a great choice if you are into self-improvement, and you want to develop your language skills, and creativity. The game has several rounds, there are four different subjects (one for each player), so we get 4x the fun!

Too bad that I only discovered "Just a minute" two weeks ago, because the game has been on air since 1967 (over 600 episodes!), being one of the oldest shows on BBC radio. Wow!

It is on air every Monday at 18.30, and Sunday 00.00; you can listen to it online (follow the link given earlier).

To summarize the above, "Just a minute" can help you:

• improve your rhetoric;
• improve your [spoken] English;
• develop your imagination;
• get a really really good laugh for half an hour, almost without breaks.

I stumbled upon it when reviewing the awkward moments of phone conversations. There seems to be an unwritten protocol - there has to be some sort of an introduction (which includes asking questions, the answer for which you don't really need); followed by the actual conversation (this is why the phonecall was made for), and the ending (a set of polite remarks, that simply diminish the signal-to-noise ratio).

How do you know that you've reached the final part? You can tell that, by monitoring hesitation, pauses that don't feel right, followed by some remarks or questions that are there to "fill the ether". Wouldn't it be cool of conversations were less diplomatic? I catch myself doing this all the time (even though I am consciously against this). Perhaps this should be used as an argument in the discussion about the strength of friendship.

A true friendship is a friendship:

• for which silence is not a problem;
• in which phone conversations go smoothly without the "polite intro/outro" mentioned above.

As I was saying, I found "Just a minute" while looking for ways to avoid hesitation, and it seems that I found a good training mechanism!

How to listen?

Go to the programme's web-site and click "Listen to the latest edition" in the column on the right. Alternatively, follow the steps below:

1. Download and install RealPlayer on your computer
2. Open this file in RealPlayer

You might want to install an older version of RealPlayer (not bloated).

P.S. Another discovery is Afterhours FM, free online radio, the greatest trance music out there, streamed in various formats. If you're into trance, AH.fm is for you.